Well, after a whirlwind round trip Brisbane-Atherton Tableland-Brisbane in a little under a week, I've come to the end of a brief holiday. :C
The purpose of the trip was to help sort out my dad's shed, as posted on another thread, but while I was there I made some very good scores on wood, thanks to the generosity of various rellies - a pile of rough-cut red cedar, a large (& heavy!) chunk of dry Cooktown ironwood, and some she-oak. My brother took me over to his firewood lot & we chose what looked like a likely tree with a good-looking bole, & plenty of firewood in the top. I roughly quarted it freehand & hauled it home so I could get it over the big bandsaw & planer. Even though I sealed the ends immediately & kept it out of the sun, the sapwood had started to crack by the time I got it here. Turned out to be a minor disappointment - the tree must have been damaged at some stage earlier in its life & it contained some very deep old cracks & some strange sapwood, which was contributing to its desire to crack. However, by careful hacking & sawing, I think I have got what I really wanted from it - so far it looks like it is behaving now I have it diced into smaller pieces, but you never know with she-oak, so I'm not counting chickens just yet!
So here's a shot of the very messy shed after 2 days of sawing, sizing & planing. The big chunk on the stool at left is half the ironwood, there is some of the cedar on the right at the back, and the several short pieces of cedar standing atthe fronnt right are crotch pieces - some nice book-matched panels coming up, I hope...
Took me all day today to clean up!
But pretty satisfying. :U
Cheers,
