My name is Clay, and I'm a resawer

Clay - WOW!!

Howard In Toronto

>Thank you for sharing this photo.

Do you have other photos of your work?

would you be willing to share them?

Did I say WOW!! ?

Howard

Re: I'm impressed...

JL

>what the heck is Palo Blanco? It looks gorgeous whatever it is.

Here's my latest

A.J. Hamler

>I made this for my niece for Christmas. The lid is spalted maple, the main box is walnut.

I loooove resawing.

A.J.

Re: Here's my latest

Clay Foster

>Looks great, AJ. The big patterns of spalted wood and heartwood/sapwwod contrasts make very dramatic resawn images.

Re: I'm impressed...

Clay Foster

>When I harvest it, it is hackberry. After I make something with it, it becomes Palo Blanco. That's what hackberry is called in Mexico. Palo blanco means "white stick" or "white wood", and certainly sounds much more exotic than hackberry. Fresh cut, hackbery has a pretty boring grain pattern. It is white to begin with, then gets an unattractive yellow tinge after exposure to light. Looks like some body peed on it. It does spalt very easily and dramatically, though.

Re: Clay - WOW!!

Clay Foster

>Thanks, Howard. Most of what I make I sell through contemporary craft galleries, so some call it art and some don't. I don't care what they call it if they buy it.

I also make furniture and doors on commission. I don't make a living at it, I just live on what I make.

My website address is listed at my user profile.

Re: My name is Clay, and I'm a resawer

Felix B

>Hi Clay,

This is an awesome cabinet! Yes, I LOVE resawing, especially bookmatching. When it's done right - it can be amazing.

I don't have fancy equipment, but I am getting most of what I can out of my 14" delta with riser block and woodslicer.

Currently I am building a desk; it's veneered all the way around using the veneer I make... not an easy task but I learn as I go. The more I do it the better it gets - just like anything else. The key word is patience ... ok, I am done now :) Thanks for posting!!!

Happy resawing,

Felix

Question for Clay, AJ and Felix

Don in Northern Arizona

>How do you surface the cut side of your book matched veneers after you resaw them? Do you have drum sanders? Do you use a planer? Perhaps if I knew this I could design a 12-step program to help you with your addiction ;-).

Don

See what happens if you don't fight it...

John in New Mexico

>This is one of the first pieces I built at a shop I worked for a few years ago. Even some of the rails are bookmatched.

John

Re: See what happens if you don't fight it...

jcousins

>sycamore - i know the feeling.

jerry

Re: Question for Clay, AJ and Felix

Clay Foster

>Don,

I use a DeWalt 735 planer. It will go down to 1/8" thin. I take small amounts each pass, 1/4 of a handle turn.

If you have trouble with snipe, feed the stock end to end with no space between them, starting and ending with scrap.

Plane the wood as soon as you resaw it. Don't let it sit around all day to start warping.

I like it!

Tom Sontag - St. Louis

>I like the design; I like the exotic name for hackberry; I like successful spalted wood projects.

I can't quite figure out the center drawer though - is the whole bookmatch the drawer front and the bottom just goes straight across leaving the V shaped drop in the center of the drawer with nothing behind it? Got any drawer handles?

How'd you burn the pecan?

Beautiful!

'bout the same for me

A.J. Hamler

>I, too, use a DeWalt 735, going slowly the same way as Clay does. If I'm joining the bookmatched pieces up into a panel, however, I usually go ahead and glue/clamp it up first, then plane it after the clamps come off.

A.J.

Re: I like it!

Clay Foster

>Thanks, Tom

The rail between the drawers and the doors is about 2 1/2" wide. The v drop comes down over the rail 2" in the center. The door tops come up over the rail about 2" on the sides.

I burn the pecan with an acetylene torch. A propnae torch will work fine, it's just a lot slower. In this case, I singe the wood until it's just black, clean off the soot with a soft brass bristle brush, sand it a little with 220, and fill the pores with white tile grout. Finish is poly.

Sometimes I draw designs on the wood with mud in a squeeze bottle as a resist, burn the exposed wood until the mud turns loose, then brush and sand. The resulting pattern in unburnt wood stands about 1/16" proud of the burnt wood. I usually finish this with brown shoe polish to bring out the rich brown color of the burnt wood.

Re: Question for Clay, AJ and Felix

Felix B.

>Hi Don,

I use Delta planer (12-560 miodel?) to plane it down... Since planer won't come down to less then 1/8", I made a sled that I use to raise the surface. I do the same thing Clay does - lowering it little by little... until it blows up - that's whe I realize I fed it the wrong way...

The best results I get after hand planing. I am using Woodslicer and it does NOT leave much work, even for the hand plane :)

Good luck.

Thanks, guys

Don in Northern Arizona

>