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DRP
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# Posted: 15 Feb 2025 09:07pm
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I mentioned that we had lost a lot of cherry to the ice on another thread and did not think to specify it was pin cherries that fell everywhere, Prunus pennsylvanica rather than black cherry, P. serotina. I think everyone north of me has it in their range, by different names, I know it as fire cherry too, it is a colonizer and one of the first trees to come back after a fire, or logging, or major disturbance. Here it was just abandonment of our old farm 15 or 20 years before we bought it. They were already about polewood size when we quit going back down to our "real" jobs 40 years ago. As a woodworker I know it as "soft cherry" vs black or hard cherry. Rarely straight and on the small side usually but they can make some neat things. I've sawn lumber and made panelling. It's poor form can be used for naturally curved stuff like braces or rustic furniture parts.
Below is the biggest score on our place... that I've seen so far. Just beyond it was another one during Helene 4 months ago. They are shallow rooted. Also an old pic of one I was making into a post and my truck full of soft cherry from clearing a jobsite. I see another Y post in the downed tree, cool.
Anyway, its a neat tree, mostly its best and highest use is firewood. To walk up someone's snow covered drive during the holidays and smell a cherry or apple fire is cheerful to me.
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paulz
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# Posted: 21 Feb 2025 10:15am
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Quoting: DRP another Y post
Nice one. Let's see, what could I make, sling shot?
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gcrank1
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# Posted: 21 Feb 2025 11:02am
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Some surgical tubing, a 'pocket' and some small water balloons for launch would be fun 
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DRP
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# Posted: 21 Feb 2025 02:24pm
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They do get your imagination going. I've thought about a trestle table base out of several funky sticks. I sold a curved front cherry mantle a month or 2 ago. We did sell some black cherry slabs yesterday. It and walnut are a couple that we do have in the blue ridge, and there are good ones but the better ones tend to be over the hill in the deeper sweeter soils, where our topsoils went . We tend to grow better poplars, oaks and white pines, beech, birch, white hickory... but there are many unique little pockets of this and that throughout.
Oh, anyway, where my mind was going when I took the pic above, I like to prefab porch post assemblies and then plop them all in place quickly with a carry beam across the tops of the bolsters. It's quick, easy to make splices in the beam on those long bolsters, it just works slick. I was thinking of some natural live edge porch posts. On that line of thought with the ice downed cherry I'll be up to 2 prefabbed ones.
Below are some prefabbed oak post assemblies from a couple of jobs. We've toyed with the idea of making some and stocking them at the building supply as a kind of DIY timber porch post. Just a little bulky tho!
timberframing_004.jp.jpg
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timberframing_020.jp.jpg
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paulz
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# Posted: 21 Feb 2025 07:00pm - Edited by: paulz
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Quoting: DRP I've thought about a trestle table base out of several funky sticks
Sounds good. That’s one thing my cabin is lacking, artistic flare. I’d like to think I have some in me, just not sure where..
Oh wait, there’s my deck railings. Just left over trunks and branches. At first I tied them together with rope, that’s the artistic part. But still a bit flimsy so had to add lag screws.
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DRP
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# Posted: 21 Feb 2025 09:58pm - Edited by: DRP
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In that same vein of "Don't count out crooked trees", an early house frame was a cruck frame. Bent trees were halved and bookmatched in an end frame using them to brace and support the straight timber by making an arch inside the bent.
Below was inspired by a cruck frame and a walk through our woods. That S curve is in a big oak that died 2 years ago. I've probably let it stand dead too long but the thing we grow best is anything other than a highly valuable, straight, cylinder of a tree
edit; there was another cruck frame sketchup doodle on the old computer. The earliest framers were really creative. Well, and then if you look at timberframes in europe after the days of great wooden warships, they were using a lot of smallish halved curvy timbers, dressing flat in the plane that mattered and letting the timber creatively wander between its necessary points. They were using what they had.
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