Today’s Haul

Here’s how low I have sunk, fooling with tools. Today I stole my neighbor’s garbage.

I was driving down the road, and I saw a pile of wood. In a neighborhood full of mahogany trees. I had been waiting for this.

I went back later and took a look. It was a bunch of thick, short, crotchy logs. The bigger ones were all hollow, but it was obvious that a bandsaw could still extract short boards two inches thick, about a foot wide, and between one and three feet in length. Well worth the effort. The only question was whether they were desirable mahogany or somewhat less desirable live oak. That’s about all we have here, when it comes to typical hardwoods.

I kept driving by the pile. I even took a photo. Then later temptation overcame me, and I grabbed a log. I took it back to my lair and tried to stuff it through the 19″ bandsaw, which I had been sure was a too-big tool buy, and DAMN if the thing wasn’t too thick to go under the bearings.

I live in a place where no one cuts firewood, so of course, I have no maul, real (non-electric) chainsaw, or wedges. I managed to trim it down using a blacksmith’s hammer, cold chisels, and a circular saw. Using a 3/4″ bandsaw blade, I popped the log into two pieces, sawed a flat side onto it so I could resaw it, and cut some boards.

I got some advice from the Sawmill Creek crowd. Evidently, when you cut fresh wood, you cut it as soon as possible, and you waterproof the ends to keep it from splitting. All I had was Kilz, so I put that on the ends.

I have to check the bandsaw tomorrow. I’m afraid I may have messed up a new blade. The wood is very wet and easy to saw, but I saw a few sparks. Maybe the hard, crunch bark is not nice to saws. This is not the kind of neighborhood where people drive nails in trees, and I didn’t see any metal anyway, so I don’t think I hit a foreign object.

If this wood turns out to be okay, it will pay for a new blade. Mahogany is expensive, even in a town where people pay yard guys to cut it up and throw it out. And this mahogany has some figuring in it, unlike the stuff at the lumber yard.

I THINK it’s mahogany. It looks and smells like the mahogany my friends and I used to help the trash guys run into a chipper when I was a kid. Can you imagine that? It would never happen today. There are always a lot of trucks in Miami, disposing of tree limbs, and when I was a kid, they let us help, because we thought the chipper was cool.

I’m hoping it’s not live oak. It’s light, even though it’s very wet, and it’s not coarse at all.

Photos:

The wood is pink, mostly. Some is kind or orange-yellow. Some of it is spalted, because it came from a rotten log. The boards in the photo are about 2 1/2″ thick, which means I can get maybe five 3/8″ sheets from each one. And I have maybe another 150 pounds of this stuff yet to cut.

The bandsaw is a wonder tool. You just put a log on the table and push, and look what you get. I love it.