Woodworking And The Wood Lathe: The Challenge

As woodworkers move from flat woodworking such as jewelry boxes, desks and wall cabinets to woodturning round objects such as candlesticks and bowls, there arises a new challenge in finding the wood with which one works. The old familiar places may not fit the new requirements and the results may be pleasantly less expensive.

People doing woodworking that results in flat objects generally start a project at the local lumber merchant, looking for boards that are dry, flat, straight and clear of knots or other defects. There are a few stalwarts who will fell their own logs and mill them to lumber that will then air or kiln dry but these are few and far between. Woodturners are closer to these folk than to the former as they will often be looking for logs to start the work. Their wood is likely to be a log that is solid, green, and has knots, bark inclusions, and forks. To a woodturner these are character.

Most of the wood carried by the lumber yards is unsuitable for woodturning especially when the turner is contemplating faceplate work which usually requires wood thicker than two inches. This is either difficult to find dry or will be split in the drying process or be prohibitively expensive.

On the other hand firewood or landfill logs are comparatively cheap. They require some thought in obtaining them and some additional tooling to be able to process them, but will give a wealth of turning material. It is not inconceivable to obtain over two hundred bowl blanks of good size along with a lot of smaller pieces and lots of spindle material from a single cord of firewood. A chainsaw and a good homemade saw buck will easily enable the turner to produce plenty of turning blanks.

While there is a great variety of hardwoods suitable for turning found growing as ornamentals in many yards of the world, it can be difficult to obtain them for the woodturner. However, in most communities there are lawn companies and arborists who specialize in tree removal when the trees get too large for the properties, diseased or in the way. These logs are generally deemed unsuitable for lumber or processing because metal is often found in yard wood and it does a lot of damage to commercial processing equipment. Instead of sending them to an expensive landfill facility, many arborists will happily call a woodturner and allow them to have the wood.

So the woodturner can find themselves easily in the position of someone who save trees from firewood and landfill, eliminates excess wood in the landfill when it should be compost anyway, and produced art and craft from the savings. This allows the turner to enter into a win win situation with all concerned.