Good day everyone, I hope this post finds you well!
The title of this post says it all. While milling on this splendid day, I felt as though my emotions were on a rollercoaster ride, and they were sitting in the front seat.
As you can tell from the time stamp on this picture, it's a shot from almost two years ago, on Christmas Day.
I'm always on the lookout for standing deadwood! I've had my eye on this beauty for a few years now, even before this photo was taken.
The colors that were being created as the tree was decaying were awesome. Much of the discoloration you see on the exterior of a piece of deadwood will also be found in its interior. Needless to say, with the mill now at the farm, this old White Ash was one of the trees I was so looking forward to milling.
Three weeks earlier I had dropped this monster with my son @ryan313. When dropping a dead tree, one can't be too careful. This is a situation when #farm-mom's advice should always be practiced, "Wear Your Helmet!"
Our daughter Erica made a few dozen of these T-shirts for the family, and of course, she had to include, "Wear Your Helmet,"
After a multitude of broken bones, dislocations, torn ACLs, a fractured hip needing a steel rod and pins to repair, and more stitches than I can remember, I guess that's the reason for her concern.
You know how mothers can be though, overprotective loving.
I guess that's what happens when you bring four rough and tumble kids to the middle of nowhere, and they are given the freedom to explore and soak in everything Mother Nature has to offer!
These minor setbacks were well worth the pain. All of our children now appreciate and coexist with THE GREAT OUTDOORS, in harmony.
Visiting the farm and getting lost in nature's magic is something they all look forward to. Plus, we're pretty cool people to hang with.😁
In this picture, the 3rd bolt in from your left was the only salvageable log from the entire tree.
At the time of dropping this decaying White Ash, I wondered if I had left it rotting for too long?
Well, there was only one way to find out, hoist it to the bed of the mill and get busy.
Again, you can see the multitude of colors in this bolt that had excited me for several years now.
When I saw this picture, I also thought of @melinda010100 and her partner in crime @archon, and some of the cool stuff that was happening over there #shadowhunters.
I figured if they ever had an event centered around a pic of a person's body, with the smallest head, this could be a possible winner.
Need I explain? Being a little stubborn, I refused to believe that I had completely blown the timing on this one, in a big way. There wasn't one stick of usable lumber in the entire tree.
Despite the integrity of this wood not being sound enough for woodworking, the real value in each cell of this #naturalresource can still be realized. For those of us who choose to admire and respect these creations of #nature, a plethora of uses waits for our imagination to be kicked into gear.
Getting some more wood for the outside fire is never a bad thing. From there on in, the day of milling only got better.
The boards you see here were milled from a piece of Hard Maple crotch wood.
The name crotch wood seems to fit the bill for me. These two pieces were milled to be book-matched as well. With the length of these two pieces being over eight feet, with some imaginative joinery, a very unique table could be crafted.
The unique characteristics of the grain and the color of the wood, at the crotch, are due to the stress at this point.
As the two branches grow and the stress becomes greater in this area, the grain in the stressed area will start to twist and swirl.
This imperfect grain pattern increases the strength of the tree at that point.
Here is a piece of crotch wood from a Black Cherry tree that I used for the base of a coffee table.
The live-edge top to the table is from a Black Oaktree.
As I said, the day only got better, and now with @farm-mom on the sticks, the disappointment from the earlier part of the day was completely a thing of the past.
The previous time we milled together, she was gone in a flash, off to do her thing. Later that evening she said how much fun she had milling, despite only hanging for a bit.
On this occasion, she milled, and milled, and milled some more. I guess she really did have a good time, the first time she took over my job.
After several hours of working as a team, which saved me a few hours, the day's bounty was loaded in the truck waiting to be stickered and stacked.
Knowing that there was no (EXPECTED) precipitation in the forecast, I put the stacking gig off until the following day.
The stacks are growing. I believe we now have about 1,000BF of lumber air-drying.
I was hoping to be able to find the time to drop this Hard Maple. The deformity you see growing from the side of the tree is called a burl.
Burls from a tree trunk can yield valuable material for custom craftwork. Insect infestation and certain types of mold are the most common causes of this condition.
With the temps in the twenties, and it snowing like a bat out of hell, as I finish up with this post, I guess we'll all have to wait to see the glory, #nature has encapsulated for so many years, in this deformity anomaly, until next year. 😥
