Last night I went to see Mark, the tree surgeon, who had promised to build a stock of promising cuts of wood. And let me tell you, he did, and in style.
He has listened to all my advice, and now has a pile of probably several tonnes of wood. Straight pieces, crotches, curly wood, odd species. All there. Let me see if I can remember all of them: Prickly pear, apple, cherry (some huuuuge pieces), monkey puzzle, cedar, redwood, sycamore, blackbeam (not sure what that is), acacia, plum, damson. And those are just the ones I can recall. There’s probably more.
And all of them are cut down the pith, end grain sealed, bark still on. The man is a treasure. Here’s what I took away from him:
From left to right: a piece of acacia, some rippled sycamore, with a small piece of cedar in the back, and some cedar (bottom) and black beam (top). What you can’t see are two more pieces I had already taken out of the boot, one of black poplar and another piece of cedar.
I’ve never had black poplar before, but it turns very nice, but more about that in a separate post.