Slab Table Travails

After I had the two slabs flattened I had to figure out how to trim off the ends. I wound up using the Hammond Glider with its sliding table. I simply raised the blade way up, held the slabs in place and slid the table past the blade. Of course I could only take about 1/8" on each pass, but it worked better than I imagined!

After that there was a crushing disappointment when I realized that the width of the boards where they come together was about 3" different. And that the combined shape looked like John Travolta in Saturday Night Fever.

I considered various other arrangements, including configurations that I call O,U, and S.

Although I am kind of fond of U, I'm pretty sure that my wife would allow any of these into the basement rec room, never mind out of it! Yet another deadend project it seems for now.

Meanwhile, I loaded up a bunch more slabs into the kiln. Quite a mixed batch, with a preponderance of nicely coloured maple.

Got one more day of milling in. Finished off an elm slab that I had started 6 weeks ago with the 60" bar. I trimmed the width down so it would fit with my 36" bar. Unfortunately I hit an embedded rock on the second cut and damaged a chain. I had a spare chain and couple helpers including a first timer, we peeled five slabs off it.

 

I took two slabs home, I was mostly interested in the spalted non-crotch end of the slabs, and in fact if I was on my own would have cut the log in half and not bothered with the crotchy end. But the two other liked that end, so we did the whole thing. I can always cut out the parts I like later, whereas it is hard to add length back in later!!

Milled Slabs - Beginning to End

One of the (many) reasons I enjoy chainsaw milling is the unique sizes and grain patterns that you can get in the wood. It's always a bit of a surprise/thrill when I first cut the slab, and then again at the end of the process when it comes out of the kiln and gets cleaned up in the planer.  Freshly cut slabs often have spectacular colours that fade over time and cannot be brought back. But once the wood is dried and cleaned up, a more subtle look often emerges, although the loses can be discouragingly high in some species.

I mentioned in my last post that the oak I took from my kiln was 'splitty". In fact the main problem was that most of the pieces kind of "folded" down the middle a bit, like a really wide V shape. Most of the splitting was confined to the fold area, so it was a simple matter of cutting the pieces in half, which yielded two decent pieces.

Oak Slabs Freshly Cut

Oak Slabs Faded Quickly After Sitting Out a Few Days

Oak Pieces Cut From Dried and Kilned Slabs

Shop Goings-Ons

I was looking at the maple I selected for my planned cabinet, and it looks like it has a couple flaws in it. Sigh. I just don't know if this cabinet is ever going to happen. It seems the time is not right for it now in any case.

For the time being I have gone over to the dark side and decided to work on a slab table. Not the catalpa I was thinking of earlier, I have some crotch elm pieces, each roughly 29 x 37". I think two of them, bookmatched end to end might be an interesting piece. I guess the test will be if my wife agrees to let it out of the basement rec room or not when it's done!

These pieces are too large to run through my 24" planer, so I set up a simple flattening jig on top of my tablesaw using a couple of 2x4's and a router with a 1" bit. It worked well enough, but was rather tedious, extremely messy, and caused some kind of temporary damage to the nerves in my hand. Thick gloves are in order next time I do this!

Also managed to get down to the beach and take six slabs from an alder log. Normally alder is not that exciting a wood, quite soft and an unremarkable light brown colour. This one had some amazing colour streaks, spalting, and even some ray flecks.

I finally got the load in the kiln dried, conditioned, and unloaded. Hooray! As I had feared, the wide oak slabs were splitty. Oh well, 15" wide 2"+ thick oak still has lots of possibilities! Another load of odds and ends will be in there soon, possibly the last one for a while.

I went to a show put on by Coast Eco Timber. Wow, they have some very impressive slabs and do nice work with them. They have a similar ethos to mine about salvaging downed logs, they just do it on a much bigger (and hopefully more profitable!) scale.

Time to Rename the Blog??

I am seriously thinking of renaming my blog "Woodworking on the Event Horizon". Those of you who enjoy a good black hole joke may get a chuckle.

I figure that while I am working feverishly on things, it appears to the casual observer that my shop is at a standstill!

Bringing the Ship Around to the Next Cabinet

Well I got one of the two motors finished. My local motor shop has been more than generous to me, in addition to throwing in the spray can of special paint for the windings last time, this time they pulled the motor's bearings and supplied new ones to me, all at no charge! They are definitely on my Christmas card list this year. This motor I blinged up with gold paint to lend it a touch-o-class. It'll look great on the bandsaw I want to restore, someday . . .

CGE 1 HP Motor Before

 After

Also went out and did another day of chainsaw milling at the beach. It was a beautiful late fall day with snowcapped mountains, crisp air, freighters from around the world in the harbour, and downtown Vancouver all in the background. I had a terrible day of milling however, the saws were naughty and I spent way more time fooling around with setups than with actual cutting. I wound up with 5 short slabs of very nice elm for my 3 1/2-ish hours of work. There's one more elm left there, then I hope I don't get any more elm for a long while!

I have been sidetracked from my woody activities in a major fashion, my dad gave me 2000+ old slides of his from the 50's to the 70's and asked me to scan them into my computer. I have started, it takes a huge amount of time, but it is kind of fun to see all the old family photos, many of them before my time.

In other news, I have made some planning progress on the cabinet. I did up some sketches, reviewed some other curved front cabinets, refreshed myself on laminating for the curved door, etc etc. Regretfully, I will not be able to use the oak I had previously selected. The pieces are just too narrow and will not yield the width I want. This was definitely a disappointment, as the air dried oak was a real joy to work with the plane.

However, I do have some mildly spalted maple with some nice suble colouration in it. I just ran it through the kiln a month or so ago. Because of the colours in it, it will be a tougher to use than the somewhat bland riftsawn oak though. But it will give me eight inches of width, more than I need.  Soon the oak will be a distant memory.

Shop In Order

The Hammond Glider and the General 14" planer are both dialed in now, (other than dust collection), and I am really hoping to get to some woodworking now!

I do have two 14" bandsaws and two 6" jointers that I would like to restore. Also the Morrison Printer's saw. However, I think they will have to wait for now.

I am still working on the rebuild of the other two motors though. They are apart on my bench, but I am inching forward with them. A broken bolt has delayed things.

Decisions were made on the yellow cedar lined display case. I want it to be made of 100% wood that I harvested myself. I finally selected on one of my oak slabs that was nicely rift sawn to use on the exterior, and managed to cut some nice clear sections out of it. It was one of the ones in this photo, I milled it in 2008 I think.

 I also trimmed a piece of yellow cedar to use on the interior. It is a bit narrower than I would have liked, I will have to slip match the veneers that I cut from it. Browsing through my library(?) of yellow cedar pieces, I noticed quite a variation in colour and in grain pattern. I had always thought that the old growth yellow cedar was pretty similar - wrong! This one the grain lines are so tight I can't even see them (yes, even with my glasses on!)

I think I will use lumber core construction for the carcass. It'll be the first time for me. I selected a piece of linden that came from a tree about two blocks from where I live.  Linden is pretty soft, it's popular for carving. I think it is stable and should do well as the core.

Here are all the pieces, trimmed up and seasoning in my shop.

I also had a chance to spend a day at the beach slabbing up a couple big elm logs with one of my friends. Using the 60" bar with the mill on it on a crotch piece was an awful lot of work, and it took the both of us to push the mill. There just seemed to be a lot of fooling around with set up, trimming, saw adjustment, etc, so ultimately we did not get a lot of slabs, only six in total.

The load is still drying away gently in the kiln, a month now. It's taking longer than in the past as I am better able to control the rate of drying and I don't want to rush it.

Motor Madness + Busy Busy Busy

Inspired by the successful rebuild of the GE motor for the Hammond Glider, I decided to carry on and rebuild another identical one I've had lying around for ages, plus a 3/4 HP Brown Brockmeyer Induction-Repulsion motor that I picked up in Seattle several years ago.

Old motors are normally a simple rebuild, the main hassle is getting them apart and the bearings out. Order new bearings, clean and paint, maybe new capacitors if needed, reassemble and you are done! Quick satisfaction. Totally contrary to my mantra of the Slow Woodworker! Luckily the BB will require a couple of different machining operations that will likely drag that project out.

The latest kiln load is gently drying, and should be done in a week or so. As I have no more two year old air dried slabs left to put in the kiln, next I may put in a load of well behaved one year old softwood slabs, specifically a couple types of cedar/cypress. I find these dry with less fuss than hardwoods.

Meanwhile a couple busy days of chainsaw milling transpired. About 100bf of spalted maple slabs one day, they're over 2 feet wide, but short. Next day over to Thetis Island to mill up some arbutus, probably closer to 200bf, boards were more like 18" wide.

 

Maple

 

Arbutus

While I was cutting up the maple on the beach, a guy stopped to chat, turns out he has a property up the coast with a big arbutus that's down, he invited me to come up and slab it up. Wow!

I am reconsidering the next project. With the Hammond Glider sitting in my shop all shiny and rarin' to go, I definitely need to do something that will require its services.  So the slab table looks like its star is falling already, and the display cabinet's is rising again. Probably a good thing.

Also got the General 14" planer moved downstairs, it took four of us to lift that beast. Had the blades sharpened locally, they did about the worst job I have ever seen. I am seriously going to start sending my blades away to be sharpened properly. Installed them anyways and fired it up with the VFD. Super quiet and cuts well. I need to dial in some of the settings still, but I am really happy with it.