This blog begins about 45 years ago. My little brother brought a Pussywillow bough home from school and my Mother stick it in the ground in a swampy part of our back yard.
It grew into a tree, a tall tree with a thick trunk. Last summer my brother and I cut the tree down, most of it anyway. The large trunk that remained was nearly 2 1/2 feet in diameter and 10 feet tall. The final coup de grace had to be dealt by a man with a chain saw it was too big for us and too close to the garden shed.
Once the tree was cut down and chopped up we saved a few pieces of the trunk and thicker branches for 'old times sake', I suppose before hauling the rest away. My Mother's city grinds and mulches leaves, branches and other collected natural stuff. Most the the tree was mulched. I kept a couple of pieces thinking that I would turn them on the lathe one day, I've never turned Pussy Willow, I'll try anything once.
The other thing that I did with a hunk of the tree was:
make a central pillar for a small glass table top that sits on my Mother's deck.
Initially I had a great idea for holding the stump so that I could saw the ends off straight. I planned to put the stump into a heavy plastic milk crate, tie it firmly to the crate and screw the crate to my bench. The problem....the stump is too big to fit into the crate. I ended up using a collection of straps and clamps to hold the piece of wood secure enough (just enough) to be able to saw the one end off, more or less square. I'm not sharing the picture of the process because I don't want to ever see it again. I didn't get hurt, and the stump was more square when I was done than when I began. I put that in the: any landing you can walk away from is a good landing category.
The table top is a round piece of glass and so I had hoped to set the cross arms into the top of the stump. Holding the stump was of course the problem with that plan too. Had I been able to firmly hold and stabilize the stump it would have been easy to cut a couple of dados for the cross arms. But as my Father used to say 'if the dog hadn't stopped to take a leak it would have caught the rabbit' The cross arms and legs are elm and shouldn't distract from the over all look of the table too much.
This was a funny job, cutting the top flattish was a bit of a slog and I didn't really get a great result but I have lots of tools and this time I turned to my 4 1/2 angle grinder to fine tune the top.
There is an abrasive for every job and 3 or 4 times a year I reach for my wee grinder and make a heck of a mess. I am always pleased at just how much havoc I can reek with such a small tool. This is were I turn when my belt sander's belt is just not aggressive enough. I don't pretend that I am sanding when I use this tool, I am grinding and want wood, or rust or stone to get out of my way.
I plan to take the table leg to my Mom this weekend. It is another of those shop projects that are meaningless to all but a select few that are on the inside. I like projects like that.
A while ago I showed you Clara's step stool. She got it on the weekend, likes it and had me explain how I got her name into the wood. She is only 3 12 so didn't think she totally understand, next time she is here I'll show her how I carved her name into the stool.
Time to relax at the end of a busy day.
cheers, ianw
weeping pussy willow, so cool.
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