Felling and milling African Blackwood

[Timberwolf]

For hollow body guitars....watch it to the end....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K3VXUNl4JzE

[Gary G™]

Good wood; look at the color o that.

[ianab]

That would be Tasmanian Blackwood (Acacia melanoxylon), someplace is Southern Australia / Tasmania. Looking at the forest, more likely Tasmania. The Holden Ute is a dead giveaway. 


The tree is generally known as "Poor Mans Koa", as it's a close relative of Hawaiian Koa. 

Coincidentally, I've been sawing the same wood here in NZ. Not old forest grown trees as sweet as that, but some farm forestry / shelter specimens that were starting to succumb to the salt spray where they were growing. Owner have cut a bunch down, but couldn't find anyone local to mill them. 
    Wife's cousin used to work for the guy, and had been offered them for firewood, "take them away before they rot". "Hang on, I know someone with a sawmill". So we ended up sawing them for shares of the wood, win win. 

Logs had been on the ground a year (not ideal) and weren't as big as that old forest one, basically only one ~12ft log from each tree. 

   

Wayne wanted a table for his "man cave", so we hooked him up with a 3" live edge plank. 

   

Close up of the grain on some q-sawn boards. 

   

A load to be hauled home behind the little Toyota

   

And it's out back drying now. 

   

The landowner is a nice older gentleman. He knows it valuable furniture wood, and has professionally made furniture made from trees he's cut previously, so we did a fair deal. He has a stack similar drying in his shed, and the other guys that helped took some home too. 

He also has another ~6 decent trees to take out


And yes the wood is fairly valuable, even with these younger trees. I don't know if it's worth enough to haul out on my shoulders, but the 6" wide boards in that drying stack should easily sell for $50+ each

[ianab]

P.S. The guy with the chainsaw has felled a few trees before this one. Hard to fault his technique with the bore cut from both sides. I know the theory, and use the same technique, but not always as tidy as that. 

[jteneyck]

P.S. The guy with the chainsaw has felled a few trees before this one. Hard to fault his technique with the bore cut from both sides. I know the theory, and use the same technique, but not always as tidy as that. 

Murray knows his stuff, that's for sure.  But holy aching back if he carried that entire log out on his back, even though the wood looked surprising light by the way he handled the cants.  Beautiful looking wood.  The stuff you milled, Ian, looks much lighter. Why is that?

John

[ianab]

 Beautiful looking wood.  The stuff you milled, Ian, looks much lighter.  Why is that?

John

Probably the faster open grown trees compared to the older forest grown one. The logs we were cutting wouldn't have been much more than 30 years old. The wood also shows a lot of variation between logs and even different parts of the same log, or even the same board.  You can see all the different shades in the drying stack.

[Derek Cohen]

The forrest looks like it was in Tasmania (down Hobart way?), and then shipped to Canterbury in Victoria (East coast of Australia).

I would not refer to Tasmanian Blackwood as "Poor Man's Koa". They are remarkably similar, if not identical. Simply stunning wood.

Regards from Perth

Derek