Well, That Was Different
plus a tip about L-N Spokeshaves
Happy New Year!
First, a little business. The Temple Chair Video series is on sale for the month of January. Usually, it’s $339 and now you get it for about 20% off, $269. It comes with nearly 8 hours of instruction, plus PDF downloads of full sized plans by Jeff Lefkowitz and an illustrated handbook I drew and Jeff designed. If you can’t make it for a class this year, this is the next best thing.
I also spent some of the post holiday stasis doing an overdue revamp on my website. You will even find the Substack on it’s own page. I hope you’ll check it out, I think it better represents what is happening around here and it’s easier to navigate.
On to the post.
If you are at all like me, after the holidays, you are probably feeling a bit like the Tin Man prior to oiling. For some reason, napping seems to be calling me more than usual, so I am starting to think of either joining a gym or getting back to the logs. So, back to the logs it is.
Mac Stubbs recently brought me a beautiful walnut log that’s been calling to me for weeks. I have dealt with walnut logs before, but I did it with a bandsaw mill. This time, I thought I’d keep it low key and see what I could do with wedges and a bandsaw (now that I have a killer bandsaw).
I’ve heard walnut referred to as a “semi ring porous” hardwood. I don’t expect it to split along the lines the same way I do white oak, but I was hoping to go a bit beyond quartering the log to get it small enough to take to the bandsaw. When I’ve split walnut boards, the way I do ash, oak or maple, it’s been wildly unpredictable. So I entered into this somewhat gingerly. But at this point, my creaky shoulders won’t allow any different.
