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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_046.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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Brettny
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# Posted: 22 Feb 2025 01:52pm
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My father had some huge black cherry come down years ago. I prob have 3 pickup loads of 1x boards. I also sawed some guard posts and made this set of railings for my cabin. The white wood is ash. I have 1.5in thick ash stair treads il be installing when the drywall and paint is done.
I love working with live edge wood.
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DRP
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# Posted: 22 Feb 2025 05:14pm - Edited by: DRP
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I sent the last of my ash home with our engineer in Dec for his house. There was some 16" wide. I think that is about the last I'll see in my lifetime, the emerald ash borer has gotten them all here. We had one fall during the ice last week and I think there is one more standing dead. I've tried to salvage from them but the wood is really already gone by the time they fall, ash doesn't last long. Our SIL's mid 50's modern, Wright-ish style house is floored, paneled and cabinetted in ash. I worked in a small furniture startup for a few years. They were using ash and it was my first big experience with it. I grew to like it although the line failed.
Prior to that I was working at a canoe livery and one of my jobs was rebuilding wrecked canoes. The Old Towns were often fitted out with ash rails, thwarts and seats. The parts had to be trucked down and it was an ungainly 17'+ package, not an overnighter. At some point I was out and in a pinch. My Dad had some long red oak so I decided to give it a try. To rerail one there is a lot of clamping, drilling and screwing about every 4" up each side. Ash is used for things like canoe rails, hockey sticks, bats and racquets because of its stiffness and high impact resistance. My rebuilt boat came back the next Monday morning with broken rails. The customer said "I barely hit the rocks", and I believe him. I continued to learn the differences in woods.
Somewhere deep in the archives at the Forest Products Labs is a paper that the Forest Service had done in 1919. Car frames at that time were made of ash as were the roof bows and we were going through the resource at an unsustainable rate. The purpose of the report was to have the labs find the next best wood to get the closest set of strength and stiffness properties as ash. If you follow baseball you already know the answer, maple bats started showing up in, I guess it was the late 70's early 80's. We solved the car frame problem a different way. My '34 Dodge truck was the first "all steel" year although there was still one small piece of wood in the floor. That was the first year to not have suicide doors as well. That is a round tuit I'd like to get to one of these days, I had always planned on a 350 but electric is now looking pretty cool.
I was talking to the state foresters, they currently believe the ash borer, which is very host specific, will wipe out all the ash trees, and die of starvation. Then the seeds waiting in the soil will sprout. I sure hope so!
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Brettny
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# Posted: 22 Feb 2025 07:11pm
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Unfortunately I turned most of my big ash into firewood a few years before the EAB beetle got them all. Once the EAB showed signs here I cut all the 10-20in trees into boards. I have a huge stack that's been drying in a shed for a few years now. No plans for it but maybe some day it will be my child's retirement. Lol
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DRP
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# Posted: 26 Feb 2025 03:33am - Edited by: DRP
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This popped up this morning, a movie of Packard wooden frames being built.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Bki2ghu5TU
When I was in my early teens Dad was building a house at an old mill. While we worked the owner cleaned up and rebuilt the breached dam. At one point there were 2 stuck bulldozers being pulled out of the schmoo behind the dam by the biggest wrecker I had ever seen. In one of the old sheds on the property was a long 12 cylinder Packard touring car. It was in a sad state but what a beauty.
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paulz
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# Posted: 26 Feb 2025 08:11am
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Great video! Didn’t notice the year but how do the materials and assembly compare with the other auto makers of the time?
Beautiful cars, I want one!
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DRP
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# Posted: 26 Feb 2025 04:58pm - Edited by: DRP
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Of the time?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morgan_Motor_Company
But yes I think that was pretty typical of all the early manufacturers. I think I saw that they were going through 2million BF per month, and they were not one of the big 3. They were blowing through some timber. In the WWI era, look up a Ford model TT heavy truck, the "body" from the plant was the hood and fenders, up to the cowl/firewall and then a coachmaker built the rest. That was also pretty common.
I'd like to have one too! It's not a doozy (Duesenberg) but they were right up there.
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MtnDon
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# Posted: 26 Feb 2025 05:34pm
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Hi!
Dodge Brothers built the first all-metal body I believe. But it was Henry Ford that made the idea take off. The all-metal Ford bodies are one reason why there are so many more Fords around these days. The wood and metal bodies had to deal with metal rust as well as wood rot.
I have a friend with a mid-70s Morgan 4/4. Cool car.
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DRP
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# Posted: 26 Feb 2025 09:15pm - Edited by: DRP
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LOL, I just saw you on the "Been Awhile" thread.
I was told my 34 DB truck was the first all metal body but the trucks usually followed car tech improvements by a year or three so I'm not sure if that was correct but the switch was right in that period. I was also told the Dodge boys sent Ford their first model with "juice brakes" around that time. I think Packard was using a vacuum booster on mechanical brakes during that period, with huge drums on a 3 ton car. I'm thinking it was the 60's and AMC that came up with the split braking system.
I like this better than the Chrysler emblem. Looking at the star and wondering about its story another old tidbit just surfaced, Henry Ford was into Egyptology and one of his early emblems was a stylized scarab beetle, right up until someone told him the more common name, dung beetle
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paulz
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# Posted: 28 Feb 2025 01:48pm - Edited by: paulz
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Pulling a ding out of the roof of my American Bantam and occurred to me there’s wood framing! American Bantams were based on Austins, USA bought the rights and built their version in Butler Pennsylvania. Mine is a 1938, went earlier some years.
Don’t quote me on any of this I knew 10 years ago. Here’s the Wiki.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Austin_Car_Company
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MtnDon
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# Posted: 28 Feb 2025 02:11pm
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In the 70s and 80s many RVs had wood framed house bodies. I'm not sure when that ceased.
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paulz
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# Posted: 1 Mar 2025 09:19am
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My ‘74 had a wood house body. Remember it well as I cut a swing up door in the side to haul cycles.
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DRP
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# Posted: 1 Mar 2025 10:32am
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Our crumbling '72 A size RV was glass on frame, built by my FIL. He bought a new chassis and went up from there. I kept a JC Whitney catalog on hand, he had bought a lot of parts there. Whenever we would get in from the road with some time I would go to the canoe factory and get 5 gals of resin and some cloth and mat, open up a section and pull out the rot, replacing it with fiberglass and then repair that section of skin. Rolling with tools at 6 tons the big block w/quadrabog would get 5-6 mpg.
I saw this supplier of MG ash frame parts with some pics of them, I see a fair amount of grain runout and short weak grain in the curved parts;
https://ttypes.org/supply-of-mg-t-type-ash-frames-including-timber-parts/
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MtnDon
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# Posted: 1 Mar 2025 03:55pm
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The Morgan factory in the UK offers tours. Last I knew they cost about £24 and lasted almost 2 hours. Morgan uses UK grown ash as they always have. From what I remember the wood appeared to be very nice.
The rear fenders are formed from a three layer glued up laminate of thin ash stock they cut on site. They have a couple of big old clamp forms that are used to form and hold the shape until the glue sets.
I have a picture someplace..... can't find it right now ???
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MtnDon
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# Posted: 1 Mar 2025 04:26pm - Edited by: MtnDon
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clamp up jig
The clamp bars have not yet been connected over the ash laminate to the clamp jaws located around the outside of the curve. They are tightened to clamp the glued strips tightly for a few hours.
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gcrank1
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# Posted: 1 Mar 2025 04:41pm
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WOW
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MtnDon
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# Posted: 1 Mar 2025 05:29pm
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They had two frames like that. Nobody was certain as to how old they were. However, some of the metal shaping machine rollers dated to the 1900-teens.
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