Thread: What to do with this wood?

Sleeper + durable outside + incredibly hard = possibly jarrah or ironbark - certainly not oregon.

Feel free to ship them to me - I'll find good homes for them!

Haha, nice try. This is my starter stock, I've got a brand new triton lumber rack I need to fill

Also although I said "Sleeper", that might not actually be accurate. It's certainly a big lump of wood, I think it was something like 80x140mm or so, and as I said, 4m long.

It's also council bulk atm, so I am scavenging all kinds of good stuff. The neighbour just put out all kinds of short timber I can recycle, plus I found some bits of bed, which I think is probably pine, but it's a decent thickness and in pretty good condition so I pinched that too. Either which way, I expect I'll probably have some more timber to be identified before very long :P

Also I didn't think it was jarrah because of the weird black/dark brown on the endgrain. I've never seen jarrah like that. If it helps, the exposed bits of timber (most of it was painted) seemed to go a very dark brown.

EDIT: Turns out I've never seen a bit of well aged Jarrah I guess, a lot of them do seem to have that weird black stuff on the endgrain. I would have expected Jarrah to be a lot more red regardless though. This is definitely more of a brown.

Salvaged from a headboard post, only have end grain scans so far. Light, reasonably hard (fingernail leaves no impression). Thought it might be handy for making a few shop tools, like a scratch stock, maybe a marking gauge.

Timber-Bed1.jpg Timber-Bed2.jpg

Add 1 vote for Jarrah.
Endgrain of my stuff looks exactly like that.

Is there anything I can do about the cracks and checks? I'll try to upload a scan of an untrimmed piece tomorrow so you can see the extent of them. I'm really hoping it's not as bad towards the centre, or in the lower boards. Otherwise that's a waste of a whole lot of really nice looking jarrah.

Welcome to the Grand Amalgamated Union of Scroungers and Recyclers!!

Originally Posted by Mooncabbage

Is there anything I can do about the cracks and checks? I'll try to upload a scan of an untrimmed piece tomorrow so you can see the extent of them. I'm really hoping it's not as bad towards the centre, or in the lower boards. Otherwise that's a waste of a whole lot of really nice looking jarrah.

If your planning on making a bathroom counter top or table etc, you can always fill the cracks with tinted resin (usually black).

Lots of others here in the forums have done that.

Get it down to something reasonable an then fill it with epoxy resin then flatten again.

I was planning on cutting them down to thin-ish boards, joining them edge to edge bookmatch stylz, and using them as part of a stool/chest or something. I guess if I have a few small cracks I can epoxy them and put them on the inside/hidden face.

EDIT: PS. Thanks artme! Gotta love those freebie leftovers Especially well aged ones. This Jarrah is literally rock hard (cracks aside).

Yep - fill the cracks with epoxy - add some reddish black tint to it and it'll look like the typical jarrah sap run.

Can you go into a bit more detail, or give me some terms to search? I've never used epoxy glue before, let alone tinted it. What am I looking to buy for this?

Glad to hear my timbers aren't a total writeoff too

Australian made - Botecote - Bote-Cote Reliable Marine Epoxy

US made (and well worth while visiting their site to read all their documentation) - West System - Epoxy by the Leading Epoxy Manufacturer | WEST SYSTEM Epoxy

You should be able to find at least one at a fiberglass or marine shop locally. (I can even find it here in 'we have no decent industrial suppliers' Canberra!)

Read the info on the West System site. There's about 300 pages, so it'll take a while.

Note that marine epoxy and araldite have similarities and differences. 1) They are both epoxies. 2) They build ocean going yachts with marine epoxy, not araldite. 3) Marine epoxy is about 1/3 the price of araldite and has soooo many uses. (TL;DR - don't use araldite)

Shelf life - well, I can vouch for at least 12 years - https://www.woodworkforums.com/f198/e...3/#post1420609

Colouring - fiberglass shops sell little vials of colour for epoxy, or you can use builders oxides, or I have used tiny drops of the Feast Watson Prooftint as it gives a transparent rather than opaque colour. You can also use sawdust to colour it if you want to thicken the epoxy as well, but this looks rather horrible in my opinion.

Haha, my stepdad swears by Araldite, crazy Kiwi. Used it for everything. I personally prefer superglue or PVA.

Thanks for the help. I wonder of Carbatec might sell it. I'm thinking I'll be heading that way sooner rather than later anyway.

PS. As a kid in the 90s, I feel I need to say your nick is like, the best thing I have ever seen

PPS. Carbatec have that West System stuff. I'll grab some, sounds handy

regarding getting the nails out, can you weld?

to remove embedded nails i weld on a scrap of metal then pull the scrap out with a pry bar. the next nail is then welded to the tip of the one just removed. works great

Nah, I can't weld. I don't think there are THAT many nails to worry about either.

This epoxy stuff is really confusing me. Thickeners? Faring? Adhesive additives? This is like, the most complicated glue ever.

Oh Hey! Mr Wood Whisperer has a video on how to fill knots like this. Not exactly the same, but it should work the same. Plus he uses the same west system gear, so that's a +1 to my confidence.

EDIT: Seems like coffee grounds and wood dust are popular additives as well as dye. I think sawdust would be too big for most things, but extremely fine dust from sanding would probably just match colours. I might give that a go on a piece and see how it goes. I've got a lot of board, so I'll do a few test sections on offcuts.