George Brett would be proud!  So a friend of mine told me there was a big tree trunk that someone had cut down and rolled out to the curb, just after the last big snow that we had.  From the drive-by viewing that he did, he thought it looked like walnut and suggested that I may want to pick it up.  Free walnut?  Hells yeah!  My intention was to swing by on my way home from work that night and pick it up.  I didn’t get out as quickly as I had planned, so by the time I drove by the place, it was dark enough the streetlights were on, everyone else was settled into their dinner routines and the street was empty.  I immediately saw the cache of wood consisted of a big, long chunk sitting right on the curb, and a shorter but wider piece that was half buried in snow.  I popped the back and prepared to muscle the longer piece into the suburban.  That’s when I realized it wasn’t walnut, it was pine.  Not a good pine like a southern yellow pine, but the deep red pine that comes from evergreen trees that really serve no purpose except to make people trying to mow around them itch.  Since I already had it out in the street, I figured I was committed and finished the loading.  I hated that log!  Being freshly cut, it was oozing sap everywhere and since it had been sitting in a snow bank, it was waterlogged and heavy.  Lovely!

Today, that little voice in my head said “maybe you’re being too harsh.  Surely it can’t be as bad as you’re imagining!  Cut up the tree trunk and see what you get.”  I listened and decided to split the log and see what I was working with.  Here’s what the middle of that log looked like:

The stuff that looks like congealed hamburger grease is actually the resin from the pine tree.  That’s the part of a pine tree that makes houses burn really hot, really fast, and this tree had an excessive amount.  This crap sticks to everything, leaves everything that touches it smelling like pine and pretty much just gums up the works.  When I figure out how to get a bowl blank cut from the log without getting that gunk all over my saw and tools, I’ll turn something, even if it’s just to punish the tree for making my friend fall for it’s walnut tree impersonation.  Next time I hear that little voice, I think I’m going to seek professional help…