Woodslabbing Timeout

Squeezed in a couple days of slabbing up logs recently.

First one was a Manitoba Maple (AKA Box Elder). It poured rain on me for the first hour or so, but I carried on and was rewarded with a Subaru full of wood! Ten slabs about 2" thick, maybe 4' long, and ranging up to 30" wide. A really nice haul and probably some of the most colourful wood I have found. I was awestruck after I finished the first cut and flipped the top waney piece off to expose the colours!


We'll see how it fares after two years drying. It does have some cracks in it so several of the boards will split, but it should still be amazing. Manitoba Maple does lose its vibrancy when exposed to light, so it is a good wood to put inside a cabinet where it is dark 99.999% of the time.




A week later I found myself staring at a 3' long section of an oak tree trunk. A short piece yes, but it was wider than my mill could handle, ie wider than 31". Got nine slabs out of it, each about 2" thick and almost totally clear, barely a knot to be seen. The grain is not really tight, and there is some splitting at the pith, but nice straight grained stuff, the QS pieces have nice ray flakes. I spent quite a bit of time peeling the bark off the log, I learned that oak bark is pretty tenacious!


The first photo above of the oak shows it fresh cut, the second photo was taken about five days later. The colour fading is quite dramatic. This is typical of many woods.


Two of my three chainsaws died that day (the Oak day) and they were off to the shop to be repaired. Meanwhile I made up a mill from the 60" chainbar I purchased last spring. It'll give me a 54" cutting capacity. Not that I find a ton of logs that wide, but I do regularly find logs wider than my 31" mill can handle, and I figure the extra width will come in handy for crotch pieces.

Photo below shows the cutting area with my cutting paraphernalia scattered around. I use Husqvarna 2100 saws for the slabbing. This model was discontinued over 20 years ago so parts are getting hard to find. But they cost 1/5th price of a comparable new one, so the economics still sort of work.

The one resting on the log has the mill attached to it, including the auxillary oiler on the nose. The one in the foreground had just died after giving me a bunch of grief, and the smaller saw on the lower left died later when the pull cord snapped.

Bake ins

So this is one of the shelves, I started adding the smaller bake in pieces to the edges of the shelves. It is quite time consuming as it has exposed the lack of proper sized clamps in my shop. So it is going to take me several days just to glue and clamp. You can also see that I made a small cutting boo boo, but I think I can recover with a patch, as there is still veneer to go on top that will cover it up.

Shellllvvvvesssssss

Well this pile represents my five shelves "in progress". On top are the big pieces of elm veneer that will be used for the tops and bottoms of the shelves. Under that the sticks are the alder pieces for the baked in edges. Under those are some smaller pieces of elm veneer for the edges of the shelves, and lastly the 3/4" ply that will form the body of the shelves.

A Quick Trip and Starting the Shelves

I forgot to mention in my last entry that I was up to visit the Inside Passage School of Woodworking last Sunday. The reason was to drop off some wood that I had slabbed up last winter. About 40 slabs, mostly elm and maple, but with a few other odds n' ends including catalpa, Port Orford Cedar, old growth red cedar, and an unknown but very attractive cypress of some sort. Possibly Monterey Cypress. (My picture at the top of this blog is of me slabbing up the Port Orford log, of which IP received several slabs.)

The truck was overkill, but it was free so I can't complain! Here are the slabs all loaded and 'secured' in the truck. It took my son and I several hours to load it all up. It took the crew up at IP about 10 minutes to unload it all!


I have to say that my motives were not entirely altruistic - I am hoping to slab up more logs this upcoming winter and I needed to clear out some space in my storage area! My slab pile is moving from a one year rotation to a two year rotation, meaning that I will not be kilning and cleaning any up this fall. What I cut last winter will be processed next fall, clearing space for what I may cut next winter. Phew, that turned out to be complicated!

On to the shelves.

I cut out and fitted a shelf template out of plywood for the five shelves I need to make. The notches complicate things quite a bit, since I will be putting baked in edges on , then elm veneer over them. That way if the shelves are removed the plywood won't be visible.

So the notches need to be cut quite a bit oversized to allow for the bake in and the veneer. The shelves will be nosed with a piece of sapele about 2 1/2" wide on the front edge.

The shelves will be about 13" wide. Ideally there would be about 1 1/2" of sapele on the front, then 11 1/2" of elm veneer for the body of the shelf. This way the sapele edging would be the same width as the front posts of the bookcase. Unfortunately my veneers are not that wide, a kind of glaring planning error on my part.

Anyways I've got all the bake ins cut out of alder. I still need to trim them to size. First though I will spend some time cleaning up the edges of the plywood on the jointer.

Still On Top!

Top is all glued up. Also figured out how to attach it to the frame of the bookcase to allow for some modest expansion and contraction. Should not be much since the whole thing is frame and panel construction. Made up the necessary little blocks, a whole day of rather fussy work.

The top frame is partially shellaced, needs a couple more coats.

Have finally started to turn my attention to the shelves.

Bought some 3/4" baltic birch plywood from Windsor Plywood here in town. It was pretty crappy. I should have looked more closely at it before I bought it, it was probably made in China. At least they will cut it for you, unlike PJ White. And I must add that they did about 6 cuts for me for free. So they are good guys. Too bad their product is not!

I ordered a veneer bag and kit from Joe Woodworker's web site. Looks like a nice kit, but not impressed with his shipping charges to Canada. Some assembly will be required when it arrives.

Also got some good tips from Nick Nelson, an IP graduate, about how to do the baked on edges and dealing with some notches that I'll need to make in the shelves.

Onward and upward! (Well actually downward, from the top down to the shelves.)

Top This!

Well I have made some modest progress in the past couple of weeks, mostly relating to the top of the cabinet. Unlike the original design, I decided to make the top a frame and panel as well.

I got the panel cut to size, the edged rabetted, then the whole thing polished up and waxed. The frame is 3/4 glued up, as well as having had a bevel put on the front and the two sides. The rest of the panels in the cabinet are not rabetted, but I did so on the top so that items placed on the top will not sit below the front frame piece.

I really just need to get the final fitting done on the fourth piece of the panel, and then mount the whole piece. May happen tomorrow if all goes well.

I was already going over my veneer for the five shelves last night to figure out which pieces were 'worthy' of being top pieces and which were going to go on the bottom! I think one piece of the 5x5 Baltic birch ply will be enough to get my five shelves out of, with an extra to boot. Will also need to acquire a veneer press.

Summer's Over!

Well that was a crazy busy summer! Unfortunately, not busy with progress on the bookcase. But things are back to normal now, and I actually made a tiny smitch of progress.

I had been up to Robert's Creek this summer and popped into the IP school to say hello. I asked Robert about my plan to use oil or polish on the elm. I had also been re-reading The Cabinetmakers Notebook and in it observed JK's comment that oil is not an appropriate finish on elm as it does bad things to the colour. Robert suggested I consider just using plain Clapham's wax. Which I thought about and decided to use, as it easy to apply, non toxic, and I really like the finish I got on the elm with the 3000 grit sanding.

So I applied wax to the elm today. It darkened it up nicely, I think it goes well with the sapele. I also smoothed the sapele frame parts with 2000 grit sandpaper to remove any nibs and whatnot, in anticipation of giving them a final coat or two of shellac shortly.