Isn't it Good, Nor'Region Wood?

[C. in Indy]

When I started into woodworking, I generally didn't like oak wood.  Mainly I associated it with house-trims of 30 years ago, plain-sawn, stained chocolate brown.   But since then I've started to really like it, and even read a whole book about it.

This is a project with wood I bought from a seller in "The Region", the northwest corner of Indiana near Chicago.  And the recipient of this box will be a guy who grew up in that same town that the sawyer sold from.   This is quartersawn Black Oak, and it pretty much took me to school lately on getting it surfaced.  It's still got some tearout that I've been scraping but it's not bad at all.   The top slide-in panel is some cypress from Hawaii, and that too was a bear, needing a high-angle plane.

It will be a surprise for my buddy, hopefully suitable for some of his hobby gear.

I was just getting this together when Roy Underhill aired his sliding-top box episode yesterday.  Mine isn't mitered though.  I had only so much wood, and resawing + bookmatching left me dealing with some warps and trapezoids (repeatedly), so I finally just rabbet-joined my corners.   It was one way to establish a straight joint when everything else isn't straight.

<img src="http://i32.photobucket.com/albums/d38/C66RUPPEL/Nor_Region_Wood_zpsxdpwhm7c.jpg" border="0" alt=" photo Nor_Region_Wood_zpsxdpwhm7c.jpg"/>


Happy woodworking!

Chris

[Adnick]

Nice box, like the oak, but never understood what made back oak, black oak....

Andy

[Steve N]

Wow that QS ray fleck is talking to me. Nice use of wood, and it makes a great statement. Winner

[Steve N]

Nice box, like the oak, but never understood what made back oak, black oak....

Andy

Scroll down until you hit the many, many Oaks. While they all separate out to individual species, they are mostly White or Red, with Black being in the Red family. Between those two read up about Tyloses which White Oaks have, and they make the wood an ok choice for a drinking straw, or outdoor use. To truly be able to spot what you have is harder than many make it out to be though. For the difference between White and Red end grain gives better clues than face grain. After you see Oaks you like Google the name of the wood, and add the word lumber behind it One of the first links will be for The Wood Database which will tell you a lot about the woods characteristics in use, that Hobbit house may not include, plus helpful numbers like the Janka score for "hardness", weights, areas of supply, and a host of other info.

Happy hunting.

[Adnick]

Oh I grew up with oaks that some people called black oak, even had a town and a rock group, sorta from the town, named the same but could never figure out why they were called black oaks....

Andy

[Skip J.]

Oh I grew up with oaks that some people called black oak, even had a town and a rock group, sorta from the town, named the same but could never figure out why they were called black oaks....

Andy

Omm, well in Texas we do have black jack oak...., never heard of black oak tho...

[hbmcc]

I never understood why people invent new names for everything. Here on the Left Coast a secondary name I learned was "Bull Fir" for what never got to the stud mill for what they call Oregon Pine ... in Oregon. But most of us call it Douglas fir, even though it isn't a fir.  And it sure doesn't look like pine. 


Oaks are promiscuous as the dickens and cross breed with enthusiasm. There are probably as many variants as there are trees in the Genus. 


That box sure looks nice!