Wood gloat

[Doug B]

I was walking the neighborhood last Sunday evening and noticed a pickup truck with a big old log in the back of it. Someone happened to be outside the house, so one thing led to another and I asked a lady who lived there about the log. She said her husband just wanted to get rid of it and did not like it that it was in his truck! Woot woot!




Of I immediately offered to go home and get my truck and haul it off for him He said no, no point in doing that, he would take it up to my house right then. Two other fellas were visiting and came with us and helped unload the log - it is fairly heavy, 10+ inches in diameter at the base.

I see some natural edge bowls in my near future And who knows how many pens and bottle stoppers

I wanted to give them something for the log, and when I found out that they were getting together for a Bible study meeting I decided to give them a BOW pen with a cross clip for their generosity.

[sachbvn]

Image didn't post - but let me start off the post - YOU SUCK!! Nice, that was awfully nice of them.... but mostly - nice of you to take that big ol' log off their hands!

EDIT: I stand corrected - the image did appear for me.... you still suck!


Zac

[Doug B]

Thanks Zac!

Yeah, I had to play around with the picture a while before getting it to show up. Finally got it figured out on the 3rd or 4th attempt

[TDHofstetter]

Good haul, Doug - got a guess what wood that'd be? I can't think of anything offhand that'd be native to Cruces but has leaves like those. That's not an acacia, is it? Or is it?

[dicklaxt]

Might be a Mimosa,,,,,,its close if not it from the leaves but I have forgotten the bark structure.It is white wood basically so probably not Mimosa..........maybe a species of Mesquite,,,,,,,,,leaves are close, bark is close ,color is right,,,,,,,,,,,,,,

dick

[Doug B]

Dick got it right - at least they told me it was Mesquite and the leaves look right, but it is not the same as the local Mesquite bush.

I think it must have been a transplant from someplace south and east of here where Mesquite grows into real trees

[dicklaxt]

I kinda thought so ,Mesquite will grow to 12 inch diameter plus if left alone to grow.I remember some on a deer lease in West Texas that was that large or larger and 30 and 40 feet high.

Mequite does vary in color quite a bit from the locale and I guess its caused my soild nutrients availble.I like the more red as it turns a nice reddish brown as it dries.

dick

[TDHofstetter]

If that's mesquite... then that's a NICE HAUL!

[dicklaxt]

You can turn mesquite dripping wet(it turns beautifully) and it will rarely warp or split as it dries,it is a very stable wood.Once it dries you can hardly drive a spike into it,it really gets hard like Osage Orange.

dick

[Ruffnek]

Nice score!

That's probably Western Honey Mesquite, also known as Torrey Mesquite. That bushy Mesquite y'all have out there is probably Screwbean Mesquite.

If you want to see some huge Honey Mesquite trees, just look at the ones growing by the roadside fences along HWY 77 between Victoria and Corpus Christi.

[Doug B]

Wouldn't you know it...Texas gets "Honey" Mesquite and we get "Screwbean" Mesquite. That just ain't fair! ;D

I'll let y'all know how it turns.

[Joe Lyddon]

Nice HAUL!

Mesquite is good for the BBQ too... scraps, of course. ;D

[imahic]

The guy I bought my bandsaw from had a mesquite log laying on his milling machine that was close to 24 inches in diameter. Biggest mesquite log I ever saw. It was about 8 or 9 feet long. He said it got it down in south Texas someplace and paid 500.00 for it.

[Doug B]

Yes Joe, I use Mesquite for BBQ flavoring sometimes, sometimes Hickory...both are good. This one is a little too big and a little too green to use it on the barbie just yet but I'm sure some of it will eventually end up there one of these years

Ima, I can only imagine a 24" diameter Mesquite, though I think I have seen pics of some that Shane had posted one time...hard to believe they get that big compared to the ones we have here.

[randyprivett]

Doug,

Great find, now get to tuning!

Randy

[kvwebb]

Great find Doug. Can't wait to see some pics of the results.

[sawduster]

Used to be a mill outside of Three Rivers, Texas that specialized in sawing mesquite. He had some logs there that were in the neighborhood of 3 feet in diameter. Most were only 6-8 feet long. He was mightily proud of his lumber and I didn't have any particular projects in mind for mesquite so I passed on buying any.

[Doug B]

I cut 2 natural edge bowl blanks today and the wood looks really nice. Still very wet though. Put some pen blanks saved from the bowl blanks in some DNA to see if I can get some pens out of this wood too.

Progress