Not So Huggable Trees

The forest around Alfalfa is all Juniper Pine. These are usually not huggable trees. They do put out lots of berries. Right now the Robin population has forgotten about migrating as they are all high on Juniper berries. When you walk through the forest it sounds like an Alfred Hitchcock movie.

These are the slabs I got for Amy’s coffee tables.

After sanding and oil.

The grain is incredibly fine. Counting rings in this slab, I gave up after a couple hundred, but extrapolating out to the edge give an estimate of over 900 years old. The wood is untypically soft for such fine grain.

These are the 1-1/2″ bookend slabs I used for Louis’s stool.

Pretty neat color and grain. Another interesting characteristic; it smells even better than cedar when you work with it.

This is what they look like when they make it to full size without suffering a lightning strike or other natural disaster.

However, most of them reflect a tortuous struggle to make it to full size unmolested.

Most are split right down the middle but don’t succumb. All these are still sporting some growing branches while other parts of the same tree are dead and rotting.

The one below was hit by lightning and mostly consumed. The surrounding grasses are not thick enough to sustain a fire from tree to tree so there are lots of burnt out single trees.

A lot have major branches that have been bowed over. Often they don’t break and keep on growing. The inside of the bend shows a wrinkling of the bark.

 Up close, it is pretty distinct. 

The really cool thing is that the wrinkling extends far inside the wood and makes a beautiful wavy grain called figuring that looks like a stream bottom or sand dunes. When finished the wood seems to move. Sorry, no photos of that but here is an example of what it looks like in Maple that I found online.

Actually a flat piece of wood.

Chilling in Portland this weekend. Weather is perfect for that.

Stay warm and take the time to help each other.