Thread: Not too shabby

Any chance of a single stick sent to brisbane?

Neah no tricks, easy to tell it ain't a trick either: I'm just contract sawing it.

I can buy 50 cedar logs and not get one like this... story of my life.

Best bits, be a couple box lid sized lumps on one end. The rest are good but the half dozen bits around that knot... Hell I don't like Cedar and it's good, and a couple days oxidizing and it'll be deep mahogany with gold flashing. Something special right there.

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Unlikely, the owner is a cabinet maker and they'll use it all in house.

All good John.G. You can only ask.

Lovely looking wood there John!

Whats sawing a log like that up with regards to the smell of it .
Is the smell strong ? and does it get to you , where you end up getting sick of the smell ?

I love it when I get a whiff of it sometimes. Its in old dry wood though, and I think its smell is mostly gone compared to a new board by the time I get it .

I did a job out of Huon Pine a while back . A decent size dinning table, all hand planed with curly shavings ankle deep all over the place . From a smell I loved to have a smell of before that job , I got the feeling I understood why Bugs dont like it. It got to be like taking a smell out of a box of soap for to long . Just wondering if Cedar would be the same.
Rob

Originally Posted by Emit

All good John.G. You can only ask.

No worries mate. It's hard, we've been on a tough run since we lost the lease on the mill buildings last year trying to maintain business and position ourselves to buy a new home for it without a home for it: difficult maintaining quality and volume with just a Lucas and a docking saw. And there's 8 grands worth of readily disposable someone else's timber sitting beside it now waiting to freight back to the tablelands next week. A few boards wouldn't be missed.

Ultimately though my reputation as not just a good operator but one of the few honest bastards in a game full of rogues is why people pay to freight logs to me and freight timber back. You get fixed mill quality and all your log back, and if you get less then expected because your log was bad it's because your log was bad.
That reputation is worth more to me then the whole lot of the stuff long term.

If it was mine I'd happily send some.

Well it was interesting. This started out as a gentle poke at some of my southern mates who always want to tell me about the lack of colour in FNQ cedar.
( they're right to some degree BTW, a lot of the smaller logs that have been sawn in the last 40 years are a bit ordinary, but you could say the same about juvenile logs from Dorrigo too)

It became something a bit more then that. I'm.kinda glad in a way I was contract cutting him: it saved me the agony of deciding what thickness to cut it at, which is a dilemma all sawmills get when they've got something special going through - you only get one shot at it.

Log volume was 2.2 cube, comprising the butt log and one lead that was worth sawing.
Recovery was near enough to 1.5 by pack volume, though I'd say 1.1 is more accurate by the time its docked/resawn. The customer likes to do that himself and I can't blame him, he'll get better utilization that way.

Call it 50% commercial recovery, mostly quartersawn, mostly 200 plus wide, nothing under 75mm wide or 900 long. Plus a little pile of non commercial bits suit pen blanks etc that I'll trade for a carton of beer along the way somewhere. Not much of that even, I know every trick in the book and a few that haven't been written down yet about forcing grade recovery from a log when i need it and I went the extra distance on this one.

Its one of the better logs I've ever sawn for figure. Sadly all good things come to an end and as of this morning when I strapped the second pack down were back to boring old floorboards and the never ending tomato stake contract.

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Both packs treated packed and strapped. Colour is coming into it now where its got some sun.

Originally Posted by FenceFurniture

Maybe it's a trick of the light, but I'm thinking that it looks SPECTACULAR!

It SURE DOES (be still my heart!)

Originally Posted by auscab

Lovely looking wood there John!

Whats sawing a log like that up with regards to the smell of it .
Is the smell strong ? and does it get to you , where you end up getting sick of the smell ?

I love it when I get a whiff of it sometimes. Its in old dry wood though, and I think its smell is mostly gone compared to a new board by the time I get it .

I did a job out of Huon Pine a while back . A decent size dinning table, all hand planed with curly shavings ankle deep all over the place . From a smell I loved to have a smell of before that job , I got the feeling I understood why Bugs dont like it. It got to be like taking a smell out of a box of soap for to long . Just wondering if Cedar would be the same.
Rob

Well I tossed the first log under the mill about 6pm Thursday and opened a face and it smelt great for a whole 10 minutes or so.
Thursday night I had steak and veg for dinner with a faint cedar taint to it.
Hooked in early Friday morning, came home around 9ish for breakfast and had cedar flavoured eggs and cedar coffee
Lunch was cedar sammiches with cedar tea, followed by a nap in my cedar scented sheets.
Finished sawing late Friday arvo
Dinner was green cedar curry with a cedar or three to wash it down. We had cedar for dessert, then I slept in a stack of cedar.
Crawled out Saturday morning, had cedar washed down with cedar... went back to the mill, ripped out a few that needed resawing around faults and strapped it all down and dipped it.
Sucked down two packs of cedarettes during all this of course.
Knocked off at lunch Saturday, went home and had some cedar and another nap in my cedar. Hung out some washing that had a lovely cedar smell to it because my work clobber had got washed ahead of it, I'd rinsed them out first but nevermind. Then had some cedar with cedar for dinner.
Its sunday am and my coffee tasted almost like coffee.

Aint so bad. Not as nice as maple which is a pleasant "juicy fruit" taste but a whole lot better then when I'm cutting NSO or Leichardt. Leichardt is a traditional fish poison and I can be numb in the lips /mouth like I've been to the dentists for days when we're in it.

And that is why I have spent a lifetime dealing in the stuff.

Ha Ha , great reply thanks John.
I think we fully get what its like from that .
I'm glad to read that it "Aint so bad" as well.

Rob

Originally Posted by rustynail

And that is why I have spent a lifetime dealing in the stuff.

Good colour boss??? You've seen more of it then I ever will.

I've never felt love for the stuff but I begin to understand the obsession now; couple more like this and I could get hooked.

I got this old mate maybe 6 mile from where we got this one with a decent stand of them - same kinda size or a bit bigger, but nothing huge - growing in a heavy basalt hollow. Plenty rock, plenty stinging tree. Might have to see if I can talk him out of one in the interests of curiosity science. But that doesnt mean I've got the cedar bug like you have.

Yet.

Yes John, very good colour. Also the variance in grain structure make for a nice log. Normally, this type of variance is caused by a massive fault somewhere within and a good dose of rot usually goes with it.
Interesting you say the site was rocky, as that is what I suspected. It explains the slower growth and strong colour.
Most hardwood millers never seem to get the Cedar bug, but I have made a few converts over the years.