I did some black walnut for her .
What are you making with your milled wood?
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Bunch of my recent smaller mesquite charcuterie boards for the gift giving season - turns out that square 12x12"-ish size ones are more popular after focusing mainly on rectangular 12 x 18-27" ones to date. Saw similar quality going for $400 at a gift shop in Hill Country, but I can't bring myself to price mine at more than $100-160 if I want to actually sell them.
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At $100-160 each, I've got to make me some. A lot easier than trying to sell firewood.
Lol - seemingly, except there's more of a market for firewood. And between the time I have in these milling the mesquite, planing, sanding, routing, doing epoxy inlays, buffing out the epoxy, drilling holes and mounting the handles invisibly (floating shelf style), and oil and waxing them? Trust me, it's not an easy money maker. Good epoxy inlay work (and an unusual high value ultra dense wood like mesquite) are kind of the selling point, anything else is just a beautiful small piece of wood with handles people can't see paying more than $40-60 for. There's always some Pier One kind of thing made from rainforest wood in Indonesia with .50/hr labor people will buy instead. These are more just something affordable for some folks to buy who love my work but who aren't in the market for one of my high end tables.
Well shoot! Thought I could put away the chainsaw -lol. I'd like to see some of your tables and other work.
Started the live edge counter top . I was positive that the stack I took wood from was hickory but now I’m thinking it was the maple stack . I milled them all up the same day so who knows as I usually mark the wood up with a crayon. But not this time . Wood was treated for bugs before i stickered them up 4 years ago
Ripping up the edge . Planed it on the Dewalt table top planer the other boards I need to bring to a friend he has a 25 inch planer mines 12 inch
Back side with Waterlox 
and I’m thinking it’s curly Maple to boot
Ripping up the edge . Planed it on the Dewalt table top planer the other boards I need to bring to a friend he has a 25 inch planer mines 12 inch
Back side with Waterlox and I’m thinking it’s curly Maple to bootAttachments
How did you treat for bugs?
Bora-care my friend who has a portable mill buys it in bulk as he mills large beams for doing barns .
This is my highest end project to date, a 6' long mesquite waterfall desk with twin streams I did for a realtor friend in California. Even drove it out to deliver it to him. I didn't have long enough mesquite slabs to seamlessly waterfall a 6' desk so I had to buy it for like $20/foot from a local place and the wood alone cost me over $700. One end was waterfalled and the other was a pair of flat bar steel legs. The next most exotic one was a small mesquite dining river table I delivered to a woman in a suburb of Phoenix. Still haven't made any really large (like 8') slab dining tables, still need to make a better router planing table to do big slabs on, the one I have never stays level. Have a crude backyard operation and a small garage shop, doing it on as low a budget as possible while still trying to be kind of a perfectionist, so everything takes way longer than it should. Anytime someone says "ah, rustic" about any of my stuff I about want to throttle them lol. But that's just because "Texas rustic" when it comes to mesquite usually means a badly/un-finished random slab of gnarled wood. Not many people try to do fine quality work with it.
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Simply beautiful! I like 'rustic'
furniture. I've got a few real rustic shelves planned. What router bit (be specific if you don't mind) you use. I bought a cheapo spoilboard? bit for my 3.5HP router. I don't think it'll last long.Thanks
I love rustic myself but means different things to different people. More properly it means more natural, live edge, weathered, etc. But some people - both makers and buyers - seem to think it just means "unfinished" or "couldn't be bothered" lol.Simply beautiful! I like 'rustic'
Thanks
I was thinking of getting a cheapo spoilboard but have laid off so far. I used just a 1.5" Freud straight bit for a long time before the slab leveling bit revolution, and finally got a 1.5" Amana 45526 carbide tipped flattening bit for $56. Not with changeable inserts, those Amana ones are too pricey. My old 3.25hp Makita isn't variable speed, so I don't really dare run a bit over 1.5" at top speed in it. Also all the wood I plane is so impossibly hard that I think bigger bits could only take the shallowest of passes anyway. Already have dulled the Amana bit some, need to take it to my local sharpening shop that sharpens bits for $10. If I had a slower router, I'd try running the $59 4-wing SpeTool changeable insert one, the SpeTool bits seem some of the best inexpensive stuff out of China.
CaptainMauw
ArboristSite Member
Most of my milled lumber is used for furniture pieces. This is a piece I created for a good friends wedding. A wine bar built to hold 21 bottles, a wine fridge, and stowaway shelves for wine glasses and the such. Make from my stash of black walnut with some red oak for accents. Simply sealed with lacquer to let the beauty of the wood speak for itself.
The wood you mill, do you run it through a kiln before you use it or just air dried?
CaptainMauw
ArboristSite Member
Boards come off my mill rough, go through my roughing planer which makes it sort of smooth, then gets stickered in the back barn for 1-3 years depending on species. I'm finishing up a loft in the newest barn specifically for air drying. Loft is directly under the roof tin and gets nice and warm with good air flow between the vents and soffit. It should speed up dry times without the need for a kiln.
Getting ready to process 10 pin oaks and get them stashed and have a small pile of cherry that is ready right now. Its very much a game of patience.
Getting ready to process 10 pin oaks and get them stashed and have a small pile of cherry that is ready right now. Its very much a game of patience.
Not exactly milled wood like the table underneath, these pieces were made from bird's-eye maple rescued from firewood. Chiappa 'Little Badger' in .22WMR. Working on something to add about 2" length of pull yet too.
And I can guarantee that grip is custom-shaped for my hand.
And I can guarantee that grip is custom-shaped for my hand.
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Finished rebuilding the transfer case of my Silverado and had a few parts I replaced - shift fork and collar - that seemed like neat pieces of metal I could do something cool with. So I made a pen holder with the shift collar and a drink holder with the shift fork, with blocks of red oak I'd milled. The red oak is so heavy it's still stable when it rotates the full glass outward. Had to grind the semicircle of the worn out shift fork and even out the wear on it and open it up more with a router and a carbide milling bit, as initially it didn't fit anything but a real small glass. The pen holder took a surprising amount of time for such a simple thing because south Texas red oak is so rock hard I had to keep stepping up Forstner bits in increments - 1/2, 3/4, 1, 1 1/2, to 1 3/4" for the deep internal hole and then 2 3/4" for the shallow recess for the collar to sit in.
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My daughter wanted to make these bookends for her sister, so we whipped these out in a day.
Walnut with Rubio monocoat.
Walnut with Rubio monocoat.
Why wouldn't you use that "FIDDLE BACK GRAIN" on a fiddle? All the stools are very nice. Merry Christmas.
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