- Read Time: 5 mins
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I started off at the Worlds Largest Burl, which turns out was a crime scene. Yes, apparently 2 culprits (caught on video) decided to try and burn down the burl which was housed in a type of wooden gazebo. I understand both have been apprehended and charged and are due in court some time in the next few months. Sadly, I have very little faith they will have much of a sentence, and I probably won’t even hear about it ...
Now the community is wrestling with what to do about their famous burl. I understand they have discovered and even LARGER burl and are now weighing the costs and efforts to have it move onsite. We will wait to see how this develops ...
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Imagine my excitement when I noticed some GREEN spalting on a split firewood log I was helping to unload. Green spalting! I had never seen it except in pictures and there wasn't very much of it, but enough that I thought it was worth trying to culture a new growth of it and perhaps spalt my own Green-Wood !! Read to the end to find out what I discovered.
Roll forward about a year, and the wood I was carefully attempting to spalt had been in a moist plastic container and on the outside of the pieces of wood showed strong signs of fungus growth and hopefully would reveal Green inside ...
- Read Time: 6 mins
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There is so much to know about using plywood that as I was making this video I kept thinking to myself, I could use a whole YouTube channel just on PLYWOOD, there is so much to know and learn.
One of the first things every woodworker should know about plywood is that there are some basic "need to know" things about plywood and first of all is the species selection ...
- Read Time: 4 mins
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I often get asked "what's wrong with using softwoods for furniture making?" and the quick answer is .. well, it really depends on what you are making. You see, the term softwoods generally refer to woods that come from needle-bearing trees, whereas
Hardwoods generally come from broadleaf trees. But these names do not always indicate the actual hardness of woods. Some softwoods are actually HARDER than hardwoods, and conversely, some hardwoods are actually SOFTER that than softwoods, so there is more to it ...
- Read Time: 4 mins
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Sadly, not every log or bit of lumber that lays on the ground or in the forest turns into a spalted lumber candidate. There are many reasons for this and finding spalted logs or lumber takes a bit of a unique set of circumstances for it to actually occur and to become something as you can see in my video where I chose some logs that "looked" like they might have some spalting in them, but when finally cut, had very little.
Sometimes logs or wood can rot and not show any real signs of usable spalting ... wood gets wet and just rots so in order to get spalting it does need some ideal conditions, fortunately, I live in an area, the Pacific Northwest, where those conditions occur often, quite naturally .. but not always.
- Read Time: 4 mins
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Saving money on lumber can take on many forms and when some lumber prices jump in price like what has happened over the past couple years, 2020 and 2021 where we have seen many lumber prices climb very high, it makes us even more aware of how we need to be particularly careful in our selections of wood and how we work with it.
This video and article are meant to give an overview of many of the things woodworkers can do in acquiring wood and using wood that will help save them money. For much more detail on this topic there is a 6 part series on how to save money on wood where each episode is independent of the others so you can pick and choose which ones are more specific to your situation and benefit from the details of those articles and videos ... see below for an overview, pick just one topic and give it a try ...