Will I get banned for using firewood for something else? Had a set of wooden stairs off the backside of the porch. Built out of incense cedar I had sawn years before but never used. An experiment to see how well it lasted outdoors. Needed replacing for several years but never had a good (cheap) idea of what to do with em. Kept junk piled on them so no one would use them but me. Enter some big white oak logs that Asplundh knocked down across the street. Was going for live edge but we hit nails on the second cut. Neighbor used stainless to tack up his no trespassing signs long ago. So rough sawn will do. Good I brought the extra log along for emergencies.
Nice job Joe! Even with the metal stain from the nail they hit milling it! Being a tradesperson, im surprised you didnt use brick or block of some sort.
The stain is from some idiot leaving the 3lb hammer on top of it overnight in the rain LOL Who could that be? They’re marked up a bit with rubber from the tires and other assorted blunders. Definitely not being as fastidious about these things as I once was, old age. I’ll call it another experiment if they warp into a pretzel I’ve heard the bricks and stone comments all the time since I built that house. Starting with my father of course who taught me the trade. My stock reply “I look at bricks all day I don’t wanna see them when I get home”. Besides it was another experiment to see if I could build a house out of wood
but Joe, remember the three little pigs and the big bad wolf? JBYB! I hear ya about trade related. If it warps maybe use some timber screws or cut a stringer the profile of each end and use some SS screws???
There’s already some 8” timber screws and steel angle brackets with 3” timber screws holding it together. Just all blind screwed. That being said it’s 6” solid oak slabs. If they want to warp nothings going to stop it. LOL
Good deal on the blind screwing. I love not being able to see any fasteners. I dont think it will warp that much if at all. Oak doesnt seen to warp that much IME. You could always mill some BL for it. I know you have plenty of that! Stuff lasts forever too!
I considered being lazy and just top screwing them and dowel plug. In reality it’s probably easier to use the brackets underneath. Pretty soon you should be loaded with more locust than you know what to do with. FWIW the sawyer told me the Ct river in South Glastonbury is loaded with Black Locust,,,,,,think I’ll have to do some scouting.
Those look great! Couldnt get much more solid. I think its great to use what you got and make it look fantastic.
Where there’s Locust, there’s almost always dead Locust. That’s how I’ve been happening upon my BL scores. It’s easy to spot the canopies from the road. Pull up, look around, chances are there’s something blown over. Funny thing about Locust growing along a river, that stuff seems to spread downstream over time for obvious reasons. In downtown Bristol the streets are lined with Honey Locust and there’s a river in that area. Follow the river down, both sides of the bank downstream for quite a ways are more younger Honey Locust trees growing. So you might find once you get to South Glastonbury that the grove extends all the way down to Long Island Sound
Oddly enough I cleared our field edges early this spring. Trees of Heaven. Just noticed after the second cutting there’s little trees of heaven sprouting up in the field now. Must’ve been some seeds on those nasty trees when I dropped them into the field.
That’s the blind determination of nature. Got to stay vigilant eradicating any unwanted species. My last place was overrun with Japanese Knotweed. The stuff was actually growing THROUGH the concrete slab in the shed. It took a lot of almost weekly cutting and a good 3 years before I got it under control again.
Yeah, don’t let anyone tell you green white oak is a lightweight wood LOL. Dang that stuff is heavy. The type of logs that will pick the rear tires of the truck off the ground winching them aboard. On the bright side there’s still a nice 3” live edge slab for a bench on the front porch and plenty of firewood leftover. A good portion of the big log is still intact. Got one tread out of it before finding metal. And all the scraps of course. Can’t leave them behind. A few decent live edge boards but I told the saw guy not to play around. Paying by the hour and the nails made up my mind to burn the rest.
