ucoulddoit

Not relevant to the original question, but regarding green/wet versus dry timber, pretty sure there should be less in service movement in timbers that absorb moisture compared to wetter wood that has dried down to the same relative humidity. The equilibrium moisture content of wood which has been kiln dried to say 12%, then left outside to acclimatise to the ambient relative humidity, will be lower than wet wood left outside to air dry and acclimatise down to the same ambient relative humidity. No matter how long the two pieces are left outside. Probably not relevant for a ‘rustic gate’ but could be for an external door and more so in furniture making. I aim to dry timbers for furniture making to a moisture content which corresponds to less than the expected ambient indoor relative humidity. Then store the wood for a while to acclimatise to a slightly higher relative humidity which in theory makes the wood a bit more ‘stable’ and the subsequent furniture better able to tolerate variation of relative humidity indoors at different times of the year. Andrew

Pretty sure PEG was used in the preservation of Henry VIII’s warship Mary Rose, which was raised from the seabed about 40 years ago. Round about the time PEG was being promoted for woodturning. Think the remains of the ship are in a visitor centre in Portsmouth now? Must go sometime. Andrew

Instead of rounds cut straight across, you could try cutting at an angle to make oval shapes. But you would need to experiment with wood species, log diameter, oval thickness, etc, to find what works! A book I have suggests an angle of 75 degrees, that’s just 15 degrees from straight across which might be fine for thinnish ovals. I’ve done it with elm from a log about 400 dia and 60 to 70 thick ovals. It was years ago and can’t remember the angle but it was probably about 45 degrees. There was a fair bit of distortion, but they didn’t split. I guess it works because the outermost wood fibres are not a ring right around the oval shape as they are with a circular disc. Andrew

Took a while to find some old pictures, but in the meantime, I googled wipe on polyurethane and found there’s lots to look at. I clicked on the following, and it seems a good starting point. First two pictures are a box of children’s building blocks, made in 2007 using ‘weathered’ sycamore, that’s 14 / 15 years ago, surprising how time flies. It was finished with the 50/50 poly. First picture was taken when new. The second, of the top, was taken today and shows how the light sycamore has darkened, and interestingly, looks like the ‘weathered’ brown sections have lightened. So overall, it’s a more uniform colour. The box is kept at a southeast facing window, so gets lots of sunlight. But the finish is still intact. The bricks which have been in the box since new, with the lid on, are still almost white. Last two pictures are a yew bed made 10 / 11 years ago and finished with danish oil. Comparing the pics when new and taken today shows how much it has darkened. I was quite surprised by the magnitude of the change, maybe poor lighting contributed to it in the picture? Anyway, still a nice piece of furniture. Andrew

Not done much milling for a few years, and only ever as a hobby for my own use. So hopefully the pro’s won’t roll their eyes too much…. This wasn’t a money making venture. I was offered some of this beech butt earlier this year by my brother in law who’d had it delivered to his house already cut into three sections. He needed help cutting it up for firewood. He mentioned there was some rot, so I immediately thought, spalted beech, maybe mill it? Today’s (half day) milling was the top section. The bottom 8 feet was so rotten it was almost possible to crawl inside the hollow trunk! We’d cut it into rings for firewood a few weeks ago. But the top section, about 5 ½ feet long showed more promise. The rot was coming down from the top, not up from below. My mill is the 24” Alaskan, a bit small for milling a 3 foot diameter butt! However, the odd shape, meant that with minimal freehand trimming, the mill fitted fine on the top part. The bottom half was then freehand sawn down the middle, split apart, and milling continued down the right hand side below what had already been completed, to create matched slabs 3 inches and 2 ½ inches thick, about 20 inches wide. I suspect they might distort a bit and perhaps split as it’s at the transition between the 1st and 2nd lengths with grain running in different directions, but pretty sure there will be some worth keeping and at those thicknesses, there should be plenty to plane off to flatten them. Some nice looking bookmatched slabs, even allowing for the rot at the top end that will need to be cut off. Decided to let my nephew keep most of the slabs but I’ve kept a 20 inch wide by 4 ½ inch slab which might become large bowl blanks one day. And there was lots of firewood. Was good to be out with the mill today. Reminded me how much fun it is opening up a lump of wood, wondering what will be inside, the delight when it’s something special, then dreaming about what could be made with it……. Andrew

I've not used it on yew but can't see why it shouldn't work. I'll post some pics in a day or two when I've time to take them. It was a tip I got from a 'well known' Yorkshire furniture maker I met at the Harrogate woodworking show years ago and was his method of finishing dining tables. Andrew

As there hasn’t been any response yet, I’ll suggest a hardwearing finish like polyurethane. An oil finish on yew looks good. So instead of using a brush, you could make a 50/50 mix of polyurethane and turps then apply it with a rag like an oil finish, i.e. wipe it on, leave for a few minutes to soak in, then wipe off what’s left on the surface. I’d start with say three coats and see how it looks. Andrew

I used a MS391 for milling with a 20 inch bar in the small log mill which was fine but a bit slow and just for a few smallish logs, max size about 18 inches diameter. As others have said, milling can become addictive and my kit was quickly on the small side for what I then wanted to do. I bought parts from Rob D to convert the small log mill into an ‘Alaskan mill’ and changed to a 25 inch bar following advice from Alec, to get about 20inches width of cut. Stihl recommend a max bar length of 20 inches, but I was happy to try a longer bar as set up in the mill it can’t cut more than 20 inches. That worked fine for a while and was more accurate than using the small log mill at the limit of it’s capacity. Subsequently upgraded to an MS661 which is just so much better. But still happy to have progressed gradually to this point instead of investing a lot at the start when I really wasn’t sure if I’d have much milling to do. Andrew

Would be awkward to use plain resin as it would need a mould set up around the edge. You could thicken the resin to make a stiff paste but that would be pretty expensive using bronze as the filler. Alternatively, you could use talc which is really inexpensive to make a grey coloured filler and maybe just finish the exposed edges with a different coloured filler? But, I doubt it would stick to the wood sufficiently to take screws for the legs, so the screws would need to be long enough to get a grip in the wood, if it’s thick enough. I think it might be simpler to cut a recess and glue in a block of wood, then shape the edges. Or maybe flatten the surface and glue on a wedge shaped piece of wood. Andrew

I had another look at the Axminster site and they still sell a 100mm nylon wire brush for a drill, but much more expensive than the 75mm one from Toolstation. I can’t remember when I bought my B & D foam sander, but probably a few decades ago as well……. Andrew

That’s a shame as it’s a good attachment that has lasted well. Bought mine ages ago, so apologies for the dead end on this. Maybe someone else can let us know what they use. Anyone want to suggest something? I found it good because the soft foam was good for freehand shaping whereas other sanding drums I’ve looked at have a rubber core and are a bit too solid. Andrew

That's stretching my IT skills a bit, but here goes. Also struggled to find them on the Axminster site, but Toolstation have the nylon wire brush. Abracs Nylon Filament Wheel Brush 75mm WWW.TOOLSTATION.COM Non spark filament circular brush impregnated with abrasive grain. Ideal for deburring, surface treatment, stock removal... It's a Black and Decker sanding drum I use. Amazon site says it's unavailable, but this link will let you see what to search for. https://www.amazon.co.uk/BLACK-DECKER-DX32365-Cushion-Sander/dp/B0001IWH52 Andrew

That resin would be fine, but pretty sure there will be cheaper options. I buy the resin and bronze from Alscot in Glasgow and from memory I use their polyester casting resin rather than epoxy. Andrew

That’s the stuff. Doesn’t look very nice when mixed with the resin, but polishes up well. Looks nice elm and should look really good when fine sanded, filled and oiled. Andrew

I'd flatten and smooth the surface to 120 grit paper before filling the holes. Lots of options for filling the holes. I like using clear cast polyester resin with bronze powder which polishes to a shiny bronze/gold colour. Put a generous amount of hardener into the resin before mixing, then add the powder until it's a really thick consistency, a bit like car body filler. Once cured, continue sanding using steadily finer grits up to say 400. Others use coloured resin, or glue mixed with sawdust from the plank being filled. Some folk wouldn't fill them at all! Just a matter of personal opinion as to what's right. I knew a guy who finished all his stuff using a steel wire brush to roughen the surfaces whereas most people would expect a sanded finish. Who's to say what's right? How dry is the plank? If it drys and shrinks when brought into the house the resin might loosen, but again, that matters to some people, but not others. What to do with the edge of a plank? No right answer again, but the console table plank has a nice shape in my opinion, so I'd probably just use the nylon wire brush in a drill to remove any loose material. Then use the foam sanding drum to free hand shape the edge, rounding the top and bottom edges slightly and also removing any sharp or protruding bits, but I'd retain most of the knobbly bits. But, if I was making this for my sister who doesn't like natural edges, I'd cut them off and form a curved edge with rounded corners on top and bottom using a router. Andrew

If the planks have a natural edge which you want to retain, I've found a nylon wire brush and a soft foam sanding drum, both of which can be used in a hand held electric drill, works well for finishing an uneven surface. On a really rough/uneven edge such as a burr, the nylon wire brush can get right into the crevices and leaves a burnished finish which doesn't need sanding. Both are stocked by Axminster Tools and are in the photo below. Would be good to see some before and after pictures of the planks. Andrew

Managed to finish this in time for Christmas. The design is at odds with the intuition built up over a working life as a structural engineer so it's been a bit of an experiment and challenge for me, but quite happy with the final result. Would certainly look at the Nakashima designs again for inspiration whereas before I wasn't sure about using his ideas. Since starting the thread I googled minguren 2 and found auction results for his original tables at about £60k!!!! Good to have been able to make this using slabs of timber, worked almost entirely using hand held power tools. I only used the planer / thicknesser for the two small rails which could easily have been made with hand tools. Andrew

Hi Mark It's probably been 2 to 3 days so far for the base, but hard to judge as I rarely spend all day in the workshop with one thing and another. Also, working on a new (for me) design adds time, plus making jigs for the router for the first time used. For instance, photo below shows a leg to rail joint which is a mortice with curved corners which exactly matches the rail cross section, rather than a traditional mortice and tenon with shoulders. Probably widely used, but I first saw it in a video about Sam Maloof and used it before on a project with numerous joints. Was it worth the time making the jig for just 4 joints on this project? It does give the benefit of real accuracy and I've got it for the future, so long as I don't lose it like the one made before........! The top has needed a couple of days work in addition. Spent at least half a day just picking the bark off the natural edges and smoothing it off, just a wee bit. I don't often have a natural edge, but if I do, I prefer to really clean it up and retain the character of all the knobbly bits. But not everyone likes that style and it's certainly quicker to just round over the edges. Andrew

I’ve enjoyed seeing all the wonderful slabs posted on the forum by numerous millers over the years, but I’ve been curious about what they were subsequently used for. So I thought others might be interested to see what I make from the milled slabs from a large oak burr, about 70” long by 40” diameter weighing 1.4t and this thread will gradually record the projects as I make them. All for my own/family use and it will take a while to work my way through the slabs, so I hope you can be patient. The following link goes to a thread on the milling part of the forum about this oak burr I bought from another arbtalk member in 2013 which I then had milled, followed by drying at home. First project, still being worked on and hopefully finished by Christmas, is a small table, using the only piece with a natural edge on both sides for the top which is about 40” x 24” x 2” thick. At 22” high it’s higher than most ‘coffee tables’ but we wanted to be able to sit in a comfy chair or settee, watching telly, while eating our tea. Just what we used to tell our children they couldn’t do, but they have long since left home. I wanted a fairly quick project and took inspiration from George Nakashima’s designs which tend to have fairly simple supports, but quite stylish. First picture below is from ‘The soul of a tree’ about Nakashima, showing his Minguren 2 design. I adapted this to use two small slabs forming a T as sketched below. But soon realised neither of the selected pieces of timber was long enough for the spine support and the table, perhaps not surprisingly, lacked stability. Also, both slabs had quite wide sapwood on the outside and most visible edges. It seemed a shame to hide the best looking areas of burry heartwood underneath the top. Quite happy to incorporate the sapwood as the slabs were painted with borax soon after starting the air drying. They are now so dry I doubt anything would have survived and the finished furniture will be used indoors and completely coated with oil finishes. I also like the contrasting colours of heartwood and sapwood. Took a while to think through what options were possible, but I eventually settled on the revised design sketched below, which resolved my concerns but at the expense of more work. Before cutting the slabs, I wanted to check the design would have adequate stability, so I placed the top on blocks of wood on the floor corresponding to the proposed positions for the legs and it was fine. Both slabs were cut in two and flipped, so the sapwood is now in the middle under the table. The slab for the spine support is also lengthened by having two rails joining the two pieces cut from the selected slab. See pictures below. Still a fair amount of work to be done to get this finished by Christmas. Legs need the shaping finished, resin bronze filling, gluing together, sanding and oiling. Also need to finalise how to attach the top. Final photos below shows a trial with it all precariously balanced to check how it’s looking so far. A bit different to past projects I’ve done, but happy to keep going in this direction. Although I’ve been thinking about cutting a 13” diameter hole through the cross slabs and a 13” x 5” oval hole through the larger slab on the spine support. Just to make the base a bit less ‘solid’. Hopefully gluing up tomorrow but if you’ve an opinion about this design modification in the meantime, I’d be interested to hear. Andrew

Also used the planer thicknesser, 1/2" router and random orbit sander, so a fair bit of the credit goes to Sheppach, Dewalt and Metabo. Andrew

No problem. That's a nice slab of oak you have, quite thick from memory as I remember seeing a pic before. Thinking of starting a thread about using the burr oak I had milled as I'm part way through the first project. Andrew

Hi Muttley Glad you like it. Tried to take some more pics but it is so small, it's hard to get a view that shows much else. The picture below shows the chamfer on the front edge of the top. Quite subtle, but helps to give a bit of shape to the top. It's only a 20 degree chamfer and I guess making it steeper, in timber with a bit more colour, might make it more obvious with the light reflected differently from each face? Interesting bit of timber to use. It came from a tree in a work colleagues garden about 20 years ago which was being trimmed by a tree surgeon. In those days, I didn't have an Alaskan mill, just a small chainsaw with a 14" bar and freehand chainsawed the side off a 4 foot length with a good sized burr. Then took it (plus various other odds and ends) to a woodmiser to tidy up the freehand sawn face, and cut a 2" plank leaving the burr as a good sized lump. After drying outside for 2 or 3 years it's been in the roof of my workshop ever since, gathering dust and basically forgotten about. Delighted to see how it turned out and it's surprising how many of the 'odds and ends' from that period when I milled anything, are still worth hanging onto. Andrew

No progress photos unfortunately, partly because it was so quick to make. But here are a few thoughts about the background to the design and making of this small table. The following sketches show how the design evolved, and it’s not finished yet, although the first one has been made. I wonder if the legs might be better splayed out slightly by cutting the corner mitre joints at say 40 degrees instead of 45. The geometry of the tapered chamfers at the mitres needs fixing. And, I like the idea of a ‘nest of tables’ perhaps two identical smallish ones under a larger/longer one of similar design. And …….., lots of other ideas which could keep me busy for ages. I wanted a design that could be machine made, really quickly, possibly suitable for small batch production. I’d used mitre corner joints before for small tables and like look of ‘folding a plank’ so that the grain runs around the corner. So that was a starting point. The width would be 10” as that’s the width of my planer thicknesser and I wanted to avoid the time needed to edge joint planks. The height and length were to suit the plank length of about 4 feet and the positions of the corner joints to avoid larger defects in the plank. First sketch got me started and fulfilled the brief and dimensional constraints. Second sketch was trying to improve the appearance by adding chamfers and the third sketch is how it was made including tapered chamfers and curves on the edges of the top and legs. I cut a 250mm wide plank from the slab on the bandsaw, surfaced one face and an edge, then thicknessed it to about 45mm, trimmed it to width, and cut 20 degree chamfers on both sides of the plank. Then cut the plank into three pieces, cut the mitre joints on the bandsaw and cleaned them up with a hand plane. Drilled the dowel holes in the mitre joints. Cut the legs on the bandsaw to taper their thickness, then cut the curved edges on the top and legs using a router and curved mdf templates. And finally, sanding with a random obit sander and glued the mitre joints with polyurethane glue. Just a few hours work which I could reduce a fair bit if making several at once as the set up time for the machines would be spread over several tables. Final sanding, picking out bits of ingrown bark and filling with resin all took longer than the actual making! And then it was given several coats of tung oil. My wife thinks the curved edges and tapered chamfers make it look a bit more ‘classy’. That’s a matter of opinion I guess, but I agree with her and copied this idea from a DVD I watched about Tage Frid who used this technique on his designs. Final sketch shows the stages to cut the tapered chamfers, starting with a straight and square edge. Really quick to do with a router. Andrew

Thanks Andy. Finished it recently but wasn’t sure about putting up a picture. But fairly quiet on this part of the forum these days, so I thought why not. Didn’t take any other progress pics, but I’ll upload some sketches later. Andrew

Hope you weren’t expecting a massive piece of burry timber! I’ve been sorting through my stock of milled and dried timbers as I’m getting to an age where realistically, I just won’t be able to use all of it. Never used horse chestnut before and always assumed it would be pretty bland and uninteresting, so was thinking of putting this into the firewood pile. A casually applied rub with a rag and tung oil showed it’s worth keeping an open mind……! First piece of furniture I’ve made for over four years and also one of the smallest, but quickest, and my wife loves it as it meets her brief for ’somewhere to put my mug of coffee when lounging on the settee’. The tapered chamfers on the top didn’t quite work out as expected, but that will just need a bit more design development next time. Some folk thought it was marble! Now wondering about some of the other planks put into the firewood pile…….. Andrew