Shi-noki Haul

Stuart Ablett

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Tokyo Japan
I got a call from my friendly Shinto priest today :D

The wood is called Shi-noki around here, but the proper name is "Sudajii" in Japanese, or "Castanopsis sieboldii" or "chinkapins" or "chinquapins", in English, and is of the Beech family. The tree was quite sick and rotting, but it looks like the main trunk is going to be OK for me to get.

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The Arborist guys have a new truck! It has a neat crane on it, that you can also attach a cherry picker bucket to the boom.

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This is one of the pieces I'm getting :D

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It is too bad that most of this wood is not so good.
If you notice the guy on the side of the pic, has something in his hand, it is a remote control unit for the crane neat :D

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I'm getting the piece with the yellow ribbon on it, and the one directly to the right.

Cheers!
 
Nice haul!! To bad you couldn't get more:thumb: Kinda off subject but How are wood turners thought of mesquite? I have turned a little of it and seems ok, but think it might crack alot. It is nateral here and I can get as much as I want.
 
Always very nice to get free wood, instead of buying wood, to expensive, anyway for me. A good friend of me, he works for the municipal works, promised me a truck load of different spieces of wood, the highest time, I'm running out of wood, so my wood store is almost empty.
 
Stu great haul. Looks like a bowl roughing party going to be going on soon.:rofl:

Zack mesquite is quite good to turn. You can take it from start to finish in one setting and it doesn't move. I have a lot of NE bowls out of mesquite that are 6 months to 1 1/2 yrs old and still no movement.
 
Well, it rained and rained and then rained some more on Thursday, so I did not get to the shrine to cut up my wood until today, Friday. It was just raining a little bit when I got there.

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Here are the pieces that I am getting, in the first pic, the piece on the left, it is the very bottom chunk of the trunk. The second pic, the piece on the right and the piece with the yellow ribbon.

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Just a picture for scale. Notice the black mark on the lower left part of the log? yep, a nail further up the trunk of the tree not the part I'm getting.

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The fine mess I made :D


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The pieces I got....

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.... the worksite cleaned up :thumb:

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Here is the stump they left, with the tree growing in and over the various stones, I was really surprised how the guy just went at the stump with his chainsaw, I would have been afraid of hitting stone.

I have the one longest piece to slice up yet, I hope to get to it tomorrow morning.

Cheers!
 
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Man, looks like you got some sweet pieces. :thumb: That burly-looking piece has got to be hiding some great stuff.

Funny how a couple years ago you had a big wood haul, and most of it became lumber. This time, all I see are turning blanks. ;)
 
Nice haul. And interesting Japan also has 'chinky pin' oaks. More correctly, Chinquapin Oak or
(Yellow Oak) Quercus muehlenbergii , these are of the white oak family. They are found in the Ozarks but are disappearing. The tiny acorns are (reportedly) tasty enough to be eaten raw by humans.
 
Nice wood Stu. Totally off topic: The reference to the Shinto priest brought back high school memories. I was fortunate enough to go to a school with a great music program. We often had new composers writing arrangements for our Concert Band. I believe Thomas Cousins wrote "Dawn Breaks at a Shinto Shrine". So much for really old trivia.
 
Do you have any idea what you might make for the local Shinto temple from this wood?

Also, I noticed that the arborists had bloused pants - is this a traditional Japanese way of dressing, a safety issue or something else entirely?
 
Interesting Barbara, I'll have to see if I can find that tune.

Mark, I'm thinking about making a nice hollow form, and some pens, if I can find some interesting wood.

Cheers!
 
Also, I noticed that the arborists had bloused pants - is this a traditional Japanese way of dressing, a safety issue or something else entirely?

Mark,

Yes, that's traditional wear for those involved in the construction related industries...and other labor jobs like landscaping, trucking, painting etc. They have loops for a wide belt, sewn a couple of inches below the top of the "pants" and come in a wide variety of colors....like the blue in the pic, but red, maroon, green...as well as "kaki" beige.

View attachment 21039

You can also see just the top of his "tabi shoes" which are rubber soled, with the big toe and the other toes separated. The "boot" is made from tough cloth, and has clips to close the top very close to the leg. They give the wearer a good solid grip and are very light.

These even have "steel toes".... http://www1.shopping.com/xPO-Rikio-Safety-Jika-Tabi-Steel-Toe-Jikatabi
 
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Another wood lot? What did you do with the first one that you got a year or more ago? Used it all already??

Now you have no excuse to make a thousand of those snowmen that you make:D:D you said it 7 months to go!
 
OK, Sunday we had my younger daughter's "Sports Day" at school, wonderful weather, the kids had a ball, I got too much sun :doh:

Move on to Monday :thumb:

Looked like it was going to rain in the afternoon, so I got to the shrine bright and early......... OK, it was ) AM, but in the city here, you cannot start any "Noisy" work before 9 AM without special permission, so I'm stuck with that :dunno:

The last chunk of wood was actually fairly disappointing, the log was shot through with rot, so I had to really cut shallower blanks that I would have liked, but I got to work with what I have.........



I ended up with 4 blanks about 16" in diameter and another 8 or so smaller, maybe 10" to 6" in diameter.

Not a bad haul all together, I have 25 blanks.

I've got them all cut round, and sealed up, now I need to find some time to rough out some. I'm thinking of leaving the larger ones for a bit, as I want to get the Oneway Easy Core set up to save myself a lot of hollowing and to get more than one bowl out of each bowl blank, basically you make a nested set of bowls out of a bowl blank, might be neat.

Cheers!
 
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