04 April 2015

Celery Pine

Recently, a good friend of mine had a tree fall over at the top of his property.  It was not a big tree, but it had some relatively straight branch-free sections.  Known as tanakaha (Phyllocladus trichomanoides) it is also called celery top pine, or just celery pine for its distinctive leaf shape.  It was used by maori for canoe and house building and is considered strong and durable for a pine.


The tree had fallen over onto one of the cattle fences.  Fortunately it was caught up by its branches, but it needed to be cleared before it damaged the fence.  It seemed like a waste to turn it into firewood so we cut it into manageable pieces, which I took home and then I sealed the ends with some leftover paint.


Next, I made a small sled to run the logs through my 14" bandsaw.  The log here is screwed to the angled timber fence to keep it parallel with the saw blade and the whole assembly was then slid along against the factory aluminium fence.


Once I had two flat, square faces I then mounted my custom made MDF ripping fence and cut all the logs into 50mm planks.


Except... I didn't.  The home milling attempt was a slight disaster.  My small 14" bandsaw simply wasn't up to the task.  The band kept slipping on the tyres, the 3/4" 3tpi carbon steel blade couldn't clear the waste from the green wood and wandered like a lost schoolboy.  The bearing guides vibrated and shook so much that they literally fell apart mid-cut.

This was really not going to work for the rest of the logs.  Fortunately I found a guy called John Furniss up the road (www.woodyone.co.nz) in deepest Makarau who has a portable Woodmizer sawmill and was easily able to convert the logs into nice 50mm flitches.


  And this is where they will stay for the next two years to fully air dry.  Hopefully 2017 will see them turned into something other than firewood!