GeneralKayoss
ArboristSite Operative
3-4 light coats of natural danish oil on spalted red maple. Brings more color out with each coat it seems
What are you making with your milled wood?
- Thread starter unclemoustache
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Gorgeous!
Finally got this to the clients/friends in NY who bought it a year ago. Whole process was a textbook case of never assume that large chunks of wood dry outdoors. It started as a roughly hewn section of a live oak trunk, crudely shaped like a really thick bench, that had been sitting in my neighbor's yard for five years. I dragged it over to my place and milled it into a coffee table. One of my friends in NY originally from San Antonio immediately claimed it, wanting a piece of Texas for their New York lakehouse. The wood moved a ton over the next six months even after resin filling the cracks and had to completely relevel it after nine months, and refill cracks. Finally was sure it was done moving and my friends were getting antsy to take possession so managed to ship it with legs on via UPS at a pretty reasonable price considering the box weighed 92 lbs - 62 lb table top, 20 lb legs, 10 pounds of boxing and packing. It's an Asian style table with shallow 6" custom steel flat bar legs I fabricated, so that was why I was able to keep it a pretty small volume box already assembled - 44x24x9, and thus affordable to ship. Volume almost always matters more than weight in ground shipping, which is why I rarely ship assembled tables. Far and away the most interesting piece of wood I've ever worked. Only possible to achieve this look as a result of that extended outdoor weathering process.
Turned out great! Finish?
Varathane water based polyurethane.
Do most Live Oak slabs show all the cool looking darker grain like that?
No, I wish they did lol or I'd mill more. Live oak has a decent looking grain but have never found it remarkable enough to justify the effort of milling such ridiculously hard and heavy wood. That grain seemed a product of the raw chunk I milled it from having five years of weathering outdoors here between extreme heat and cold cycles (and not rotting whatsoever that entire time). Kind of a happy accident being able to salvage it from my neighbor's yard, I would have never kept it lying around in the weather that long doing nothing with it.
Awesome! What a beautiful chunk of wood.
Looks like some of the cracks aren’t completely filled?
Try raising the grain with a Butane torch then sand.
Probably not in the first photo. That was taken before releveling and refilling sometime last year, the first time I "finished" it. I painstakingly tried to get everything the second time around. The spider web cracks are exasperating, they're so thin but so extensive that it takes forever for epoxy to seep down through them so you have to coat it again and again to fill them to surface level. Oak seems to have a different way of cracking than most other woods, at least in the burl-ish sections. Because I don't like epoxy finishes, I don't just coat the whole thing with a ton of epoxy, just around the cracks. I always sand down the wood bare so I can do a water based poly finish or mineral oil/beeswax finish depending on the type of wood (I use water based poly for a clear/non-yellowed finish on lighter woods and minerai oil/beeswax to enrich the grain of darker woods).
motolife313-2
ArboristSite Lurker
Black locust animal table, about my first time using a table saw, was looking for dewalt used but couldn’t find a nice one for the right price so I got this Hardley used ryobi for 45$, everything works on it, pretty sketchy tool that’s for sure lol, still need so put oil on it 
That’s pretty cute!
Only problem is that you’re feeding those tree rats instead of shooting them. My house is practically overrun with those buggars!
GeneralKayoss
ArboristSite Operative
I've done a few spalted red maple tops here recently and have a couple more in the works. Some turned out better than others.
GeneralKayoss
ArboristSite Operative
Coasters.... 
I was splitting some Cherry rounds I cut up in the Spring, and I found out that it was very curly. My Nephew was in town so he dropped by and picked up a bunch of the useable pieces. He's a wood turner, but because I waited too late to get tho the wood, it had started to crack. No bowl blanks, just bottle stoppers and pen blanks.
We got to talking about other projects and his son, who came with him, said I could make $200-300 on those cutting/cheese boards (can't say or spell the name). So I made my first 'Chartreuse' board. I told the son I would sell it to him for $200 and then he could resell it for $300. He didn't go for it for some reason.
We got to talking about other projects and his son, who came with him, said I could make $200-300 on those cutting/cheese boards (can't say or spell the name). So I made my first 'Chartreuse' board. I told the son I would sell it to him for $200 and then he could resell it for $300. He didn't go for it for some reason.
motolife313-2
ArboristSite Lurker
Black locust legs and English walnut top. I did put 6 dowels in each leg frame support. 2 on each long and 2 on the miter joint so very strong 
Hackberry side table 3” thick. About 18x26”. Legs were an experiment from the steel salvage yard. Cast iron frames of some sort, like 33 lbs apiece, so the most impossibly heavy small table in the world. Used it half-finished as a printer table for awhile and finally put enough 2" lag screws in to tighten up the legs and refinished the top w water based poly. Just need a client with an industrial/steampunk themed place.
This next shelf wasn’t milled wood but salvaged 1x5.5" cedar from the leftover cuts of a huge deck job I did in Nashville recently. Just posting it for the shelf-building technique I used for those who don't have a lot of woodworking equipment. I mitered and biscuited the corners to make the outer frame look good and be strong, and then I just aligned and screwed all the shelves into place, and went back and pulled out one screw at a time and drilled 3/8" holes for thru-dowels and tapped them into place and sanded them flush. Looks reasonably professional, but mostly just need a chop saw and a drill and sander to do it. I could have doweled the miters, but I have a biscuit joiner so that's easier.
This next shelf wasn’t milled wood but salvaged 1x5.5" cedar from the leftover cuts of a huge deck job I did in Nashville recently. Just posting it for the shelf-building technique I used for those who don't have a lot of woodworking equipment. I mitered and biscuited the corners to make the outer frame look good and be strong, and then I just aligned and screwed all the shelves into place, and went back and pulled out one screw at a time and drilled 3/8" holes for thru-dowels and tapped them into place and sanded them flush. Looks reasonably professional, but mostly just need a chop saw and a drill and sander to do it. I could have doweled the miters, but I have a biscuit joiner so that's easier.
Working on some small hackberry slab tables, one of my planer blades got happy and my planing results not so much. Been through one too many sharpenings maybe or just abusing it constantly with the hardest of American hardwoods, though it's odd it would happen on hackberry as it's one of the softest of my woods. Weird that it stress split in half horizontally, have nicked planer blades a lot hitting nails but never had one do this. Also could be the steel Freud is using in its blades these days ain't what it used to be, but it's a 40 year old Makita planer only Freud makes aftermarket blades for ($60 a pair vs $188 a pair OEM).
fleethirte
ArboristSite Member
Yeah, my first reaction was "they laminate steel on these blades?" I kind of discounted it because it didn't make sense to me but obviously given the clean split line, it is laminated. Doing a bit of research, I guess laminated tool steel planer blades are a pretty common standard. Always just assumed they were made from single pieces of HSS steel.
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