A tree blew over and I've been chainsawing it up. I noticed it seems to have some attractive heartwood.
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'm not much of a carpenter and while most of the tree, I think it was a Lime, will be going for firewood I'd like to make something nice to show. The only thought I've had so far is to polish a slice as a clock. I'd like suggestions, and tips, as to what to do with it. Whatever I did with it would I need to season it first to stop it from cracking over time? If so how? My late friend used to try turning bowls on his electric lathe but they always cracked.
The main reason wood cracks is because of differential shrinkage, the water needs to leave the wood at the same rate it can migrate from the inside, otherwise the inside stays swelled and the outside shrinks over it. The other thing about differential shrinkage is that the cells change shape more tangentially than radially ( and not a lot axially) so first step is the quarter them.
Your logs have incipient rot and the green tinge suggests a bit of copper.
I agree that it looks like willow and it is in a pretty bad state. As a firewood it will spit and crackle and produce lots of smoke. It is full of moisture and even after seasoning will crack badly. The bottom line is forget it!
Have to agree - forget it totally. Willow isn't really a turning or carpentry wood and in reality isn't much use for burning either. This is all due to it's large water content which takes ages to disappear and then you are left with a wood that has grown very fast and has little calorific value or ability to be used structurally. The colours you are seeing are rot and that is the reason for the tree falling.
Hard to tell, but that doesn't look much like a lime internally, or at least it was a very rotten one (why did it fall over?)
Lime is usually a very fine grained (invisibly so) pale cream or off- white wood. It's light and works beautifully, especially for hand tools.
Lime isn't much use for most turning, but it's an excellent wood for carving. It's best (at a convenient level) bucked into logs a couple of feet long, quartered and then coated (ends at least) with a wax emulsion (Chestnut Endseal, from woodturning suppliers or Axminster). Wet or dry, these will then sell to carvers (eBay) and the money is much better than firewood! It sells fine wet, but (if you have covered space), it's a doddle to dry.
If you have access to a big bandsaw and a thicknesser, then slab it, dry it, and surface it into 12" x 18" blocks for relief carving. These sell very well.
I'm not going to hazard a guess at species from a fuzzy photo and no leaves, but that really doesn't look like a lime. The rings are too prominent, the bark too coarse and lime isn't noted for rotting like this. That "attractive heartwood" is rot, probably punky as anything to work with.
Willow? Maybe.
Willow is of little use to man nor beast. It won't turn, it won't burn. Willow poles (grown off a coppice or pollard) have their uses as sticks, and it's a good lightweight timber for building things around the garden out of thin branches with the bark left on, but willow logs just aren't much good for anything. It makes nice charcoal though.
I've a fallen willow in our spare garden, and it's mostly going as firewood (dried over the summer). I have to light some coal beneath it to get it going, and then it's still just about the worst firewood you've ever seen. Because it can't be used for turning (tm) I naturally hhad to turn some of it. I made a set of thin platters in sizes from 6" to 15": trumpet-shaped, heavy centre, flat thin rims. As I'd turned them wet, I also allowed them to warp on the rims into a Pringle shape. It is turnable, but it's not rewarding stuff to work on and it is a right nuisance to get a decent finish on it. Hardly worth the trouble, unless you're keen.
Apart from asrc plus some trials with eucalyptus and short rotation softwoods I don't think anyone plants trees commercially for fuel in UK. You'll note from watching treework on roadsides that it's still cheaper to chip it to waste rather than haul it off, the economics of biomass demand large scale harvesting to keep the costs down to about 1/10 those of old fashioned ( my sort) forestry.
Sawlogs and then industrial wood (chipboard but no longer pulp in this country) are the intended markest then forestry residues are sold as fuel but even so I'd guess the planned products subsidise the biomass fuel harvesting.
There was a large estate near Reading that grew cricket bat willows, a premium crop on a short rotation, and they did use the logs for heating the main house.
Generally willow is awkward because it's a b****r to chip.
ASRC has problems in a small boiler too as the extra mineral ash from the large bark/bud percentage coupled with extraneous soil inclusions cause havoc from clinker in one installation I dealt with.
One almost never plants willow or poplar as whips commercially, setts are used often in a hole dibbed in the ground and backfilled with sand.
Going off on a bit of a tangent, my son is having to have 2 huge trees taken down this week, plus a lot of other gale-related remedial work, in the garden of the house he has recently bought. He can only afford the basic work and will have to arrange to cut and remove the wood.
One tree is a very tall Scots Pine, we are told, and because of its position will probably come down in sections, so won't produce any long clear wood like the 25 foot lengths I had to buy when boat building. But is it worth thinking about getting any of this dried out and to a sawmill? The house came with a large shed (double garage sized) with a lean to open covered storage area beside it. It's dry but gets no sun because of the huge trees, and I've been saying that I think it would be good for slow drying of logs and other wood. I assume we want airflow rather than sun.
We don't know what the other big tree is but hopefully we will be able to see a leaf or two when it's down. There is also a smaller 30foot-ish dead holly tree in the deal.
He is talking about a wood burning stove, but the money and time is tight (eg the drains took us all of Friday and I'm still bodging him a trailer from what we bought on ebay), so is it likely that we could find someone to buy the wood for logs?
I've dug out the small Bosch chainsaw (no box, instructions or accessories) that I bought off a remainder table about 10 years ago in some long defunct diy store and will buy it some oil later today and then see if it works.
Phone Wood-mizer in Pocklington, and they'll tell you local Wood-mizer operators near to the tree. Phone them and see if they're interested, either for buying it or else for coming and slabbing it for you (usually to 2" or 4", then shed dried).
Dried holly timber is very pricey, even in small pieces. It needs to be debarked, split and put into drying very fast, no leaving it lying around for a couple of days.
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