Wood That I Were Finished
February 26th, 2009Logged Out
I am worn out from cutting up trash pile mahogany.
I’ve been writing about the pile of rotten mahogany logs I found in a neighbor’s trash. I stole a bunch and took them home. Since then I have been sawing viable wood out of them.
It’s shocking how much wood you can get out of a short rotten log. You can take a log maybe 11″ wide with a 4″ hole running down the middle of it and get a clean 9″ slab that is surprisingly thick out of each side. Then you resaw the slabs into thinner slabs. You wind up with a lot of perfectly useful wood.
At first, I was disappointed when I cut out the rot and ended up with pieces that were short or oddly shaped. Then I thought of the horrible screw jobs I had taken on red oak at Home Depot.
First of all, red oak is remarkably ugly. It looks like a desk from a high school, circa 1970. Maybe that’s the kind of wood they used for desks. It’s plain, it’s coarse-grained, and the color is about like a Band-Aid. Sure, it’s strong. In Appalachia, they used to make solid wagon wheels out of it, cutting slices out of round logs, because it wouldn’t split. But it’s very drab.
Second, Home Depot oak is very expensive. Sometimes you really need a piece of hardwood for something, like maybe a backing slab for a latch on a shed door, and you can’t just pull the wood out of your ear. You have to get it somewhere. So you find yourself making a ridiculous trip to the store for maybe a foot and a half of three-inch-wide oak. And then you find out it’s ten bucks, or some such insane price. That is beyond belief. It makes you wonder where all the forests went. Don’t we still have a few trees?
It may seem silly for me to carve out a piece of mahogany two feet long, three inches on one side, and two and a half inches on the other. But that’s equivalent to more than two of the pieces of Home Depot oak I just talked about. It’s probably twenty bucks’ worth of wood. And it will also look good. Damn, why not take it when you have the chance?
For that matter, why not take live oak? It’s better-looking than red oak, and it’s probably just as tough. It’s free, all over the place. A couple of months ago, a live oak fell on a neighbor’s house, and when the clearing crew got done, there was a pile of logs as big as two cars. FREE. Sitting by the street.
I suppose live oak is desirable wood, to people who like oak. What the hell. Take it and make furniture. Hmm…Wikipedia says it warps and twists when you dry it. Okay, fine. Make two-by-fours out of it. They surely won’t be any worse than the corkscrews Home Depot sells.
I am looking up other trees that grow around here.
Tamarind is hard and dense, and it has all sorts of weird figuring in it. And spalted tamarind is highly desirable.
Poinciana wood is crap. Whoops, wait. You can turn it and make beautiful things.
Lignum vitae is probably too hard to do anything with.
Citrus wood is hard, dense, and really pretty.
I’m starting to think about wood lathes.
I will stop now.
February 26th, 2009 at 12:49 AM
Hm, my spinning wheel is made of red oak by a character named Rick Reeves somewhere in Florida. I think its pretty though it does kind of have the surface of an old school desk.
February 26th, 2009 at 12:57 AM
Some of that will make great blanks from which to make gunstocks.
After, that is, you dry them for three or four years.
Jim
Sunk New Dawn
Galveston, TX
February 26th, 2009 at 1:42 AM
I had the same experience buying a piece of oak at Home Depot a few years ago. I just wanted something to put my computer on — it sat on the floor, and where I was living the carpet was this thick pile that my computer wouldn’t sit straight on, and the cheap cd drive I had in it was having problems because the computer was wobbly. So I figured just buy a plank of wood to stabilize it. Naive me, I thought I’d only spend pennies. So I wander around and look at all the wood at Home Depot, and it all looks alike to me, and then I saw this oak stuff. I think it was red oak, and I guess it wasn’t spectacularly pretty or anything but it was going to be on the floor under a computer tower. And it was smooth and close-grained and very heavy, so I figured it would smash the stupid carpet fibers down better than splintery old pine. So I had the guy cut me a piece, about one and a half feet long. Then I took it to the cash register and almost died when they quoted me a price of nearly ten dollars. I felt like an idiot, but since I already had had it cut I went and paid for it. I didn’t expect that because I thought oak was the most common tree after pine.
February 26th, 2009 at 8:11 AM
Even if you don’t want to use it yourself, the lignum vitae would make great swapping material to get you other species from non-local “found wood” collectors.
February 26th, 2009 at 9:51 AM
trash pile mahogany-
that sounds like a good name for a rock band.
February 26th, 2009 at 10:48 AM
Bois de arc, osage orange or whatever they call it there, is extremely hard to cut and is orange but it is a beautiful wood and STRONG. Be on the lookout for it, it is usually considered a very trash tree.
And Trash Pile Mahogany does sound like a rock band. Get back to that music you were doing…..
February 26th, 2009 at 12:15 PM
Rifle stocks.
March 2nd, 2009 at 3:21 AM
Dear Customer,
On behalf of The Home Depot I apologize for any inconvenience you may have experienced in regards to your wood purchase with our company.
Please know that it is The Home Depot’s goal to satisfy all of our customers with our products and services. We look forward to assisting you and your family with all of your future home improvement needs. Please do not hesitate to contact me if you have any questions.
Sincerely,
Christian L. Sagna
Agent Expert
2455 Paces Ferry Road/B-3
Atlanta, GA 30339
Phone: (770) 433-8211 or 800-654-0688 x84861
Fax: (770) 384-5038
March 2nd, 2009 at 9:55 AM
Dear Mr. Sagna:
Please make everything really cheap, even if it costs you money to sell me things. Thanks.
.
Actually, the biggest improvement possible has already been made. You got rid of Nardelli.