>Got a little surprise this morning in the form of a lead bullet in this plank. Luckily this will be the underside of a blanket chest bottom so it won't show. The damage did telegraph through to the other side so I'll have to do a bit of judicious filling with a shellac stick. It didn't hurt the plane iron any. Since this is the hidden side I just leveled it with a jointer plane. I'm a little more circumspect in what I'll let my smoother iron contact.
I've had this happen a few times before. Luckily they've always been lead. I've hit nails and screws a few times when resawing old barn beams and it ruins a bandsaw blade in a heartbeat.
>Too late for it to be on the show side. As seen in the picture, I've already rabbetted the underside. I doubt there's any historical significance. I'm assuming the sycamore this board came out of wasn't that old since the largest board was only 10" or so wide.
>I hit a steel squirrel shot once, in an otherwise clear, commercially harvested hardwood board, with one of my Lie-Nielsen planes. Needless to say, I was less than pleased. I think about it every time I see a bushy-tailed tree-rat, Sciurus carolinensis, in my birdfeeder, or digging up my flower bulbs, or stealing tomatoes, or planting a walnut or oak tree where I don't want one.
>I got a few pieces of cherry from a friend.He milled a tree about 25 years ago. It was a trunk he had gotten for firewood,but too nice to burn up. Anyhow in the general center of a 16"wide plank I found a lead bullet while planing. It was pretty distorted but from the size it was either a large bullet or a deer slug. Also, from the location in the tree,I fugure it was shot about 50-75 years ago.I kept the bullet for a curiosity.---Jack
>I have some walnut that I call "Pa's" walnut. It came from right next to the house he grew up in. It was originally a log cabin. We have a picture of my grandfather about 8 years old with the tree in the background and one before the tree was cut down a couple years ago when he was 90. You can tell from the angle the tree was growing it is the same tree. Pa says the tree grew so well because he "peed on it when he was a kid!"
A couple pieces had lead bullets in them. I've been making things from this walnut for family members. The first piece was a chest of drawers as a wedding gift for my cousin. I showcased the bullets in the back and speculated in the history of the piece about whether it was from target practice or indian battles which are well documented around there.
>My brother-in-law has a coffee table made of 4 sheets of Lexan (tm). It has 9 9-mm slugs buried halfway through the top. It starts a lot of conversations, to say the least. He used to work for General Electric plastics and sold the stuff worldwide.
>My old man bought an apartment building built in 1911, in New Westminster BC about 12 years ago. When it was built it was the height of modernity- birdcage elevator, brine operated fridges, pedal operated doors etc. It fell on hard times from the 40's on. During the 80's, according to the police, it was used by needle freaks, hookers and the top two floors were used as a club house for a biker gang. My old man has been restoring it by hand to its former craftsman cottage style- a few of the old pieces of furniture still exist that were built to go with the suites. While repairing suite 16, we found an arc spray of large pellets embedded in the bathroom door frame. Asking the local police, they said that the story was that a disgruntled member thrust a shot gun through the letter box of the door to the suite, and tried to blow away a guy sitting on the can. The spray of pellets would seem to confirm the aiming direction. If you're near Vancouver BC, you can visit the building and suite during the New Westminster Heritage Buildings day. Worth a visit, even just for the woodworking and weird history. The holes and a few bits of lead can be seen on the LHS of the frame about 3.5 to 4 feet H. It's also where I got my first handtools, a brace and a drawkife (made from a file- Todd H may remeber this tool)- hidden behind some framing timbers in the basement- probably fell down while being built.
