Thread: Stepping outside my comfort zone

Wow, that grain is all over the place... Pretty wood, pine or not.

I went through a couple of cubes of Hoop making bee boxes in Brisbane. How does it compare to that? I'd imagine the two are similar being of the same genus, but I never got my hands on any Bunya.

Never sawn hoop either. Thats a four letter word as well!! Unpruned farm plantings so it looked like hoop in terms of branches up it etc.

But... shrinkage is way less per Bootle which is why its a guitar belly timber. And I was quite suprised at how firm it was under the saw. Cut nice and laid straight with very little movement (which is nice after 1200 ton of hardwood in the last 12 months - this is what normal people saw)

It'll make some awful pretty fruit tree props anyway.

Tectocoris diophthalmus (Cotton Harlequin Bug)

Nice looking Pine.

Love Bunya!! In itself it is a a beautiful tree with its parabolic profile and the nuts are great to eat when roasted.

one of the best features of this aruacaria is that you can get wide boards from the older trees for table and bench making.

The timber seems to be very stable once seasoned and works like a dream. It will get a blue mold if left in the wrong place
for too long so it is basically a matter of seasoning and using in short order.

The only furniture I have seen made from Bunya Pine was a bush style BBQ setting. There is a bloke about 50Km from here who makes this stuff up. The table from memory was eight place The top was about 75mm thick and I think he had around $3500 on it including the chairs. Quite impressive looking, but not everybody's taste. It was not there when we last looked so I suppose it was sold. This is the type of product he sells:

P1030584.JPGP1030585.JPG

Regards
Paul

Nice milling there.

The bug looks like a harlequin beetle. They like hibiscus plants

John

I rather like the Bunyas. We have planted two here at home and they seem to thriving. Probably be about ready to harvest in 2118. The Bunya mountains are only three hours away from here so it is the right sort of region although it lacks the elevation to make it ideal.

If you milled away from home, what style of mill did you use?

Regards
Paul

Hi Paul

Don't forget to prune them. This would have been a nice sawlog if it had of seen a chainsaw every couple decades. As it was there was maybe 6m of clear at the butt, then the knots started. I looked down the road at another row of them and same: what could be high value logs are just low grade crap - but pretty to look at I'll give them that.

I have a 1030 Lucas that's mostly permanently mounted on a deck in my shed for oversize logs: it's a handy machine within its limitations. Shes getting old and tired but it'll still cut a decent enough board. Actually the machine is a credit to Lucas Mill and I can't speak too highly of the company or their product, and the volume of timber we've pulled out of a lightweight portable mill is phenomenal. Bang for your buck they're hard to beat if you aren't in the tonnage game.

Im kinda in the tonnage game but even then it's a handy thing to have

Hi Luke,

Bunya is much easier to work than hoop pine.
I should add the hoop pine I've worked with (almost a cube) was finger jointed boards made from offcuts from bee box making.
So they were all the bits with knots and the grain reversed on almost every finger jointed section.

Nevertheless, Bunya is somewhat softer in comparison, and very easy to work.

Cheers, Jeff

Originally Posted by Luke Maddux

Wow, that grain is all over the place... Pretty wood, pine or not.

I went through a couple of cubes of Hoop making bee boxes in Brisbane. How does it compare to that? I'd imagine the two are similar being of the same genus, but I never got my hands on any Bunya.