I just got off the phone with someone who is gutting a building in downtown Chicago. They are GIVING away the 100 year old joists for free! I offered to take the 60-2 1/2”x12”x22’ floor joists off their hands. There is another 120-1 1/2”x12”x24’ joists that are available if I want them also. The 60 2 1/2” joists are 3300 board feet alone. I forsee a bunch of home improvement projects, and furniture being built in my near future. They will be available in a few weeks for me to come and get them.

Here’s a pic of some of the drawers. They are just pressure fit, and not glued up.

So anyways, I planed all the drawer stock, cut it to size, and have all the pins laid out ready to go. The dovetails are coming along, and with every one I do, I get better/faster at it. It’s really not that bad, and it sure is much quieter than using the router! The sides are maple, and the faces are elm. I hope to have the drawers done next week, since I have a bunch of other work to do this weekend, and early next week.

Not being able to leave well enough alone I am making a new handle out of some choice curly bubinga and have ordered a new set of sawnuts. The handle was a lot of fun to make, and was finished with BLO then a few coats of amber shellac, followed by my home made beeswax polish. If all goes well with the rebuild, I might try my hand at building a few saws from scratch.

Here is the saw as it was shown on the website I bought it from.

Here it is with the teeth ground off, and the sawnuts polished.

Here is the new handle.

Last weekend I was at a relatives house cutting some trees down and scored some decent apple, and spalted birch logs. The smell of the freshly cut apple tree made my van smell like 50 pounds of over ripe apples. It was pretty wild how strong the smell was.

The tree wasn’t too large, but I did get enough wood out of it for plenty of small projects like boxes and picture frames, not to mention plenty of wood for grilling with! There was also a dead standing birch tree has some wild colors in it. Unfortunately, there was barely any salveagable lumber in it, but what I got out of it is really nice looking.
APPLE

SPALTED BIRCH

I recently decided to try adding a dehumidier to the kiln and seal up the vents in an attempt to get the kiln to work faster. Well it works, but unfortunately, my dh is on its last limb. It sat in my shop for the last few years and got completely caked with sawdust, and is in bad shape. It worked for 3 days nonstop, then all of a sudden it decided on its own to run very intermitently.

I made a little 1:6 shooting block for paring the joints to the final dimensions, and also made a dovetail marking jig. To hold down the boards I built a small hold down jig that just gets temporarily screwed to the workbench.
Armed with the jigs, dividers, marking guage and knife, 1/4” and 3/4” chisles, and a dovetail saw, I proceeded to chisel, chop, and cut my way to the finished product.

Let me say that the saw is a totally different beast now! With the underpowered stock 3/4 HP motor, a very slow feed rate was needed to resaw tall stock. Now it breezes through 10” rock maple without slowing down at all. I am very pleased with the results, and would suggest this to everyone as one of the most needed upgrades to the typical 14” Chinese made saws. Now if I would have just saved my money before I bought this 14” saw, and just bought a well built 17” saw. Oh well, it works well now, and I am happy with it.

I planed down a test piece and tried out three finishes; tung oil, shellac, and linseed oil. The coloring in the wood is great. Now its time to get to work on making furniture out of it!

Tung oil

Shellac

Linseed oil

Now to look onto the next load to go in. I will be cutting down a pesky silver maple in my front yard due to it destroying my sidewalk, driveway, AND sewer pipe. I am hoping to get 300 or more board feet out of it, which will be more than enough to build a new dining room table and chairs.

The outfeed table is 44”x48” wide, and the router table is 18”x24”.

All in all the cost of the riser block kit was WELL worth the money. I now have the luxury of being able to bookmatch panels for doors, and tops.

Now I need to build a nice storage shed to house all of this lumber that is coming my way. My garage woodshop can’t possible hold all of the wood I will soon have. I already have a few hundred feet of 4/4 white oak, a few hundred feet of 8/4 african mahogany, plus a bunch of cherry, and quartersawn sycamore, and soon will have 250 feet of red elm to add to it.

I’m really hooked on the idea of using locally harvested trees for lumber instead of them being wasted as firewood.

Here’s a rough plan I designed in sketchup. It was actually the first thing I designed using sketchup, and I must say that the program is excellent! The kiln deck measures 4×10. The rear wall is 5’, and the front wall is 1’, making the roof 45 degrees angled to the south. It will be just large enough to fit 200-250 bf of lumber, which is perfect for my small scale needs.

I used 11 7/8 lvl’s and I joists for the deck, and 2×4’s for the walls. The whole thing was sheated with 3/8 plywood( on sale for only 8$ a sheet!), then insulated and plastic wrapped. The inside was caulked and so far has a coat of alumized roof coating. My plan is to have a double layer of plastic sheathing 3 1/2” apart for the top for now, and in the spring will use clear corrugated fiberglass. The top, which is not yet finished, will be on hinges in back, and lift up for access.

Hopefully, I will have this kiln completed and ready for a charge of red elm by the weekend.

The plan is to get it in my truck this weekend and get it over to a local sawmill to have it milled, then get it into storage stacked on 1” stickers to air dry. This is my first attempt at doing this, so any tips would be greatful.