While looking through old Flickr sets, I realized I never made public one in which I slabbed one of the huge Eucalyptus logs I wrestled home from a craigslist ad. The largest of them is over 230lbs. I chose the smallest – probably around 80-100lbs, because I was desperate to see what lurked inside. I have at least a dozen of these things, so I could sacrifice one enormous beast to curiosity, though that said, I did immediately seal up the ends with a few inches worth of Anchorseal, and the slabs are drying on stickers now. This was mid July, about a month and a week ago. I haven’t noticed any new or deepened checks, though these logs are filled with checks from having been left out in the sun for 2 years before I claimed them.
First up, I spent an hour and 15 minutes manually resawing my smallest huge euc log one night after work, and gave up in a puddle of sweat when a show I wanted to see came on at 9PM. The next morning, Saturday, I sawed the rest of the cut, which took a full 30 minutes more. One cut, 1 hour and 45 minutes. This particular euc (possibly most/all eucs?) was incredibly hard, maybe even moreso than oak. It was like sawing through a hard aluminum alloy. My coarse cut saws, which normally power through logs, ejected small amounts of powder with each stroke, instead of the nice, small shavings I normally get. My arm was worn, my clothing drenched in sweat, but worst of all, my hand felt like a truck had driven over it. I have some ideas about the lack of comfortable grips in saws that I could share :)
I needed a tall fence for pushing my resawn log, so I slapped together this thing out of scraps of baltic birch ply:
Note in the above shots that the half-log still needed a shave on the top edge to fit under my 12” max height blade guard. This is by far the smallest log, too. You can see it in this old shot taken just after I moved the logs into the back yard from my truck (originally blogged here). It’s the tiny one on the opposite side of the picture from me:
While slabbing, I ended up cutting through not only some tunnels left by Eucalyptus boring bugs, but also through about 3 of the bugs themselves:
These are the same bugs that left trails all through the other Eucalyptus I found. The larvae have a fat head with a little beak on it, tapering down to a tiny, pointy tail. I could tell I sawed through something when goo began to pile up at the top of the log, on the cut line.
They are some nasty looking boards, but I think there’s a beauty hidden within, which I hope to bring out one day, when they’re dry and ready.
Here’s an example front/back view of one messy slab:
And another:
The checks are not my fault this time :)
Here’s a nice set of thick, 12” wide, book-matched slabs. Of course, everything you resaw is by nature book-matched…
Burnable scrap, and a few pen blanks:
And here’s a very exhausted me with freshly Anchorsealed slabs, still wet and white:
This effort involved a few hours of fighting. My 2TPI Timberwolf blade was dulling (and it actually snapped later this day while resawing a utility pole crossbar – still need to order a replacement), and this wood is a bit green, and hard as rock, and also very dense and heavy, and some of these cuts were 12”.
Here’s a little video showing how slowly the difficult resawing went.
I’m used to much smaller, softer, wetter things that fly through the blade. This was a real chore. Still, I was glad I had the capacity in my shop to do it at all, so I won’t complain to loudly :)
And here’s the stack. I think some are close to 2”, but most are about 1” or a bit over 1”. Note the Anchorseal dries mostly clear:
Here are some end closeups, showing through the wax that these might be pretty when dry, cleaned up, milled, and finished:
I moved them over to my miter saw wing table on July 12th, and I’d like to say that I’ve found a good home for them since. Alas, they’re still right there. There really isn’t room on the log racks for much more, and the shelves are short enough that I’d have to make probably 3 stacks side-by-side just of these few slabs. I do have another crazy idea up my sleeves, though, but it will be awhile before anything happens on that front.
Anyway, this is just a filler post. I wanted it on record for the future when I attempt to make some things out of these slabs. I’m actually a bit keen to try cutting a couple of round blanks out of some of these for turning into shallow bowls or dishes, but that could simply be my turner’s-lust kicking in.
And now I have to figure out where to put this new thing, too:
I’ve just been standing it in the corner by my dust collector. I did just take it out this past weekend for some new, unexpected work that I’ll post about very soon.
-- Gary, Los Angeles, video game animator
13 comments so far
Innovator
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3125 posts in 308 days
posted 98 days ago
Gary another great photo – blog. The pictures are great, thanks for sharing.
-- Whether You Think You Can or You Think You Can't, YOU ARE RIGHT!!!
lew
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4486 posts in 650 days
posted 98 days ago
Gary,
You sure are getting your monies worth out of that band saw!!
I envy you- my max re-saw is 6”.
Lew
PurpLev
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2752 posts in 543 days
posted 98 days ago
NICE! those bugs should have known better than to stick around the battlezone… serves them right.
those are some real nice slabs. what are your plans for them except for turning or is that about it?
-- When in doubt - There is no doubt - Go the safer route.
patron
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2399 posts in 236 days
posted 98 days ago
great gary ,
i never really looked at timber that way before ,
now i catch myself looking at trees and wondering !
thanks to you and other LJs that do this .
-- david ,new mexico ,allheart
Scott Bryan
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20684 posts in 717 days
posted 98 days ago
Thanks for the photos, Gary. This looks like a lot of work but well worth the effort. I have a cherry log that I have been meaning to slab out but simply have never made the time. This post certainly is an inspiration to get started.
-- With God's help all things are possible- even woodworking. Woodworking is not just a hobby, it is an (expletive deleted) expensive hobby.
reggiek
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712 posts in 165 days
posted 98 days ago
Nice work…I went through 3 small hunks with burls on them called Higuerilla…dulled the heck out of my woodslicer…..not to mention near the end it was excruciatingly slow going….
you are probably lucky that the Eucalyptus is a bit green…it gets even harder once it starts to dry…take it from someone that used to try and split those rounds…
Funny that those bugs didn’t get the heck out after all that vibration and noise…I hate running into open bug holes as they will leave voids….usually a bird gets em…and the wood forms around the hole….
What bandsaw do you have? Is it over 1.5hp?
-- Woodworking.....My small slice of heaven!
a1Jim
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16841 posts in 472 days
posted 98 days ago
looking good
-- Jim from Heirloom Woodshop Southern Oregon
davidroberts
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242 posts in 381 days
posted 98 days ago
i lived in orange county for many years and the smell of eucalyptus, orange blossoms, and jasmine were just intoxicating. i do miss it.
-- david roberts, houston area, "A little knowledge is a dangerous thing, but that has never been a problem for me."
mmh
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1385 posts in 617 days
posted 97 days ago
I think you are a prime candidate for the “Ant Carrying The Grasshopper Leg Home Award”.
Nice blog. From what I can see, there is some interesting grain there. It will make a sturdy project, what ever it becomes.
I have a piece of Blue Gum Eucalyptus that is quite dry and I initially thought of using it to cut for cane shafts, but the texture of the live edge is so beautiful that I’m not sure I want to cut it. After reading how hard this wood gets, I doubt I could cut the darn thing!
(Hey, I like the beardless chin! Looks cool!)
-- "They who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night." ~ Edgar Allan Poe
Gary Fixler
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647 posts in 277 days
posted 97 days ago
Thanks all!
Lev – Good question! I’m hoping inspiration hits me one of these days. I also think I need to see how they look when I mill them up after they dry next year sometime. Man, I hate waiting.
reggie – I have this saw Yo&cName=Fucking Big Ass Saws&sName=Fuck Yeah&sid=I0084400010000100600&aff=Y. It’s 18-inch and 2HP. The body isn’t all that strong, and the table bends under the weight of the heavier logs, and even a bit under my resaw jig. All-in-all, not super sturdy, often quite rattly (this might smooth out with lots of adjusting of things), and I’ve several times had it slow to a stop, tripping its own reset switch, so not all that powerful either. It’s great for rough resawing of things in the 8” and under range, and it can fight its way eventually through 10”-12” hardwood, but it doesn’t like it.
mmh – the beard comes off a few times a year, but within a week you can’t see my skin, and in a month I have a very full beard again. It’s like a mutant or super power. I think I’ve shaved 2x since that pic on July 11th, and I have a full, ball-shaped beard again now.
-- Gary, Los Angeles, video game animator
Gary Fixler
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647 posts in 277 days
posted 97 days ago
reggie – Ha! What a time for the edit feature to disappear on me. The spaces in the URL in my above comment broke it up, leaving the vulgarities behind. I didn’t realize they were in there, but that was from when I noticed you could screw with the categories listed above the items at Sears’ page. I sent the link to my friends to let them know what saw I was going to get earlier this year. The properly-formed URL would be this. Click that and read the categories above the saw. My friends got a good laugh. Firefox has a great feature these days that lets you type almost any relevant thing into the address bar, and it finds the link you were looking for. I just typed “craftsman saw” and my old link popped up. I forgot it had the swears in it, though ;)
Sorry for any confusion, or offense!
-- Gary, Los Angeles, video game animator
Karson
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25801 posts in 1295 days
posted 97 days ago
Gary Some great looking wood. I’ve run into some tough cutting also. A small Camphor log went from a sharp blade to a dull blade in about 3 ft of cutting. And that was in a 5” log.
-- What happens in the workshop stays in the workshop. No wait that doesn't sound right. Karson Southern Delaware karson_morrison@bigfoot.com †
Gary Fixler
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647 posts in 277 days
posted 96 days ago
Hey Karson, how much of your huge stockpile comes from naturally-found stuff, and of that, how much is felled, and how much was found fallen, say by wind, fire, bugs, or rot?
-- Gary, Los Angeles, video game animator