Thread: Too good for firewood?

MA

Looks interesting. Do you know the timber? Without seeing any other part of the tree, the first pic looks a little like Spotted Gum and the second could be Stringy Bark: Probably way off beam with both.

I think quite a few people end up rescuing timber from the firewood pile.

Regards
Paul

Hi Paul. Pretty sure it's Mountain Ash (E. Regnans). Wood was dumped in the carpark of a Parks Victoria garden just up the top of the hill from our place. Bark seemed to indicate that this part of the trunk was close to the ground (bark a little woolly, gets smoother the higher you go). And it smelt like MA when split (as in the wet timber not a wet me!)

That has a lot of potential. If things go well and it dries without too much splitting & warpage, what sorta sizes could you see out of it? Box panels? Smaller? Larger?

I'm thinking it'd make for some nice turning blanks at the very least.

Originally Posted by Bushmiller

I think quite a few people end up rescuing timber from the firewood pile.

Indeed. It can be a bit hard on the tools when your firewood is primarily Ironbark, but the results are worth it. (Or so I keep telling myself. )

Oh yes, there have been quite a few diversions from firewood pile to an alternative life for many bits of wood round here! I was busting a gut trying to split a chunk of unknown hardwood one day, and after the splitting maul bounced back at me for the 3rd time without leaving more than a bruise on the target, I thought "why am I trying to destroy a bunch of potential mallet heads?!" The bandsaw didn't make as hard work of it as the maul had, so that piece & quite a few others since became the raw material for things like this: Small mallets.jpg

My biggest 'mistake' was in cutting up an unknown log in the half-dark (not the smartest move by any measure, you'll agree), when helping a neighbor to clean up and old windrow on his place. No, I didn't cut my leg off, but I took the wood & some other stuff from round the place up to MIL's (they had a wood heater, we don't), and some months later I was being helpful & spending an hour or two on the wood-heap. The stuff I'd dropped off was mostly blackbutt, which is the most common hardwood on the slightly better soil here (the stony ridge top above our block is all ironbark & spotted gum), but there were a few billets of this dark stuff, which turned out to be a lovely acacia with a fine fiddleback figure. I can't tell you which species, there are 3 or 4 of them that reclaimed the old farmland that this area once was. I promptly ferreted through what was left of the wood I'd delivered but only turned up two more billets, the rest had already gone to the fire. The bits I did manage to rescue contained a few splits thanks to sitting "in the round' for years, but they still yielded some nice wood - this is probably the least well-figured of what I recovered: Badgered smthr d.jpg

Since then I've been a bit less cavalier about sawing up any windfall log. The said acacias grow like weeds but have a short life span & there has been a steady supply of dead trees in the time we've been here. Some of them are as hard as iron & not easy to work (that first log was lovely stuff to work with), but I often find interesting bits around branches or defects adequate for small jobs like the infill in this little chariot plane: Finished.jpg

The scrubby trees rarely grow straight for more than 400mm in any one direction, but when they do, they are a good source of chair spindles. I just finished this chair for a grand daughter: Done.jpg

The legs are acacia from our yard & the seat & back rail are jacaranda from the neighbor's place (it committed the capital offence of getting its toes into their grey-water system). It was a very large old tree & it would have been a tragedy if it had all gone into the chipper, as it nearly did....

All wood is good, but free wood is gooder....

Cheers,

Lovely work!