My father and both grandfathers were accomplished woodworkers. When we purchased our acreage here in San Luis Obispo, Ca, 25 years ago, even before we started our home, we planted Monterey cypress trees. My Dad dug the hole, and my wife and I planted this particular tree, one of about 50. We watered it, and nurtured it and it grew until the drought killed it. Between the drought and last winter's storms, we have several fallen or standing dead trees, more than we can use for firewood. So, I bought a Granberg MKIV Alaskan Sawmill for my Husky. The first trial tree was a small cypress up by the driveway. I sawed 3 1" thick boards and then tried 2" slabs. When I looked at the slabs, I realized that, despite the thickness of the kerf, there was a recognizable book match there between the 2 slabs. To shorten a long story, I decided to try making a live edge table. There are no metal fasteners in this, just a spline and groove joint to join the slabs, wedged mortise and tenons to join the legs to the top, and some glue.
Welcome to the club SLOweather ! That's is one beautiful table! And the best thing is that you didn't use any fasteners! If you made a couple more of those I'll bet you could sell them for some nice money. And you could use that money to buy more saws, equipment and toys for you to play with!
Thanks everyone... Blacksmith, it's interesting that you mention getting more tools. After I cut the slabs and decided that there might be a table to be made in them, I was all ready to order a tenon cutter, and run to Harbor Freight and buy a planer and biscuit joiner. Then I realized that my grandfathers and Dad made do with whatever they had. In the 50's the three of them and the wives built the house I grew up in in Moline IL. Dad milled grooves on 1000s of bf of 2"yellow pine flooring, and cut the splines to join them, all on a Craftsman table saw (hence the spline joint in the table). And, he made the redwood cove molding for the eaves by pushing clear redwood over the saw blade at an angle. So, to get the top smooth, I sanded the heck out of it with 3 grades of sanding belts. The coarsest one was in my grandfather's ancient Porter Cable sander. And, to do the mortises and tenons, I had a Forstner bit for the mortises, and a hole saw with an ID that was just a tad over. So I made the tenons with a hole saw, and then sanded them to fit.
Ah, well, yes, firewood... Back in the early 50s, when they were getting ready to build that house I spoke of, the house was designed and laid out such that only one oak had to be removed. You can't tell it in from the painting, but the garage is set at a bit of an angle to miss an oak in the back right corner. So Dad, before he was my Dad, cut the single offending oak down solo, with a 5' crosscut saw, limbed it, cut it into rounds and split it and ricked it. Beside the wood work I spoke of earlier, the house contains 250 tons of reclaimed limestone which he and his FIL recut and laid, outside walls and a massive fireplace in the exposed basement. The first floor fireplace is made of reclaimed Ohio red sandstone from the old steps of Deer and Co, AKA John Deere. In the 60s, Dad was also mayor of Moline IL, when Dutch Elm Disease killed all of the elms. To save the City dump fees, he has the Street Dept dump the wood beside the garage. For fun and exercise, he and I split it. That winter, we had 24 cords of elm. Frozen green elm splits really nicely. That was the winter of the never-ending fire. He stoked the fires ever morning, and took hot ashes out every few days. He worked for Deere for 42 years. He bought from the company the very first chainsaw they sold during their first foray into OMP (Outside Manufactured Products). It is a 19" Remington, painted JD green.You can see the Remington orange paint where the green has worn off. It was the model for the brochure and ad photos. I remember that when we got it, the "decals" were photographic negatives glued on for the photos. He also bought from Deere the last saw they sold during those OMP years. It's also a Remington, a 23" as I recall. It is the known "last saw" because it sat on the display floor at the Deere Admin building AKA the Rusty Palace until they dropped the product line. I also have it, and both saws still run. But they use that soupy 16:1 2 cycle mix and it's like fogging for mosquitoes when I run them. Plus, they were manufactured during the leaded gasoline years. Mom and Dad moved out here to San Luis Obispo, CA 27 years ago, and shortly thereafter my wife and I bought our hilly 10 acres. There were about 150 trees here, mostly mature coast live oaks at the time, and we have planted at least 100 more trees, mostly Monterey and Sargent cypress. Because of storm damage, we lose one or 2 oak trees a year, and the drought has taken out a few cypress, so I have plenty of wood to cut. Our home has 2 wood burning fireplaces, and the cabin in the woods in my avatar has a real Rumford style masonry fireplace that Dad built, plus oak is what we cook Santa Maria style BBQ on around here, so I have an appetite for firewood. Let's see... Back in '04, an oak fell on our neighbors' property, just on the other side of our fence, in November. I told him about it and he, being a city dude with a gas fireplace and no Man Skills, wanted to know who to call to pay to clean it up. I told him if he let me have the wood, we'd do it for free. Dad was turning 80 on the 6th of December, and so I gave him the tree for his birthday. Mom gave him a 20" Craftsman saw, and he, my wife (she has her own 14" saw), and a different neighbor (Dave) went to town on that tree with various saws, mauls, wedges, and sledges. We took part of the fence down and moved all of the wood on to our property. It took us about a month of weekends. Dave wanted to rent a splitter. Dad gently explained that was NOT how we did things. I showed Dave how to split a large round by spalling pieces off the sides, rather than trying to halve it. Now I hear that he is explaining the same thing to his stepson. The purchase of the Alaskan Sawmill was prompted by this tree. It fell last winter. Those twin trunks are about 2' in diameter a couple of feet from the base. Another trunk from this set of stump sprouts fell a few years ago, and I cut it up for firewood before I realized I could have milled it into timbers for a bridge that I wanted to build. Even with my tractor, I couldn't figure out how to safely get those trunks out of the woods and to the local sawmill, so I bought the chainsaw mill. But the bridge is another story. The last couple of weeks, I've been limbing the oak and splitting the larger rounds until I get to where I can start using the mill on it. I did slice up a 2 or 3 smaller logs on the miter saw for drink coasters. But that's another story too.
Story tiiiiiime! Awesome. Love it. Great story. Could see it as I was reading So, it might just be totally official? You....will....fit....in.....here....exceptionally well
Welcome SLOweather !! Spent a week at Morro Bay, Los Osos area for a photography class that my wifes work paid 5K for her to attend, I tagged along and did the class for free! Beautiful area. And here Eric VW thought he was the photographer all along! Sorry for the detour. Gary
No detour... If you went CA Highway 1 to MB from US 101 or the SLO airport, you were about 2 miles from our house. If, by some odd reason, you took Los Osos Valley Road, closer to a half mile. Hmm, I set up my avatar. Now to do my sig...
There you go, Gary_602z. Any time you need a Central CA Coast fix, look at my sig. That's from my weather page, wx.sloweather.com.
