June 4th – Wood hoarding is real!  A friend of mine lost a tree earlier this year when the late season ice storm split it in half.  It was some kind of ornamental fruit tree (wild guess there) that had become weak because of obvious bug damage followed by relentless woodpecker attacks.  The first chunk fell all the way to the ground, while the second chunk was just kinda sticking out at an odd angle.  Recent rain storms were enough to coax the second chunk to split from the main trunk, but it was stubbornly still hanging on by a little bit of bark.

His ex-wife (notice how I didn’t add any extra adjectives?  That’s called restraint!) decided to call the city building inspector and report a “public safety hazard”, no doubt hoping that he’d have to hire a tree service to remove it.  The joke ended up being on her, because in about an hour, the tree was dismantled and stacked on the curb so the city could take it away.  Total cost to him?  a 12 pack of Summer Shandy’s, which he helped me empty.  While we were at it, we also took down a small ash tree the beetles had started to kill.

I kept some of the wood from the mystery tree and decided to make bowls for him and his children since this was the tree that was next to their play fort.  All four are roughed out, ready to dry.  The good news is the grain pattern in the wood is spectacular!  Here’s a picture:

The bad news is the wood in the center of the tree is pretty much rotten.  After it dries, I’m going to have to figure out some way to stabilize the wood, or else it will just either break apart or be so brittle that it can’t be turned or sanded.  There were live grubs of some kind in the wood that the woodpeckers hadn’t removed (yet), but they were no match for high-speed steel gouges.  Stay tuned!  I’m building a wood stabilization vacuum chamber, so if all goes well, I should be able to stabilize the blanks and have all the bowls turned in a couple of weeks.