Ronin Daiku: August 2016

Matsu Kaze Woodworking
Urban Tree Salvage

A fair amount of my material I source myself. It's just impossible to find the wide or exceptionally thick boards I need for projects. Sure it's out there but is it the quality I want? Was it cut properly? Did the guy drying it even know how to dry wood?????
I realized I had to source my own materials. I buy logs standing or on the ground. We then custom cut for dimension and grain orientation specific to our needs which has drastically reduced waste and increased efficiency.
A fair amount of lumber comes from right from town not the forest.

I get to re-purpose the material headed for the landfill and the homeowner gets to off set the cost of tree removal a little bit and sometimes even have something made from the relic tree from their property.

This 105 year old mango was growing near the servants quarters of a historic old Hilo victorian owned by Lorraine Shin ( BJ Penn's mom). It was a huge tree. Over 7 feet in diameter at the butte . The yellow spot up in the tree is Brendon Yew. A very talented tree climber. He and a couple helpers took the tree down quickly and safely with no damage to the building.
There were some massive log sections, but unfortunately the tree formed two spires only a few feet off the stump. Basically it was two trees going from the same stump.
And when the tree was felled, the two split apart. Which is actually fortunate. Because we would have needed a bigger boom truck.....

Here delivered to John's mill site. Yup, it was a real monster. Full of nails , rocks, rat shield....You can see the split trunk. It's over six feet tall laying on it's side.. Really hoping to see a couple massive 5" thick slabs out of it for forth coming tables. I still have not slabbed or cut dimensional from it yet, but I bet it has lots of color and spalt now.

Then just around the corner from the Penn's house I met a very nice lady that was clearing land for her new house and picked up several more mango and some silk oak logs.

I love silk oak. Silk oak is here from Australia where it is used for cabinets, furniture, and exterior millwork. Many woodworkers are allergic to it suffering respiratory and dermatological reactions but fortunately I am not.

To the right, we have the mango and oak logs.

They were nice, large , straight, free of knots, and most any defect. They averaged 28~30" in diameter and 20 to 23 feet long each.

They produced some amazing wide quater sawn boards with wild ray fleck.

Much was cut in anticipation of door making and tansu parts. I also plan to make my kitchen cabinets from it. A friend made an uke with silk oak, sounded pretty nice.

Last year I expanded the shop to included another 1000 feet of outdoor dry storage for material. Warm, dry with plenty of air blowing thru. Perfect for air drying wood. Wood as you know requires extensive air drying before kilning for kind behaving material. It's a long cycle, years even. Longer the better! And eventually your milling, acquiring materials for projects you won't build for 5 or ten years from now. All the better for it and you.

Guess I forgot to mention , about two and a half years back we moved shop to a down town location near the Port of Hilo. I can literally walk 100 yards around the corner and get in the ocean......

I'll save that for next time.

Here are a couple picks of lumber from above logs now air drying.