Read Time: 5 mins

Hits: 3841

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 ... 

Read Time: 5 mins

Hits: 5056

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

Hits: 10707

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

Hits: 8340

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

Hits: 5582

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.