Home grown

[GaryMGg]

Monday's Florida tornados took down a sweet gum that spanned my driveway. Since I had to get out the chainsaw to clean it up, I also cleaned up the oak tree that fell across the front of the driveway a
few weeks ago. I had pushed the oak out of the way and left it lay.
When I went to move it, I noticed serious spalting and upon cutting,
I found most of it is solid. Thoroughly spalted without being punky.
[8D]
Y'all probably know where this is going.

The little chunk the pen is resting on is the source of this pen.
There is about 10' or 12' of roughly 10" chunks of this stuff.

I'll be posting below to learn what interest exists for this material.

Cheers,
Gary

 

[NavyDiver]

From chainsaw to pen in no time flat! [][8D] Nice job!

 

[Ligget]

Lovely work![]

 

[Jim15]

Looks good.

 

[Glenn McCullough]

I hope its going up for sale!!
Just a note, I had a burl cuy fresh from a friends tree. It turned great but after 2 or three weeks, his pen started drying out and getting bumpy and the wood started to open. You may need to let it dry out for a while. Watch this pen and see before turning another, just a suggestion. I am attaching a photo of his pen that i took back, disassembled and refinished after a year.

Originally posted by GaryMGg
<br />Monday's Florida tornados took down a sweet gum that spanned my driveway. Since I had to get out the chainsaw to clean it up, I also cleaned up the oak tree that fell across the front of the driveway a
few weeks ago. I had pushed the oak out of the way and left it lay.
When I went to move it, I noticed serious spalting and upon cutting,
I found most of it is solid. Thoroughly spalted without being punky.
[8D]
Y'all probably know where this is going. []

The little chunk the pen is resting on is the source of this pen.
There is about 10' or 12' of roughly 10" chunks of this stuff.

I'll be posting below to learn what interest exists for this material.

Cheers,
Gary

 

[GaryMGg]

Glenn,

Thanks for the comment; I hadn't even thought about the oak being wet even though when I
do flatwork, I always consider wood movement.

However, with the blanks for pens being so small, I see no issue with microwave drying as an option.
I'll have to do a search and see how long is recommended.
I'll bet the one pictured doesn't last two weeks but we'll see.

Cheers,
Gary

 

[atvrules1]

Good work Gary. Spectacular wood.

 

[Penmonkey]

That is a nice pen.

 

[broitblat]

We had a nasty windstorm blow through a few weeks ago. Winds up to 100 mph, they claim. There were trees down everywhere -- all the free wood you could use. The problem is, almost all of it was Douglas Fir and other soft woods [V]. I didn't look very hard, but I didn't see anything nearly as interesting as your spalted oak.

 

[BigRob777]

I just love spalted oak. It does take some time to dry. Nice job on the pen.
Rob

 

[johncrane]

Top work Gary and a nice save.[]

 

[wudwrkr]

I received one blank of cross-cut spalted oak some time ago. Here's the pen I made from it:

I would love to get me more of this![]

 

[GaryMGg]

Originally posted by wudwrkr
<br />I received one blank of cross-cut spalted oak some time ago. Here's the pen I made from it:

I would love to get me more of this![]

Yessir. That's an absolute beauty. You did 'er proud!

<s>Check the Trade/Swap/Sell below. I'm offering this stock very reasonably</s>:

<s>http://www.penturners.org/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=20465</s>

If things change, I'll post below.
Thanks,
Gary