se7enthdevil

thought i'd cleared that up:lol: the cone shaped things on alders arn't actualy cones but are female catkins. alder is in the birch family, betulaceae. .

the cone on a yew is almost microscopic. basicly it's inside the red berry. never looked at one my self, i must do that once the yews start fruiting

technicaly a softwood is anything that produces a cone i.e. the conifers. softwoods are gymnosperms where as all hardwoods are angiosperms. not all hardwoos are deciduous and not all softwoods are evergreen. also some softwoods can be very hard and hardwoods can be very soft. in answer to the question cedar is a softwood. .

i think i might watch it if all the inbred self harming drug addicted air thiveing criminal guests were guillotined at the end of the show.

i hope a grand old tree like that hasn't just become firewood... thats the sort of beech i would have to use for my skittle blanks. any chance of big j having it so he can mill it up for me? .

hey woodworks, northcountryboy is right ian leach should be the man for the job as he's been doing plenty over the last few weeks. .

the yanks for some reason use the name sycamore for the platanus genus so sycamore is planetree. no idea how plane splitts as i've never had any. anyone know??? .

sad to hear the news that one of my favorite comidiens has had prostate surgery and is being treated for parkinsons. i hope he gets better (as good as you can with that anyway) as i've still not seen him live and would very much like to one day soon all the best mr conolly. .

why am i not suprised that osage orange tops that table... if only we had hedge rows of that stuff on our shores.

i'm having not to be tight with it at the moment as this past year the skittle buisness has taken off and as i cut up my slabs of sycamore to turn into skittles i get so much in the way of offcuts it unreal. all the waney edges get trimmed and cut up first then once the blanks are cut to length i usualy have 3-4" that i've cut off either end to get rid of the splits and boy do they pile up quick. over the past 6 moths i've filled two builders bags and have at least one more sitting in the workshop ready to be cut into manegable legnths for the fire, plus im still getting orders. 3-4 cube should be plenty for our little fire... .

i've always wanted to make one of them but no ones asked me yet. i have had lots of orders this year thanks and the years not over yet... made this today as well, its for a version called hood skittles or northamptonshire table skittles. a set of nine of these were knocked over with the cheese pictured beside it. its only 6" tall.

cheers bud. i'm trying a few sizes and shapes that are not usually seen in a skittle alley, like the first one. i 'm trying to be sure i can make what the customer wants if they ask for it.

need to be dry but yew and leylandii are great in my opinion... just burnt some deodar cedar and was great stuff to start it off.

i made these,

genraly i'm happy to resist untill about 10 degrees in just jeans and a t'shirt but my mum is an o.a.p. so have to think of her a little bit. i have told her how to keep all the heat in though as she will happily sit there wasting money with the curtains open and doors ajar letting all the heat escape. .

i relented tonight and finally lit the fire as it was down to 16 degrees in the living room. i'm trying to just use the fire and not the central heating to save dosh. as a woodturner i've plenty of offcuts to burn so dont need to buy logs. has anyone else sparked up yet??? .

i must admit i do remember seeing a bit of bubinga that had a grain not too dissimilar from the dry pics but the givaway is the pore structure, bubinga's is not like that in the pictures provided and anyway it looks alot like the pore structure of rosewood. i have seen old bits of brazilian tulipwood look not unlike the log cut up but its only just on the cusp of being able to sink. big j said it was not that fragrent and tulipwood has a very pungent smell so i doubt it is tulipwood. cocobolo casn be very fragrent if it wants but i've had some bits that didnt smell at all. where's this test then muttley?

thanks for the praise fellas, i do pride myself on being a total nerd on the subject but am well aware that i can learn a new timber everyday for the rest of my life and i'll still not know them all. i'm pretty good on the comercial and hobby ones though. i'm all up for your pop quiz if big j doesn't mind hijacking the thread unless you start a new one. some rare bit as part payment is a posobility but it'll depent what you've got...

leadwood is combretum imperbe genuine lignum is guayacum officianle vera wood/argentine lignum is bulnesia sarmientoi african blackwood is dalbergia melanoxylon cocobolo is dalbergia retusa kingwood is dalbergia cearensis both the lignum species are from the same family called the zygophilaceae hence they have similar characteristics. i may have spelled their names wrong and thats because i "am" reciting from memory and not copying from the web. .

not sure what lignum you've been looking at my friend... genuine lignum is dark brown to black and even the argentine stuff (also called verawood) which admitidly can be olive brown but usually has no discernable rings as such. anyway this wood obviously has pores and any pore structure on lignum will be microscopic and only visible with a powerfull jewlers lense. come to think of it taking in to consideration the pore stucture visible in the closeup big j provided there are only a few tombers that have that sort of pore structure that will actually sink in water. the ones that i know of are cocobolo, kingwood, african blackwood and leadwood. well blackwood and lead wood are both very dark and look nothing like the picture so thats them out of the window in my opinion. the colour of this wood is an odd one but could be a srangely coloured bit of either kingwood or cocobolo (most likely cocobolo) as they are very closely related. i should point out that there are about 6000 comercial timberes in the world and near on a quater of a billion species of tree. so we may never get to the botom of it.

its not goncalo alves as that is orange when moistned with thick black streaks sometimes in the grain. it also has no obvious rings either. it does look vaguely similar to bubinga i'll admit but bubinga wont sink and should be pinkish.

a table sound just the job however i'd be tempted to go for 6-8" legs considering the size of the top. 4" legs may look spindly and lost but it depends what the customer wants. lets see some pics when its done... .

i know it doesnt look like your typical block of cocobolo but it does come in many different colours other that the usual ruby red we all know and love. that colour is uaualy all we see because thats what the loggers know will sell first. the tell tale signs are the black and orange staining around the flaws and cracks in the log. this is only something i've seen on cocobolo and indan rosewood. looking at the picture below you can see just what an aray of the paler shades and colours cocobolo can be and for me the clincher may be that turned bowl as its very close to the moistened pic big j put up. although this is paler than any that i've seen before i think cocobolo is what were looking at but if i'm proved wrong then i'll hapilly accept it.

just let me say that i know my woods however this one does have me stumped... its not greenheart thats for sure. for the last hour i've been racking my brain and keep geting this naging feeling that it's a rosewood but i've neer seeon a rosewood that colour before. the only thing i've ever seen look anything like it is on the picture below. that is cocobolo which is usualy a redish colour but can be purplish too. although unlikely it is possible for cocobolo to be that colour and it looks like a log that has had the sap hewn clean off before being shipped. if you take away the colour in the pictured log the grain looks incredibly similar in my opinion and may well be that it is cocobolo but without a sample it is impossible for me to tell 100%

hi ian, you are ulikely to get a bit of genuine lignum that size in one piece. in fact you are not likley to find much genuine lignum at all. argentine lignum is your best bet for that size but even that will be a challenge so i recomend putting two or three bits together. what is a block that size for??? if timberline doesnt have any then know one will. i can guarantee you that as i buy lignum for my skittle balls and not many people keep it...