Cutting out beech

[clancey]

That's so funny--I am not good at math so I measured it and it is about 12 inches high--quite a difference...You see how my schooling went..lol Sorry...Here is a picture of a old board that we found floating in the Gulf of Mexico when we took the john boat out so he made it into a gar fish--I think..I think it is a pine board but not sure....clancey

 

[mcdougy]

Here is a few pictures of the beech trees in the small pocket in our bush....
Let me know if they look unhealthy enough to cull?
We had some snow last night and I really do enjoy the bush more with some snow on the ground this time of year....
It's been muddy and hindering my wood gathering plans (much like last winter for weather thus far and no frost)

 

[mcdougy]

Here's my collection thus far,for this css year.... around 5 cord or more.....
hoping to get 5 cord more or done this winter...
Heading for the 5 year css plan on hand (30 cord), currently have sitting about 3 years here css.(20ish cord)

 

[Diabel]

I am not an expert but the beech in your pics looks fine to me. Mine has blight and it shows. I just came back from a walk in my woods and looked at my beech patches. I wish I had brought my phone with me. I would have shown you what blight looks like, but there are lots of pics on the net. The beech trees that I have and are the size of the ones in your pics are already dead and most of the wood is already punky

 

[Poindexter]

I will see if I can upload a couple pics tonight. Internet spotty with temperature swings. One will be my beech sawtill (incomplete) hanging from the coat rack in my mudroom to check for square. The visible panels are fairly plain grain beech. The inside of the casework is heavily oiled, well waxed, and buffed at every step. The outside of the casework is bare wood and still has some tool marks on it. My plan is to surface and finish the exterior after the remaining bits are added to the interior. Other pic, on my bench, has one piece of figured American beech at the top rear (oiled and waxed) with another piece (bottom front) just wet with ispropyl so i can figure out how to use it.

I should note I am working with just heart wood. One of the pics in this thread shows some firewood with both sap wood (white) and heartwood (dark pink) on each of the splits. I saw a bedroom suite once made out of this, where they glued pink to pink to make boards (with no pith) that were white on each edge and dark pink down the middle. Stylistic choices are personal. I thought the queen sized bed was gorgeous, but the dressers with every drawer front white/pink/ white was too busy for me.

I shall now challenge the goddess of connectivity...

 

[mcdougy]

Looking good Poindexter.....did you do the dovetails with hand chisel or a jig and router? The beech wood looks nice with the mute grain. I have yet to produce anything of much significance with the wax technique, but it does interest me as the newest poly finishes can be so hard to level......I've fooled with beeswax and the minwax finishing paste.....the finishing paste is great for dressing the top of my table saw and jointer....stops the rust and eliminates drag while pushing things thru....

 

[Poindexter]

Hand cut dovetails. I use a coping saw to get most of the waste out after cutting the sidewalls with a dovetail saw, then chisel to the lines. I still need to make drawers, the one board just sitting there will become drawer fronts. At the rate I am going Jesus may have his second coming before I get done.

The casework is all ordinary beech, the French Cleat at the top on the back is flame grain beech, the 3 small boards bottom front are also flame grain beech cut from one board so the grain still lines up.

 

[mcdougy]

Looks good, that's a big collection of saws!!

When I took my apprenticeship (27yearsago) for carpentry, one of the first courses was hand tools. They taught you to sharpen chisels, then you had to practice dovetail joints, that led into building a saw and small tools box with dovetails and a piano hinge top...I still have it somewhere I'm sure. It was fun and a new experience, truthfully any dovetails have since been done with jig and router for cabinet drawers.....I appreciate the time and finesse it takes.....trade school was a riot, alot of good memories when I think back....started with a class of 35 apprentices, 3 years later wrote my red seal with a class of 8. Finding tradesmen was in short supply back then and it's a definite problem nowadays from what they claim.
I'm happy with my career choice, it's been very rewarding making some people's dreams happen.

 

[Poindexter]

I have way more saws than any one man needs, but I am pulling them out of the waste stream and rehabbing them to be around another 100 years or so. I just can't seem to leave a fixer upper saw on the shelf in the antique stores.

 

[mcdougy]

Nice....It appears that many may be from the same maker? As the handles appear to be near identical on many. I know Diston (sp?) was a big maker of saws, Some of them feel so nice in the hand. Are you able to sharpen them yourself or what are you meaning by a fixer upper? A kinked one is tough to straighten. I've seen a few with a notch in the spine and was once told it was for cutting g nails? Not sure if I believed that.....

 

[armanidog]

I have way more saws than any one man needs, but I am pulling them out of the waste stream and rehabbing them to be around another 100 years or so. I just can't seem to leave a fixer upper saw on the shelf in the antique stores.

Is it hard to find someone to sharpen hand saws where you live? They disappeared around here since battery powered saws became so popular.

 

[Poindexter]

I learned to sharpen my own saws. It really is not that hard to do. You need some kind of vise to clamp the saw in, the correct size triangular file. I need a magnifier for the smaller teeth. Raking light. Someway to make consistent angles, even a piece of plywood cut at the target angle to slide along the plate can work.

The first saw I sharpened came out not bad and I feel pretty good about mine now. It is tedious, cause you want the same angle on every tooth, but it isn't rocket science to do a more than adequate job.

Some woodworkers collect and rehab old handplanes, some folks have 16 thousand chisels restored in their garage. Retensioning a blade to straighten it is a bugger. I can do the simple ones, but badly kinked ones go to my old friend. There is a guy here in town, older than dirt, used to be a carpenter, now he paints eagles and outhouses on old saws. If I can take the handle off, derust, straighten, reassemble and sharpen (after I get the thing home) then I buy it, get it fixed up and then wax it up real good so it will last a few more decades. It may not be my grandkids I am helping out, but somebody's grandkid is going to benefit. When I get beat by a saw I bought but can't restore, it goes to my old friend.

Handsaws are kinda like workboots. I readily agree Danner makes a great boot, but they don't make a boot that fits my foot good. Among saws, the early golden age Disston (1896-1917) Number 7 fits my hand awesome. I only have two of them, but I often linger over basket cases of the type in antique stores.

Really three saws like these would be enough for a craft person's career. I am just obsessed with them and figure someone in 2122 will be glad I was.