What is it?

[IanW]

There are lighter ones, too, including smaller ones that look like slicks but lack the thickness that slicks have (and they also have a lightly built socket like that one, with a hole in the end of it to pin the handle). I'd be lying if I said we ever used one (though we cut a lot of wood when I was growing up, never for anything but firewood).

Must've been spuds for saplings, DW! . I reckon the tool in question is a bit light to tackle the bark on most trees you would want to de-bark in our part of the world. I've used a few bark spuds back in the day, and they were pretty solid affairs, more like the ones pmcgee showed. The one the old man had was solid steel, and heavy for a weedy teenager to wield, so I would have much preferred something with a lighter, more hand-friendly wooden handle. Mind you, the bark spud was easier to lift than the 16 lb splitting-hammer!

Cheers,

[D.W.]

I think that generally, your timber is tougher than ours. Call that one an american spud

A lot of the trees that were used for log homes here had bark that comes off pretty readily, and grow commonly in sizes that are handy for house building.

I'm not sure who else would use spuds, but in the area where I grew up (which dates to the mid 1750s in the US, mostly german ancestry), there are a lot of buildings (barns and houses) with hand hewn timbers. I think they were too proud to just take the log as round and stack it and fill the cracks with chinking.

[IanW]

I think that generally, your timber is tougher than ours. ....

You're not wrong there, 'ol buddy! I spent quite a few years on your continent and can attest to that. You have a few species I caqme across, like the Hickories, that are pretty tough, and Honey Locust is hard stuff, too, but none of 'em is remotely like our denser Eucalypts, which also have very thick, tough bark (as a protection against fire, which is a major hazard for many open-forest species down this way). Depending on season and growth status, you can get the bark off some Eucs with ease, but when they want to hang onto it, it's a major struggle to get a good-sized log naked, I can tell you!

Cheers,

[D.W.]

I'm not sure what our hardest is, maybe persimmon? None of them can't be worked by hand, though persimmon can be a pain. Osage orange might be harder, but it's just a bunch of strings, and I find it to be a generally nasty wood for hand toolers. Charts say osage is harder, but I find persimmon to be more resistant to planing.

We like our easy woods!! Good samples of such are getting harder to find around here, though. Mostly second growth poor color stuff, real mahogany is expensive, cherry doesn't look like vintage cherries, the pines are like styrofoam compared to the high density old stuff.

It's probably better to get timber here if you're going to be a hand tooler from start to finish, though. Or maybe I should say that most stuff is soft enough that it's possible to do it with relative ease.

[IanW]

Horses for courses! We do have some pretty unfriendly stuff over here, I'll grant. Good for benches & suchlike, though. A bench made out of wood with a density >1 is kinda solid! While there are a few hardy types who work the tougher woods by hand, they yield best to machines with carbide teeth, imo. I do use some pretty hard stuff myself and work it with hand tools (after using machinery to do the hard yards!). But hardness isn't the sole measure of workability - you can do some fine work with very hard woods, like these marking gauges made from an Allocasaurina, which is up near the top of the Jaanka scale : New set 2012.jpg

But as it happens, we also have quite a few much more friendly woods - some of the Acacias like Blackwood and Salwood are pretty similar in their working properties to your Black Walnut, and there are several rainforest species that are every bit as good or better to work with. In fact, the choice is much broader, if you take the whole continent, but we have the same problem as you do, and that is scarcity. Most of the more desirable woods have been loved to near-death here, too....
Cheers,

[pmcgee]

A lot of the trees that were used for log homes here had bark that comes off pretty readily, and grow commonly in sizes that are handy for house building.

That made me chuckle [ ... not in a critical way. ]
I figured if I had to build a house outta trees, I might let the trees decide how big the house was.

And while we touch on it ... never having seen maple ... hard or soft ... what would we have that might be similar ... that I have encountered?
(which pretty much comes down to jarrah, sheoak and pine) (ok, karri, marri, peppermint, and suspected ironwood)

Cheers,
Paul

[pmcgee]

it's a major struggle to get a good-sized log naked, I can tell you!

It can be a major struggle to get a good-sized anything naked.