Interesting maybe to some people

[caryc]

I have purchased lots of wood with curl in it, but this is the first time I've seen it "in the wild" so to speak. I have a friend that has a small olive orchard on his property. He's lived there many years and has been trimming the trees and just disposing of the wood.

I asked him to look at some of it when he got a chance. He sawed out a big burl stump. Below are pics of just a small piece that I cut for testing.

I never knew that the curl went all the way through the tree like that. You can actually see the ribs on the outside of the tree where the bark has been taken off.

No one really knows what causes curl in trees. One theory is that it is the weight of the tree pressing down causing it to compress. But then curl is even found in 1 1/2" diameter small limbs growing horizontally out of the trunk, so there goes the weight compression theory.

Too bad he didn't know that the olive wood was so pretty since a lot of it was just left to dry out and crack. I'm hoping there will be some usable stuff in the burl stump.

[wildwillalaska]

Way cool. Beautiful stuff--thanks for sharing.

Will

[wheelgunne]

Nice, I got your Italian Olive # IO2 grips about a year ago, and they are jaw droppers to everyone I've showed them to since. I could only imagine what grips you could make out of a piece like that !!

[boxhead]

Neat and I bet there is more than one pair of grips in there. I have a pile of mesquite in covered wood "shed" of the place I just bought. I do believe I need to rummage through it.

[caryc]

Apr 13, 2010 7:34:55 GMT -5 boxhead said:

Neat and I bet there is more than one pair of grips in there. I have a pile of mesquite in covered wood "shed" of the place I just bought. I do believe I need to rummage through it.

BH,

Even if your wood shed is covered it will still crack and check from the center out while it is drying. It would be great if you had at least a 14" band saw.

If you think you might have some good wood in there, you need to get to work cutting it up. Even hacking into it with a chainsaw your should be able to see if you have something good. A lot of the stuff I purchased was chain saw cut chunks about 1 3/4" thick and sealed on the ends.

If you have that band saw I would cut it into small pieces maybe 5/8" thick and one or two feet in length. You then need to seal the end grain of the boards with anchorseal or just plain melted paraffin wax. Stack them with small spacers between the boards to let air get to both faces.

This will let them dry slowly with the moisture drawing out from the board faces. If the ends are left unsealed it will lose its moisture much too quickly causing it to crack.

In other words, even as you read this that wood is cracking while drying out unprepared. Most of the prettiest wood is in the heartwood or the center of logs and unfortunately that is where it starts cracking first.

[boxhead]

Cary,

Thanks but I am 10,000 miles away from it until June or July but will heed your advise when I get there. I will walk the property looking for anything live when I get there. I board a plane to Kazakhstan in 4 hours...

[ronegg]

Very interesting, can't wait to see what you do with it.

[caryc]

The stuff pictured is a small piece only about 5" long and 2" thick when put together. This was just whacked off the side of the burl stump so I could split it and sand it smooth to check the color. The real pretty stuff with the good color and dark striping as I said in my post to BH will be further towards the middle of the stump. I'm just hoping it's not too cracked and split in there.

As I said the owner of the property didn't know it was worth keeping the wood and drying it correctly.