Fine woodworking

i thought i would try it when i retired. bought the whole shop, found out i didn't have the patience and gave everything away. live and learn, the hard way. interesting about burl though, i love those little boxes they make from it.

 

My uncle was a luthier.

 

1) Exotic wood is expensive.
2) If it is not pine, it is exotic wood.
3) Most of that exotic wood ends up as sawdust.

My initial observations.

 

I've done quite a bit of furniture restoration and refinishing, and in the process have had to make odd bits of moulding, but I definitely wouldn't call myself a woodworker. I do admire those who can produce fine objects from wood, though. Recently I helped a friend sell a set of bedroom furniture designed by George Nakashima (although sadly not his own production, which would have increased the price by a factor of at least ten).

 

The one wood/tree that caught my attention is Lignum Vitea. I knew that early US nuclear submarines used it in the main prop shaft bearing external to the hull. It was self-lubricating, withstood immense water pressures, and lasted for decades. That is some might impressive wood. Understandable, it was nearly harvested to extinction since the tree it comes from is very slow growing. What really surprised me is that the tree is native to Florida and is now a native plant recommended for yards and other natural uses.

 

Well..., I've watched a lotta New Yankee Workshop shows. More often than I care to admit, I doze off during the safety tip lecture, wake up when he's varnishing.

All I can manage personally is rough and ready stuff, like DIY antenna for example.

 

try it on an old piece of oak.

one of the things i found difficult about woodworking was the massive amount of time it took to prepare a machine before using it. table saw, bandsaw, planer, jointer, mitre saw, etc. all require more fine-tuning than a '65 jag.
have you ever seen what the japanese do to a block plane?

 

i saw jimmy carter build a rocking chair out of sticks, that was impressive.

 

hate the acorns. squirrels are spoiled around here.

 

definitely need some wild boars around here.

saw norm abrams working with the old growth wood dredged up from the great lakes, fascinating. they used to float the logs downstream to a place where they could be plucked out, but many didn't make it. you can't get wood like that anymore. and yes, it's expensive, and a very good business.

 

we have some beavers in the area, but do they eat wood? either way, it's more like rough framing than fine woodworking.

 

The teredo was also a hazard to undersea communications cables. The copper conductor of telegraph (and later telphone) cables was insulated with gutta percha from the beginnings of the industry in the 1850s right up to the 1940s, when polyethylene came into use. The teredo evidently liked the taste of gutta percha and would nibble its way through the approximately 1/8" of it surrounding the copper conductor, causing a short circuit to the sea water and the degradation or failure of the cable.
Tired of this, in the 1870s a clever cable engineer invented the use of a spiral-wound thin brass tape around the core of the cable, which caused the teredo to go elsewhere for lunch:
History of the Atlantic Cable & Submarine Telegraphy - Henry Clifford - Teredo Tape

Today's fiber optic cables continue to be insulated with polyethylene, and although they have a glass conductor rather than copper, there's still quite a bit of copper in the cables to carry the power for the amplifiers which boost the signal every twenty miles or so.