WOOD

Well, hardly anyone reads this thing anymore, but I don’t mind. I’m doing it for ME. It is very possible that I’ll croak one of these nights, and since I live alone and have few (no) friends, no one will know. None in this area, anyway. No one comes to the house.

Boo frickin’ hoo. I like it this way.

I am alone, not lonely.

But if I do die in bed, at least the dogs will be fed by Dad.

Just in a different way.

So this is my record of what is happening here, or will be if I ever catch it up.

I’m almost there. 

I began gathering wood when I ran the Woodmizer sawmill at Deschenes and Cooper Architectural Woodworks (DCAM) in 2014. The Woodmizer is essentially a huge horizontal bandsaw on a set of tracks. My job was to mill 4 to 500 year old antique southern yellow longleaf pine (also called heart pine) into flooring and joists. It had to be denailed first, and my arm still hurts six years later.

My mentor and constant friend Richard Heinz, expert Woodmizer operator. I and my friend Josh loaded big timbers and took away slabs while Richard ran the saw. We did this in the snow, in the shade, and all winter long in 2013.

It was a bitch on our feet, which froze. But Richard was a saint and a good teacher.

Hey, Richard!

He is also an absolute artist with a lathe, and took the leftovers from our cutting to turn into gorgeous bowls and such. He even turns thin stirring sticks from heart pine called spurtles. I use one of his spurtles every night at cocktail hour.

Slabbing

My personal spurtle.

It's quite an involved operation, sawing slabs with a Woodmizer. Set the denailed timber, slice off the painted bit, then turn it and turn it again to get the quarter sawn profile that will show off the straight lines. You'll see what I mean. Slab by slab, we gathered the pieces that would eventually become the fine woodwork that trims out The Morgan Suite at the Ocean House in Watch Hill, Rhode Island. You can spend the night there, if you have the bucks.

Ten thousand a night.

At least that what they tell me. They wouldn't let anyone of my ilk near the place.

But first they have to be denailed. One nick from a hardenened nail (square nails five inches long) and you can kiss your blade goodbye and take ten minutes to change it. Denailing took forever, and it is a craft. Pulling nails like these was not for idiots. You used metal detectors, Japanese nail pullers, and wiles.

You see, I milled the joists and flooring from 27 foot-long 7”x15” beams salvaged from a deconstructed woolen mill near Boston. The wood was cut in 1870 when it was old growth, thus my guess at its age. Much was cut off that was unusable. It had paint, it had black areas from iron oxide. It had nail holes, it had yellow pitch.

 Timbers at the Yard. Scary place. Scary foks ran it.

Certain timbers were marked by Chad, the project manager, and me; these had the right grain structure for our purposes.

And though we began by milling the trim for The Ocean House, we eventually milled the stuff into all kinds of things for the same client. He had a penchant for clear, quarter-sawn heart pine, and used the wood for his own home we were building in Avondale, Rhode Island.

Some nice cabinet doors. Nice milling and joinery, no?

Finisher Brian showing off a cabinet door ready for finishing (eight coats of varnish with sanding between each). Matt is impressed. Or possibly trying to figure how to get out.

The slabs I created with the Woodmizer, once I learned to use the one at the shop, were straight, flat, and showed off the straight grain beautifully. You can't really see it here.

You can here. Kitchen cabinet doors; the hole is for a bumper or magnet. Or a hinge.

 Arches made from quarter-sawn heart pine.

Bent into shape and glued up. Each is quarter sawn, the grain perpendicular to the face.

All from these, which crowded our parking to for a year. I grabbed them with a forklift, placed them on the sawhorses, denailed them (with the help of Josh, without whom this could not be reported), then cut them into twelve-foot lengths to be milled into whatever we needed.

 Ah, denailing. The bane of my existence for over two years.

 When milling heart pine, pitch builds up on the blade, causing it to wander. You can't clean the blade, you must replace it BEFORE it ruins the cut by wandering. We went through a LOT of blades before I started cutting the ends of the timbers to check for excessive pitch. Those timbers were set aside.

I had to determine which way to turn the timber to get the perpendicular cut that would produce that straight-line cream-and-red grain.

There was a lot of waste. 

And I got the leftovers.

I asked to take the leftovers home, and they said okay. The really clear stuff with no marks would become crosses, which I mill and sell. The iron-stained stuff would become framing lumber, though to join it one must drill pilot holes and use screws; it is fabulously hard.

Framing lumber, containing holes and stains, pitch and cracks. But it holds up very well.

The in-between stuff would be used for barnboards; heart pine is notoriously distasteful to termites and bugs.

To add to that, I was also allowed to take home the antique white pine flooring and barnboard they didn’t want. All this would be used to sheathe the barns I knew would need them, since those barns were covered with shingles and the original boards beneath are often questionable. Shingles on barns built in the eighteenth and nineteenth century are anathema to me.I want them to look like barns. WOOD barns.

 

Did I have anyplace under cover to store it? NO!

Did I have a way of storing it on the land? YES!

Would I lose some to rot?

Probably.

The pile on the left is thin heart pine, the pile on the right is eighteenth century eastern white pine. It has been stickered (thin sticks between to allow air circulation), and has also been (since this was taken) covered with plywood.

This pile is destined for my sheathing my wood shop, built in the 1960s and BEGGING for a new coat. It would not be disappointed.

You’ve already seen what I can do with the pretty, thin stuff. I used it as trim in the Standish House.

Just wait until I sheathe the Barns.

I have three.
Plus the shop.