Mantelpiece, towing and salvage

[Mac168]

This one didn’t really fit in any of the other sections but might be of interest to some of you.

A few weeks ago I found a lovely old hardwood beam washed up above the high water mark on a fairly inaccesible but of shore.

Of course it had to be salvaged and the only reasonable way was to get the help of a good friend, his boat and a spring tide to tow it home.

Operation went smoothly and I’m now the proud owner of a 12’ length of well weathered (possibly) opepe that’s fallen off a pier somewhere.

The only question now is whether to get a professional to mill it into something usable or to invest in an Alaskan mill and ripping chain and try it myself.

Or wait until I’m building a house and use the whole thing as a feature decorative beam...

 

[brightspark]

more saleable if left as is. well weathered or as they would say distressed

 

[Morrisman]

Hang on to it, leave it to dry out, wait until the right time and place to use it.

 

[Tinbasherdan]

Our dad got a baulk of pitch pine out of what used to be the old shipyard timber pond. Must’ve been in there for 50 odd years at the least. He made a mantlepiece for our sister out of it and it looked amazing. She left it in the house when she moved, the idiot

 

[Morrisman]

I found some old siding wood in a used timber yard when we lived in the Philippines. It was painted white on one side, I think it is oak actually, and I had to use my oxy acetylene torch to get that off. Paint stripper and a normal blowtorch didn’t touch it. I build a shelf unit out of it, with angle iron frame.

It’s pretty much a ‘junk pile’ shelf at the moment, all sorts piled on it while we finish moving into the new house.

 

[selectedgrub]

Nice lump.
How long "wood" that take to dry?

 

[Morrisman]

Nice lump.
How long "wood" that take to dry?

Knot too sure. ​

 

[Gritineye]

A customer asked me to cut up some nice driftwood like that for a garden feature, goodbye nice tungsten blade in a couple of seconds, wood looked OK but was full of grit, never doing that again!

 

[colnerov]

If it can't welded, is it going against the grain?

 

[Robbie260]

This one didn’t really fit in any of the other sections but might be of interest to some of you.

A few weeks ago I found a lovely old hardwood beam washed up above the high water mark on a fairly inaccesible but of shore.

Of course it had to be salvaged and the only reasonable way was to get the help of a good friend, his boat and a spring tide to tow it home.

Operation went smoothly and I’m now the proud owner of a 12’ length of well weathered (possibly) opepe that’s fallen off a pier somewhere.

The only question now is whether to get a professional to mill it into something usable or to invest in an Alaskan mill and ripping chain and try it myself.

Or wait until I’m building a house and use the whole thing as a feature decorative beam...

I would go with the idea of keeping it whole and using it a s a fake/decorative lintel over say an entrance porch to a house.

Where you at any way if its not to cheeky a question the sceenery looks very familiar.

 

[frank horton]

if u asked me to put that thru my wood machine's the answer would be no I'm afraid...
most decent machine shops /woodmills won't touch second hand timber.....

 

[waddycall]

Doesn’t matter too much what you do with it. You’ve had the fun if getting it!

 

[cheb]

I found a length of greenheart in similar circumstances, I use it as an outside workbench.

 

[brightspark]

if u asked me to put that thru my wood machine's the answer would be no I'm afraid...
most decent machine shops /woodmills won't touch second hand timber.....

reason being theres particles of grit and god knows what else embedded in it ruins saws and deffo ruins a planer blade . if anyone wants timber to look like that sandblast it with kiln dried sand it takes all the soft wood out and leaves the hard grain showing making it look old and weathered

 

[outofthefire]

If you go down the making a mill route look at bandsaw rather than chain you waste a lot of wood with a chainsaw.

 

[Mick Annick]

if u asked me to put that thru my wood machine's the answer would be no I'm afraid...
most decent machine shops /woodmills won't touch second hand timber.....

I did a workshop conversion job on a Victorian warehouse in Sheerness some years ago, we took out 15 beams about 18mm square 30’ long, couldn’t give them away as no one would risk cutting them, they all went to landfill

 

[Seadog]

18" ?

 

[Mick Annick]

18" ?

Umm, you could be right!!