Author: fitz

It is hard to find much on a WWII era battleship that relates to woodworking. Iron and steel rule for the most part.

My daughters and I visited the USS North Carolina (BB-55) located in Wilmington, NC. I have been there many times; it is one of those things that never gets old to me. The girls love because it is like the world’s largest playground with lots of places to hide from dad. Every time I visit I see some part I never noticed before.

Today it was the decking, more than an acre of almost flawless 8/4 teak. I never really looked closely at it before (I know, I am stupid), perfectly laid and fitted the entire 728 feet of deck. The deck drains were even perfectly executed. What is most amazing is this deck is not the original, it was replaced in 1998 with teak from Myanmar.

One other thing that was kind of neat were the seats in the galleys. Same idea as Mr. Schwarz’s workbench seat except these had a locking mechanism for holding them in the in or out position. I guess this was a battleship only option.

If you are ever in the Wilmington area the battleship is a great place to stop and spend an afternoon, or the whole day.

— Will Myers

Part of the season 36 episodes of the Woodwright’s Shop are now online. One of them is on testing tusk tenon joints that Roy and I filmed a few months back. I made an apparatus to pull the joints apart and measure the amount of force it took to make them fail. The results are pretty impressive. The episode is called “Wedged Tusk Tenon” and is available to stream here.

I also shot a short video showing the joint smoker in action that is available here.

— Will Myers

I absolutely love to use wide boards in my projects. Wide stuff shows up quiet often in old  pieces of furniture, and I try to use the same whenever possible. It seems most folks these days think there is no way to get these wide boards anymore. They think there are simply no trees this big. And if they do find them, they are cost-prohibitive.

That’s not true; they are out there.

Most really large trees are not in the forest; they come from people’s yards most of the time. The great majority are big shade trees that eventually get too big and have to be removed, or they finally come down in a storm. Most of the big commercial mills do not want timber like this because it is often too big for their equipment and there is the chance of iron, such as old nails in the wood.

My advice is to find a small sawmill. Even if they do not have anything when you visit, leave your contact info for when something does show up. Smaller operations can and will deal with these kinds of logs. The biggest negative to lumber from sources such as this is that the lumber is usually fresh cut and green. Depending on the species and thickness, it can take months or years to air-dry. On the positive side, the lumber can be had a much lower cost than a lumber-supply house.

A few days back, Lesley Caudle of Lesley’s Sawmill called me and said he had a big cherry log come in. I have done business with Lesley for several years and he knows the kind of stuff I am looking for. In my part of the world, cherry is a pretty common tree, but large ones are rare. This one had been growing on a property line between two tracts of land. Apparently it did not get cut because neither owner knew whose tree it was. We had some pretty rough storms pass through a few weeks back, and the big cherry blew down.

The log that this tree yielded was 44′ long, 30″ in diameter on the butt end and 22″ on the small end. The tree was not perfectly straight, and the heart was out of center in a couple  places. Cherry is an easy wood to air-dry and not usually temperamental; the lumber should work out fine. Leslie made me a deal, and I bought the whole tree. The big logs yielded dozens of wide clear boards from 24″ wide down to 20″.

This is one of three loads of wide boards from the big cherry.

If you are not looking, you won’t find anything. Get out and beat the bush. The big stuff will turn up.

— Will Myers