se7enthdevil

yup, ailanthus it is.

not sure if the carvers will want it as it wont last outside but there are other uses for it. if it's nice and straight it can be milled in to boards for furniture or joinery. problem is that a girth of only 4-5' is only a 12-15" tree that has limited uses. if you meant the diameter is 4-5' then it's worth milling, if it's only small then it will probably end up as firewood.

doug fir is an excellent construction and joinery timber and i don't know why 100s of tons are logged up every year when it could be milled up and used. laws should be in place so any good trunk get milled and used rather than logged. yes there is a market. green you can sell it to the construction side or if you can get it kiln dried then sell it to joiners. how big is the trunk?

no disrespect to other carvers but that has to be the best carving i've ever see on here...

ash wont last as a building material. i believe alder is better but i'm not sure.

this item may be of interest to you to use as the top... thicker than i've seen before as they are usually 40mm solid oak worktop 60mm thick 3m long 610 width | eBay .

it was beech i purchased but sorry mate that's a trade secret...

in august????? whats the temp up there???

alec's pretty much spot on there. you should be able to get away with 3/8" or 1/2" stickers and as alec says, cover it and keep it out of the wind. i would also seal the ends of the boards with a couple of coats of pva or other sealing solution. if i've been given bits like strawberry tree which splits badly then i kept them in a shed to stop the wind altogether but i don't think hawthorn is quite as bad as strawberry tree.

i think they trialed that at windsor great park as the forester said that the 1 hectare squares that they had were not followed up as they wee not as successful as was hoped.

mill it quickly and dry it slowly or otherwise it will split like crazy...

welcome to the forum lee. i wish i could buy the whole lot but i'm a bit murray mint at present mate. you got any pictures of it though. i'd love to see it. remind me what you want for it per ft3?

i've a rip saw and a planer thicknesser at hand. the materials get delivered and that would take me one hour to rip the boards and plane them, jointing with gluing time will be two hours plus one hour for the cleaning up and sanding with 5 minutes of oiling if required. i'm as joiner by trade and that is half a days work for me.

what tosh, materials about £70-£80 and making it would be about the same so no more than £160 tops.

there are some hard woods that grow fairly fast to be fair. whats the average growth ring in a softwood tree? i don't know what it's like on the fire but ailanthus i've seen at 1/2"+ per ring. hornbeam springs up fast round here too, and walnut.

medical advances have made the world what it is today. in 1900 there were almost 2.5 billion people in the world and only 100 years later we've just about tripled it. we've wiped out some killer diseases and vaccinated against the rest of the bad ones reducing their effect on the human population. a little disease can go along way in my opinion. i recently learned that the war 100 years ago got rid of about 3 million people which was pretty bad. that's nothing, the disease they called spanish flu was reputed to have killed up to 100 million people all over the world. the advances in medical science have curbed events like that because swine flu is a descendant of the very same disease but supposed to be worse and only hundreds of thousands were killed rather than millions. it will take a natural event like starvation due to the overpopulation or a disease that we can't cure spreading like wildfire to take us back down to 2-3 billion again.

could also be a silver maple. pics of the bark and seed would help.

happy to teach if you're ever over this way.

any ideas on what an asking price should be for a pair like these?

my latest creation that i did for a friend. made from solid iroko that i got from offcuts around my workshop, the central spars have turned tenons on the end and finished in a single coat of danish oil. about 18"wide 19" high and 24" long. .

if you want to learn to swim sometimes you need to just jump in the water....

i'm aware of that. to properly answer your question, yes it is possible to find stuff that size but it's hard to get and expensive as i said. wood wise you will be wanting something like ash, beech, oak, elm, robinia or sycamore. the cheapest option is probably beech and this is also one of the best woods out of that selection.

i'd suggest you glue at least three boards of q-sawn wood together at 8x3" to make up your 24" width and you will get something very stable indeed. a single wide board that is dry and flat will be ridiculously expensive not to mention difficult to find and you will have to fork out hundreds for it. a manufactured one could be done for as little as £200.

i've done absolutely no milling at all yet. i wish to do some in the future and knew a big saw would be required so snapped it up when it came up for sale. it was only once i got it that i was told that it was supposed to be possibly the best for milling so that was luck on my part. the only other saw i've ever used is my cheap ryobi 18" agg221 has an 090, as well as rob d.

bought an 084 that i'll be using for milling when i get the chance and have since been told that it is the best saw to use for alaskan milling as it has an extra oiling button.