Workers Of Wood

Made a couple of sunbeds from Iroko.
they are longer and wider than most because my family are all above average height, and a few above average weight.

Really nice job. I like the slide out side boards too. I am not familiar with wood is it weather resistant? How easy it to work with?
Herb

Herb,
First time I have used a lot of it. Nice to cut and even to sand, except it has a lot of side stresses (at least in the planks I bought did).
Several times I had to change plans as a rip of a large piece into three or four lengths would result in at least one of them bending off to one side as the cut progressed. I had to go and buy one more plank to finish as I could not get some pieces square no matter what I did.

But the result looks good. I put nylon feet on them because they are by the pool and that will stop the legs soaking up water from any puddles.

I had to look it up. WOW 80' of straight log and another 80' of log with branches. Similar to teak,boat building wood,good choice for damp use. has a nice rich reddish brown color when finished. I doubt it would even be available to purchase here.
https://www.woodworkerssource.com/lumbe ... -teak.html
Herb

Its very common here, (cheaper than white oak or mahogany) and in the UK, and I know it doesnt grow in either of those places, so I expect its a cheap(at source) wood and you should be able to get it with a bit of research.

Herb, regrettably not too much of it left. Mostly from Equatorial Africa, primeval plantations, nobody planting it. There has been very limited success in growing the trees in some sub-tropical areas of South Africa.
But as Bob says, more affordable than the North American of even European hardwoods. And fairly resistant to the atmosphere and moisture. In the old days, it was used for wooden exterior doorframes around here - I rescued a couple of pieces from junk heaps. Nowadays our currency is worth very little, so we have to make do with Malaysian Meranti, which is far inferior.
Only problem is the dust is said to be highly toxic.

Bob’s is a lighter shade, the darker shade approaches imbuia in depth of color. Holds detail well. I made a standard lamp some 40 yrs ago, using a router lathe to experiment with the possibilities, and a home-made circle jig for the base. At that time, I was working outdoors, but I guess I did not take enough respiratory precautions. These days, between ear, eye and nose protection, I could be working on the moon.
The lampshade has just gone in for recovering. .

Love the detail on that, wish I had the patience to make similar.

Meranti is no longer imported here, its completely out of fashion due to the dust I think.
I bought three iroko planks, two of them were a smooth and plain as teak. The third was highly checkered with darker patches and stripes.

I never remember how to rotate images, but it beats me why they would be turned on their sides in the first place. Simple copy and paste becomes copy rotate and paste, without a choice.

Bob, I would not mourn the loss of Meranti. There are two grades here, a paler one which is probably sapwood, and really only good for drawer sides (and not even that), and a reddish one, I guess heartwood, where one sometimes gets reasonable timber. The problem is, unless money is no object, there is little else.
Non-indigenous trees grow much faster here than in their original locations, so the annular rings are widely spaced, the wood is soft and splintery. 20-year old pine trees are ready for harvesting here, and eucalyptus (imported from Australia for mining timbers in the gold-rush days even earlier. The pine is mainly used for roof construction, although people have found ways to work it for (cheap) furniture purposes, best when painted. Interestingly, selected eucalyptus can be reasonable to work with - pretty heavy, long fibers, somewhat splintery, good for frames and stuff like that. Prone to splitting when dry. Mostly used for construction (you will see them in the roof of my photos).

There are some indigenous species of very workable wood, but they are slow-growing, limited in height and girth, and very difficult to propagate (some even require a seed to pass through some bird’s gastrointestinal tract before germination will take place). In the wild, elephants often like to ring-bark them (edible bark) or push them over to get at the roots. Once the tree is dead, it deteriorates remarkably quickly: all manner of insects, presumably resident in the wood, but kept in check by the tree’s natural defenses, go beserk. I have seen tiny jets of sawdust streaming out of microscopic holes, so that in hours a tree trunk could be covered in fine saw-dust. As if all those bugs were using microscopic wood auger bits

Biagio wrote: ↑Thu Apr 27, 2023 5:45 am I never remember how to rotate images, but it beats me why they would be turned on their sides in the first place. Simple copy and paste becomes copy rotate and paste, without a choice.

If you are using your phone then rotate it 90 the next time. The other way, like you say, is to take it and rotate in viewer and then save the rotated copy. They do straighten up anyway when you click on them and they open on a new screen. Very nice wood and surprisingly different in appearance between the two examples.

I like to experiment with woods I find here since the only real workable hardwood is white birch. Some shrubs provide bits of interesting wood to play with. Hawthorne is both beautiful and hard but hard to come by. Douglas maple is another but I've tried making boards out of it and every cut releases tension and the board warps instantly. Yet I can make turnings out of it and it works beautifully for that.

Very nice chairs Bob but they would need to be taller so I could get out of them.

Like Chuck says ,when you click on the pictures they open the right way up.
Biagio, I like that lamp stand you made and the interior of your house too.
Are the rail and reed construction of the walls and roof exposed to the outside, or is that interior decoration, either way it is quite unique.

Where I am located on the Pacific NW Coast, Douglas Fir is the most common lumber,then Hemlock, some Pine. For local hardwood ,Western Maple is common,it is whiter and softer than the Eastern maple of the USA. When I was a youngster Alder was the local wood of choice for the commercial furniture, it is softer than maple and and a tanner color. The Old growth Fir was a furniture material the 2nd growth was the common utility grade lumber.
Western red cedar was the most rot resistant and used for exterior applications.
Herb

Herb, most construction here is brick and mortar. Our roof is thatched, There is a framework of eucalyptus poles with thinnish cross-pieces of the same wood, to which grass is bound in layers. The inside layer of the thatch is usually a slightly thicker species of grass - has a better appearance. In the southernmost part of the country they use thin reeds, but we are on a big savannah plateau, so grass it is.
Thatch is less commonly used these days. Last century tiled roofs were popular (slate, terracotta or cement), but because of costs there has been a reversion to corrugated galvanized iron, which was the standard in older neighborhoods built in the gold-mining era. This city was founded in 1886.
This is how it looks from the outside. The house is boomerang-shaped, symmetrical about the centre, this is the west wing. Insolation here is the opposite of yours, I.e. from the north.
Because of the 45 degree pitch, there is an airy, cathedral feel to the ceilings. At the ridge, the roof is 6 metres above the floor - there is no ceiling void.

The photo of the interior is out of sequence, and resists my best efforts to re-position it.

A lot of the interior wood trim in the older houses here was done in imported Douglas for, and it became trendy to strip off layers of paint to show the grain and color. It was also common to use Douglas for for floorboards, in sprung floors, I.e. on joists above ground level. I filled in part of the subfloor downstairs in order to tile (the upper story is on a concrete slab), and still have a stash of the floorboards we took up. I used some to dress up a very dull built-in cupboard in my previous consulting room, before I moved to work from home. Stained the wood with a marvelous Rustoleum product which is no longer imported.

Absolutely Magnificent, is all I can say! Thank you for sharing the pictures of your home.
Herb

Way cool house!!!!!!

Herb Stoops wrote: ↑Fri Apr 28, 2023 4:12 am Absolutely Magnificent, is all I can say! Thank you for sharing the pictures of your home.
Herb

As my friend Herb said, one very beautiful house,

bushwhacker

Absolutely beautiful.

I mentioned earlier in the thread that elephants can be quite destructive of indigenous trees, particularly since humans have limited the animals’ ability to traverse long distances in search of preferred food.
Am having my annual bush fix, and came across this freshly debarked tree. Indigenous hardwood. Will not survive.

Gorgeous home, Biagio!

On the Iroko, we have it available up here (Pacific North West of Canada).
https://www.westwindhardwood.com/produc ... ods/iroko/

Back in the late 80's we went "on safari" in Tsavo east national park in Kenya, and saw just how much devastation a herd of elephants can cause. Driving along through scrub jungle we would come across their tracks. Imagine the first construction of a motorway, where all the big earth movers have just bulldozed the top soil off in a straight line for a mile or two.
Then we overnighted in a safari lodge in the wilds, we had trouble sleeping because of the noise of branches snapping off and when daylight came could see that they had attacked a small copse of trees, pulling the top branches down until they snapped, so that they could eat just the new fresh green leaves. Elephants are not a tree's best friend and I can fully understand a farmer wanting them killed.

DaninVan wrote: ↑Wed May 17, 2023 8:01 pm Gorgeous home, Biagio!

On the Iroko, we have it available up here (Pacific North West of Canada).
https://www.westwindhardwood.com/produc ... ods/iroko/

Yes,Yes, The boat builder's used it for decks back when wooden boats were popular.
HErb

sunnybob wrote: ↑Wed May 17, 2023 9:14 pm Back in the late 80's we went "on safari" in Tsavo east national park in Kenya, and saw just how much devastation a herd of elephants can cause. Driving along through scrub jungle we would come across their tracks. Imagine the first construction of a motorway, where all the big earth movers have just bulldozed the top soil off in a straight line for a mile or two.
Then we overnighted in a safari lodge in the wilds, we had trouble sleeping because of the noise of branches snapping off and when daylight came could see that they had attacked a small copse of trees, pulling the top branches down until they snapped, so that they could eat just the new fresh green leaves. Elephants are not a tree's best friend and I can fully understand a farmer wanting them killed.

The Elephants probably felt the same about the farmers..

sunnybob wrote: ↑Wed May 17, 2023 9:14 pm Elephants are not a tree's best friend and I can fully understand a farmer wanting them killed.

the elephants were there 1st...
have the farmers give back what they took away from the elephants..
problem solved...

Stick486 wrote: ↑Sun May 21, 2023 5:43 am

sunnybob wrote: ↑Wed May 17, 2023 9:14 pm Elephants are not a tree's best friend and I can fully understand a farmer wanting them killed.

the elephants were there 1st...
have the farmers give back what they took away from the elephants..
problem solved...

Stick, that is exactly the problem we are wrestling with in this part of the world. I mentioned that humans had messed up seasonal migration patterns. Elephants can easily cover 20 kms in a day (and uncannily silently).

So some visionaries came up with the idea of trans frontier national parks. For example, South Africa, Zimbabwe and Moçambique all have parks on common borders, and the fences have been removed along some of the common boundaries. It is now possible to enter the Kruger National Park in South Africa, and drive through to the Gorongoza Park in Moçambique, following a migration route. But it has not been without other man made problems: the scheme was delayed for many years until the Gorongoza was de-mined - a relic of a civil war over there.

Then the open border became a thoroughfare for poachers. Rhino horn is worth more than gold, weight for weight, because of alleged curative properties for those with penile insecurity in the far Orient. A case of nominative determinism leading to aspirational marketing. Being hung like a horse pales into insignificance in the imagination, compared to having a horn like a rhino.

So now there is a low-grade war against well-armed poachers. It is kind of disconcerting when heavily-armed troops materialize out of peaceful bush, keeping an eye on rhino in the background. And sadly, we are not winning - local mafias are now involved. Some local poaching kingpin was taken out about six weeks ago, and his wife was whacked the following week. Murder, corruption, intimidation: who needs the Sopranos?


Some (in her youth, stunningly desirable) former supermodel has attributed her mature good looks to some concoction allegedly containing rhino horn. Since rhino horn is essentially like nail clippings, it is only a matter of time before some entrepreneur monetizes nail clippings. Hopefully there will be enough to go around, so the rhino can be left alone, and elephants can roam.

Basically too many people on the planet. We have exceeded its carrying capacity. And the concern about artificial intelligence appears to have eclipsed a more pressing concern about natural stupidity.

Biagio wrote: ↑Sun May 21, 2023 9:00 am
Basically too many people on the planet. We have exceeded its carrying capacity. And the concern about artificial intelligence appears to have eclipsed a more pressing concern about natural stupidity.

Yes there are too many of us and while that is concerning enough, your second point is even more concerning. The statement that genius has it's limits is true but the opposite of that maxim doesn't seem to be. Just when you think you've seen stupidity at it's upper, or maybe lower limit, someone comes along and sets a new record.

Edit:
After reading Stick's post about the Denver councilwoman I might add that those records are too often set by people elected to public office.

The distinctive competence of elected officials, is getting elected. Once elected, all bets are off. Automatic membership option to Ass-hats Anonymous. Thank goodness not all take up the option.

Biagio wrote: ↑Sun May 21, 2023 2:31 pm The distinctive competence of elected officials, is getting elected. Once elected, all bets are off. Automatic membership option to Ass-hats Anonymous. Thank goodness not all take up the option.

Unfortunately they wear their asshattery like a badge of honour...

Are Elephants good to eat? Just wondering....
herb

Herb Stoops wrote: ↑Wed May 24, 2023 6:00 pm Are Elephants good to eat? Just wondering....
herb

yes, it's sorta like dense chewy pork and you are going to need a lot of help at the dinner table

Besides the tusks, do they harvest the hides and meat? any other parts?
Is the dung good fertilizer for the plant life? Those big ears ought to be good for something. Just wondering.
Herb

Herb Stoops wrote: ↑Wed May 24, 2023 10:16 pm Besides the tusks, do they harvest the hides and meat? any other parts?
Is the dung good fertilizer for the plant life? Those big ears ought to be good for something. Just wondering.
Herb

all of... every scrap, bit and piece...

A long time ago now, I knew a man who had been "on safari" in the early 50's, way before game parks and conservation. He had slides of his safari. and one that I shall never forget is of a bull elephant he had shot, it was on its side and he was standing next to its belly. the carcass was higher than he was!.

On my camera safari, we were in an open topped mini bus, on a dirt path through scrubland. We were moving very slowly to stop dust rising. As I looked behind us, an elephant stepped out of the bush only a couple of feet behind us, stepped across the path, and went into the other bushes. I did not hear a single footstep, let alone a snort. Scarily quiet for a two ton animal.
That evening, we were in a safari lodge that had a small rock pool right next to the seating area. An elephant wandered up and started drinking only a few yards from us. We could hear the water gushing down its throat like someone had thrown a full bucket down a shaft.

@Sunnybob; What a fantastic experience. They are the most awesome animal on earth to me.
Herb

Herb Stoops wrote: ↑Wed May 24, 2023 11:57 pm @Sunnybob; What a fantastic experience. They are the most awesome animal on earth to me.
Herb

I second that...next to dogs!