Author: fitz

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

The bench is finished.

It’s not the prettiest bench around, but I think it will get the job done (and it only has to last until December, anyway).

The top is 6′ long and 21″ deep. I had planned for it to be 38″ high, of course, but somehow it ended up being 34″ instead. Not sure how that happened.

It is extremely solid (better than my bench at home in that regard). It has only four legs, but what legs it has! I’ll pit this bench with its four elephantine legs against any 8-legged (or even 11-legged) arachno-bench any day.

I had to plane out about 1/8″ of twist in the front apron (no, I don’t know how many thumbs that is), but other than that it’s reasonably flat and square.

I still have to make the “stick” that fits in the center slot to keep tools from plunging to their deaths, and I need to make a couple of other appliances, like a bench hook and shooting board. But other than those, I’m ready to start real woodworking.

That is, after my arms recover from boring all of those holes.

–Steve Schafer

As a kid one of my favorite things to do was poke around the attics of my grandparents’ houses. Dark and dusty with all the relics of life past stored away. When I was young most of the ghost stories seemed to always begin with noises from the attic or basement. At that age a ghost seemed much more of a possibility than it does now, so that definitely added to the thrill.

The most interesting parts of old houses and buildings are often times for me the parts not usually seen. In these places construction details such as tool marks, Roman numerals on the joints between timbers and sometimes even mistakes can be found uncovered by plaster or sheeting. Of course there are also the things that did not get thrown out that tend to accumulate in these places, saved for whatever reason and are still lying around that often have their own stories and history as well.

Saturday I managed to slip off for a while and go on the attics and basements tour at Hancock Shaker Village. What an experience!  Of the 20-plus buildings at Hancock many have areas closed to the public that can only be seen on the tour.

A few of the highlights for me: The upper stories of the machine shop. All kinds of lathes, belts, pulleys and various other equipment are stored here. An old drill press with its flat belts that run through the floor below, looking as if someone had just stepped away from using it but has not run in decades.

The upper floors of the brick dwelling where many of the artifacts not on display are stored. This area looks like time stopped completely in the many rooms, staircases and hallways.

Of course there is also the basement of the trustees building where there dozens of tombstones are stored.  These were removed from the cemetery at some point and replaced them with a single large monument.  The Shakers, being utilitarians, used some of the tombstones later on as ironing boards.

This is just a very, very brief summery of the tour. If I tried to write about all the things we saw it would be a volume too large for a blog post! The attics and basements tour cost a few extra bucks on top of regular admission price, and I highly recommend it.

— Will Myers