Curly Curly

JP Sinclair said:

Daren-That's just mean buddy, tortuous for those poor guys.

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JP, where have you been brother? I thought you fell off the map. But I should have know, someone uses the words curly and birdseye in the same sentence your funky wood alarm goes off :laughing:. I have been doing pretty good with burls here lately myself. Did you see this picture ? A redbud I could not get my arms around (I am 6'3")...the "tree" was 12" maybe, the rest was just burl on top of burl . And I have been picking up a few at a time from the firewood cutters, they just cut them off and dump them in the yard.

frankp said:

Of course, if he's a jerk you're still helping him out, but you're also helping you out.

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You would have to know this guy, he is a jerk, and not even a smart one. I have had dealings with him before. I was told he was a real oddball before I ever met him, but his money was green. I did offer to help him sell it, no commission ...he said no, he would just keep it. I had 10 guys who would have bought it in a heartbeat, they all saw it and tried to buy it and I said it was not mine to sell. (it laid on a pallet in my shop for 3+ weeks, right in my way, before he would come get it after I called him and said it was dry. And he lives 1 1/2 miles away. Are you getting the picture?)

I will even tell more of the story. This guy cost me logs too. The day he brought the log in his neighbor came with him. I spent some time showing them around. The neighbor was an old dude, like 90, seemed like a nice feller. He said he had 3-4 walnuts down he had pushed up behind the barn I could just have. They had been down a couple years (which does not scare me abit) just come out with a trailer and he would load me up with his tractor.

So fast forward a few days. I had not got out to pick up the free logs, I had been busy sawing and figured they were not going anywhere. I cut into the curly log and stopped on the first cut and called the guy. He wanted it all sawn 4/4, but since it was curly I thought maybe he would want to do something different. He said "What is curly?" I explained, he still did not get it. I told him it was worth 3+ times as much as plain walnut. He said 4/4 was fine, so I went out and sawed it up. I get in the house for lunch and there is a message from the old neighbor, he wanted to talk to me. I did not call him back right then.

I am back out milling in the afternoon and the old dude pulls up. He says "You know I have been thinking, I will just hang on to those logs, don't bother coming out" . He had talked to the jerk and he was bragging about having a small fortune growing in his yard, so the neighbor thought for sure he did too...I bet there ain't another walnut like that for 100 miles, let alone across the road from the first one :no:.

90 years old and the logs have already laid for a couple years, what does "Hang on to them" mean? His neighbor talked him out of giving them to me...and I was nothing but nice to both of them.

Ok Daren, here's the pics:

I still have work to do on the shop, plywood on the walls etc. The slide saw table still needs to be leveled and shimmed but the planer system works great. What an awesome machine, 70's vintage powermatic 18 inch planer with the quiet cutterhead. It weighs about 1400 lbs. The edger is powermatic too, runs great. I threw in a couple pics of flooring and some spalted maple, birdseye and butternut.

More pics

and more

JON BELL said:

.By the way,what causes the end grain to poke through?

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It is a deformity. If I could draw you a picture I would. A tree grows in rings around itself in a layer underneath the bark. Only that part of the tree is growing. Usually in a straight and symmetric way, up and out. The curly pattern occurs because of an irregular stem growth. This causes tensions in the zone between the wood and the bark (the cambium). The same thing can happen underneath a heavy limb for example, its called compression curl. I see alot of curl at the bottom (right on the ground) due to compression.

If you split the "grain" of curly wood..it is squiggly because the grain is not straight it is "curly".

I am not going to split a curly log to illustrate a point. But I did take a picture of a piece of wood with compression curl. maybe you can see the difference in straight grain and curly grain this way. This was a leaning tree, that caused the curly. Where it was not compressed it is straight grained and the wood split in straight splinters.

A whole curly log would look like the little bit on the corner of this piece.

Here is a piece of split quilted maple. I think you can figure out now if it were sawn flat it would have end grain, straight grain and the transition between the 2.