se7enthdevil

i like this one myself, Solid Air Dried Oak Beams Timber Posts Hardwood - 3.2m and 4.2m | eBay works out at just under £30ft3 which they claim is "cheaper than green oak", more like twice the price... according to what they paid for them they purchased the oak at £50ft3, boy were they ripped off!!!

unless you find a slab that has been drying for x amount of years in a barn (very rare) bowls of that size need to be turned wet as the large diameter could mean that the radial shrinkage will be too great compared to the tangential and go too far oval for a round bowl to then be turned once dry

that's a beast, i'll have to settle for a large branch 18" or so but i'd love one day to turn a 5' bowl. if that tree is solid it should be slabbed for tabletops.

would be interested in some for turning, what diameters are there?

8-9 foot square will be tricky to come by i think... plenty of 8-9" ones on ebay that have come out of similar period buildings...

these are sounding interesting guys and i'm definitely going to want some of these. just to point out what i would like, rather than you cutting me samples i'll cut them my self from a log or small branch that i'd like to get from any of you as i would really like to get a sample and turn a small object from the rest of the block/log i purchase. if anyone wants to call about the timbers they have they can get me on 01628666191.

you don't need loads of big boys toys (although it does help) i did that with a handheld circular saw, a tape and a palm sander and battery drill to screw it together..

only samples the size of your palm really. he has some of them already but Atlantic blue cedar, blackthorn and hawthorn i'll be interested in. do you have any of these? pagoda, judas, whitebeam (and swedish), poplar (black and white), wingnut, hazel, zelkova, magnolia, rowans and service tree, medlar, cherry laurel, robinia, norway maple, silver maple, manna ash, juniper,

can nobody help me with this???

you could always try some thing a little more rustic... its only held together with battens... .

i made the project at the bottom of the first page from some deodar i got from big j. http://arbtalk.co.uk/forum/woodcraft-forum/60100-all-my-woodwork-so-far.html

i bought myself about 8ft3 of wenge, a 19" wide board of mahogany, a small log of lignum vitae but would really like santa to bring me a stihl chainsaw that could handle a 48" bar...

that's a beauty tom. including just cutting round blanks from the brown oak i've made nearly 120 blanks in total and i should be getting another delivery of timber soon so could have another 100+ by febuary. i've no idea where im going to keep them all. i think i'll have to cease skittle production just so i can keep up with this.

i've too many bowls at the moment.

why would they do that??? its not going to drop dead just because a bus slammed in to it is it? from all the camera angle i saw the tree will have had bark damage and maybe a bit of metal digging in to it but otherwise it looked ok.

terrible accident yes however strangely to me there is something pleasing to see either car, lorry or a bus wrapped round trees that will just shrug it of and not be affected by all this metal flying in to it.

yeah i have a bit clive, i needed to really as i got delivered all this wood from windsor and i had to core it straight away so its ready for the summer. they don't realise just how long these things can take to season.

this has always been a sticky subject for me so take my advice with a pinch of salt. pricing bowls is tricky because a large bowl could take you hours depending on the ease that the timber turns, the desired finish and any problems you encounter. things to consider should be the cost of the wood, your time and the look of the finished item. remember, if it looks a million dollars then charge accordingly, if not charge to sell. from a personal point of view i turn bowls aplenty and have lots of wood to choose from but an example recently would be that i bought a reclaimed plank of elm from ebay and cut it in to blanks it cost me £35 including postage and i got about 10 blanks from it so it really doesn't matter what i charge for each bowl as even if they only average out at £20 each then £200 is a fair return for what should only be 4-5 hours work to turn all 10. if you are commissioned then stick to an hourly rate or some other pricing formula and that will take any guess work out of trying to come up with a price when you've finished. one tip would be that if you can try to make lots of an item in one go as batch production is more cost effective than doing a bowl then a coffee table then another bowl. a good example of this is my current commission of the savill garden bowls turned from their own timber. they dropped it off and i set my self up to do various tasks. firstly cut them up in to blanks, next i did nothing but turn the outside of all the blocks i had, then i cored all the blanks as many times as i could keeping all the tools i would need to hand. after one weeks work of only two to four hours per day i have cored 44 blanks ready for seasoning and cut round another dozen bowl blanks. i'm keeping a constant record of how long everything is taking me. with this particular job i'm not charging by the hour though, i have a price band ranging for bowls 5"+ up to 20". doing this ensures i get a bit more than if i were just charging an hourly rate as i can finish a dozen bowls in a few hours. for me its currently working out at about £30-£40 per hour. this may only work on the larger scale so you may want to take a different approach yourself. bottom line i think is that the more you do the better at pricing you get.

hi all, I've a friend in the states who has a great website that has loads of different timbers from around the world listed on it and a few years ago i sent a package of about a hundred samples. would appreciate anyone sending me a sample of any unusual species they can get there hands on. these would include things like judas, whitbeam, zelkova, hazel, mullberry, blackthorn, rowan, pagoda and anything that is not run of the mill be it softwood or hardwood wet or dry. unspalted samples would be best will be interested to see what people have... here's his site, The Wood Database | Hardwood and Softwood Lumber Identification

well that's a new one on me. i must assume you are correct. i only know timber type species and not necessarily garden plants. dogwood is also known as dog rose or flowering dogwood in the states so i presumed that was the species hedgesparrow was referring to. i am now the wiser man. which species do you mean hedgesparrow???

glad to hear it:thumbup:

briar wood is the one for pipes but its not related to dogwood. briar is erica arborea and European dogwood is cornus sanguinea.

cant they be turned in to logs for burning, seems such a waste to chip 6" bits...

i think the word is cleaved. split wood was often done during the victorian era.

i think the gold company should be fined in some way for wanting to rip out all that forest. go costa rica...