Wood, Precious Wood

The woodworker has a special relationship with wood. There's a deep appreciation and respect for the look, the smell, the feel, the way it planes, the color and the grain pattern. The Japanese believe that wood's beauty comes from the beauty of the soul of the living tree. I'd say I have to agree. Last Thursday a few classmates and I drove two hours north to a small town called Redway to meet Dan Primerano and view his private collection of wood. 

Dan gets most of his logs from fallen trees in the forest or through friends and acquaintances that clear their land. He mills his own lumber on a hydraulic mill and stacks it for a few years to dry. He has an impressive array of claro walnut, black walnut, madrone, eucalyptus, maple, chestnut, and many other local and exotic woods. The intent of the trip was to purchase some eucalyptus for a classmate's project and any other wood that one of us couldn't walk away without, but it became very clear that Dan was not willing to part with most of his wood. He was too emotionally invested in each and every piece. He did, however, spend four hours with us talking about his furniture and his wood collection. He allowed us to rummage through the stacks, and pull boards down to plane on them to expose the beauty of the rough lumber. In the end, my classmate found the perfect eucalyptus for the legs of his project. It's colors are the pink-blue-white of a rainbow trout.

On the way back, we stopped at a nice deli and had lunch in Garberville's town square and then stopped off at a beautiful swimming hole to spend some time in the water and the sun.

Admiring the view from Branscombe Road

Lily the cat helps out at the shop

Michele planes a piece of madrone

Dan explains the milling process

The hydraulic mill

Time for a swim!

Fog fills the valley

Alex's Pear Tree

Alex is one of my classmates. He sits two benches up from me and is a likeable guy with an easy sense of humor. For four generations, his family owned a pear orchard in Ukiah. They had approximately 30,000 trees on 200 acres. Sadly his family lost the property to the bank in April, and since then a potential new owner bulldozed many of the trees to make way for grapes. Alex was able to grab one of the felled trees, which he brought to school to mill. His great-great grandparents grafted and planted this particular tree nearly 100 years ago.

Pear wood can be an incredibly beautiful wood for making furniture or woodwind instruments. It’s a fine-grained hard wood that ranges in color from salmon to peach. The tree Alex brought in looked from the outside like it might be checked the whole way through—that is, it might have imperfections in the wood that made it less than desirable. But there was only one way to find out—with a chainsaw and an Alaskan mill.

An Alaskan mill is a device that holds a chainsaw horizontally so you can cut a tree into slabs. It was quite a process to get the mill set-up. The log had to be secured and stable and the mill had to have a broad, flat reference that was parallel to the tree. Set-up also involved lots of standing around and contemplation with cigarettes and coffee. After about an hour and a half, Alex and Co. were ready to cut into the tree. As it turns out, the wood is quite pretty. It's nice to know that his family's history will live on in a dovetailed box, a wall cabinet or perhaps a piece of furniture.

See for yourself. Here are a few photos of the affair and video of the first and second passes, if you're really into it. Alex is the one operating the chainsaw.