collecting outback timber

[bellyup]

Hello All,
I'm very much a novice turner living in Broken Hill, far west NSW. I became bored turning up pieces of pine and assorted bits from our local timber merchant so hitched the trailer to the back of the 4wd and headed to one of the dried creek beds and found lots of redgum with burls and dried limbs. I managed to lop about 5 burls between the size of a shoe box and some the size of a small esky before the chainsaw blade became too blunt to continue and threw a few dried limbs/logs in the trailer as well.
At home I lopped some of the limbs to about 30cm and put them between centres and proceeded to make huge amounts of sawdust - great fun!! Not surewhat to do with the burls just yet.
My questions are these:
Is it ok to use whole limbs for turning, are they stable enough for projects?
We have alot of Pepperina gums and Quandong, are these any good?
With Mulga and Mallee, how thick does the timber need to be, to be worthwhile.
Are there any good resources to identify what our local timbers are, the local library has very little and the pics are old B+W.
Would appreciate any advice,
Thanks,
Bellyup.

[rsser]

Hi Bellyup,

Nice haul of timber!

With whole limbs dry they are likely to be checked in the middle so cut 'em and see. Generally with dry I cut the pith out cos that's where the checking is likely to start. Ditto with green timber, except you can turn 'branchwood' green provided you do it all in one session and fairly thin.

Redgum is pretty unstable however you get it so you end up living with 'rustic' pieces courtesy of checks and sometimes sap pockets.

Any Mulga and Mallee can produce useful or interesting turnings regardless of thickness. Even just a finial for a box top or an egg cup. Or even a pen blank (arrggh!).

Hope this helps.

My two best references on timber are

Forest Trees of Australia (will give you some means of species id and distribution)

Wood in Australia (species characteristics and uses)

[bellyup]

Thanks Rssr,
I appreciate the advice. When you talk about "checks" do you mean cracks or splits?
Also, I rough turned one of the small redgum burls (still green) into a bowl shape and the flecks through the timber were fantastic, looks like an African Cheeta, but the base timber was quite white not red, would that be sap wood and is it worth perservering with?
Thanks,
Bruce

[rsser]

A check is a surface split (ie. which doesn't run the depth of the piece).

Your burl sounds like a gem.

I can't really help with the sapwood question. Unless it really adds to the appearance of the piece, or you need it for depth, I'd be included to turn it off.

My guess would be that redgum sapwood should nonetheless be fairly sound and if so you shouldn't have a strength issue with it ... but older hands than me on redgum should be consulted. I see redgum sapwood only rarely cos the trees are big ... but of course you have a burl.

[China]

Just don't let the ranger catch you with his trusty digital camera, I got snaped cost me $600.00