[Mountain]

Hallo, my name is Ed, I live in North Idaho on a small 40 acre farm. I raise milk goats, sheep, horses and some timber and landscape trees. I bought a sawmill just over a year ago and have been learning the ropes on cutting lumber. After just over a year and about 3 log truck loads of logs I am starting to get the hang of milling lumber.

A couple months ago I started working on finishing my lumber and have that down pretty well now. I have done carpentry and woodworking most of my life so my next step was to get my wood shop fully setup and start building with the wood I am making. I have made little wooden yard ornaments and whatnot for years and much of our own furniture, but I would like to step it up a bit and learn a bit more at this point. Getting onto a forum where I can learn from others seemed like the next logical step.

I am looking forward to learning and improving my abilities through this forum.

 

[Mountain]

I am trying to decide on what to do with this elm before I start cutting it. I want get some for the wife to turn on the lathe and the rest I would like to make into some high quality projects worthy of the wood.

I have great plenty of red fir, white fir, pine, poplar/aspen hybrid and quaking aspen to play around with but the elm is the only real high quality wood that I have at the moment.

My shiny red Hudson mill, and a new jig I set up for cutting octagonal lathe wood and posts.

Our ShopSmith lathe, it was left in the barn by one of the previous owners, I added some pulleys and a tensioner from an old rototiller and tightening mechanism and got it running again. This is my wife's new toy, she would run that thing all day long every day if she could lol...

Anyone have any ideas what direction to head with the Slippery Elm wood, I have an entire wood shop set up planers, table saws, band saws, sanders, miter saw/ chop saw, router table, drill presses etc. My skill level is pretty high but I want to start fairly simply for the most part. Right now it is about learning and practicing more than anything.

 

[cabinetman]

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[bigcouger]

Welcome Aboard

 

[Mountain]

I cut a small elm log this morning just as a test to see what the wood would cut like and look like. The log was pretty bent and I did not wind up getting a great deal of useable wood out of it, but what I did get is pretty good.

I have six perfect 1 11/16 inch thick x 3 3/4 inch wide x 44 inch long boards, they are all still quite wet and green in spite of the logs sitting in my log deck for a year, I would have left them 8 feet long but two of them warped as I cut them off the log, I figured I could better control warpage with shorter pieces. I got them all squared up and planed to exactly the same dimensions and then clamped them together and held them in place with wood framing. This in theory should slow the drying process a bit and keep them from warping or cracking.

I have decided to use this elm for a table, I have another small log to cut up tomorrow which should give me another 8 to 10 boards of this size.

I managed to get a good 3 1/8 inch x 3 3/8 inch x 8 ft 9 inch piece to cut into four 26 inch legs.

I was told by the guy that I got this tree from that it is slippery elm, after cutting it I am not sure that it is, does anyone have any guess whether this is slippery elm "red elm" or whether it is rock elm?

 

[cuerodoc]

Welcome!
Nice set up too, wished you weren't so far away.
Have used elm from around here (longleaf they tell me) makes nice trees and good lathe material. Have found that when I slab it the centers are fairly colored but do fade whilst drying. Turns nicely too, but does have a knack for having end grain in odd places--makes sanding-----interesting. But the bowls I've made don't stay with me long---they get sold.
Have shopsmith(s) too--ebay is good for parts, usually cheaper than their website.
Dave H