Apple Trunks

[Holy Mackerel]

I was able to score some nice Apple wood from a local orchard last week.

The tree's where all about 80 years old and had to come down to make room for new saplings.

Looks like I will get a lot of good quarter sawn stock.
I am torn as to what I should do with the beautifully figured face grain slabs.
Do I rip them down for turning blanks or keep them for table top slabs.

On average they are all about 20" wide by 30-36" long. I have a mixed bag of thicknesses. Mainly 1-1/2" and 2-1/2"

What would you do? I am not much of a wood broker.

 

[Holy Mackerel]

And yes that is my girl the Mona Lisa in the back ground. What a fox.

 

[Daninvan]

Is it your plan to sell the blanks/boards? Give them away to your buddies? Take up woodworking yourself? Etc?

 

[Holy Mackerel]

I plan on selling most and keeping a few nice pieces for myself.

The quarter sawn slabs that have a punky pith are going to be ripped in half right away.

Guess I will wait on the rest and see how it looks when is dry.

 

[Daninvan]

In that case my guess is that it will be easier to sell bowl blanks than slabs, unless you already have a channel to sell slabs. Cut them in a variety of thicknesses.

Apple (and all fruitwoods) are notorious for cracking, so you will probably see fairly high losses no matter how thick you slab them.

I'd probably do a mix of both, heavier on the bowl blanks.

Good luck!

 

[mikeb1079]

i'm no expert but have heard that apple is especially difficult to dry without high losses. i'd err on the side of slow slow drying, ie no sun and plenty of anchorseal...
looks like beautiful wood!

 

[Timberframed]

All I could do with most of the apple I had was turn it into charcoal. This Summer's grilli'n is gonna be grand! I did turn out some cutting boards. Cut a v notch in one end for scraping whatever you diced into a bowl.

 

[SDB777]

i'm no expert but have heard that apple is especially difficult to dry without high losses. i'd err on the side of slow slow drying, ie no sun and plenty of anchorseal...
looks like beautiful wood!

Good advise.....wish someone would have told me this after I had slabbed and then cut into turning blanks. Sealed the endgrain with latex paint(I'm too cheap for AS)...just the ends, should have applied more latex paint to the blanks.
Ended up with around 45% loss on the blanks I had made.




Scott B