Too little...almost too late

[ohsoloco]

A little over a month ago one of the tree services I get logs from was taking down a very large sycamore.  They didn't bother to tell me about it  : I just happened to be driving by the job site while they were working.  The only thing worth taking was the butt log, and the homeowners wanted a 3-4' stump left over for a table  :(   Told them I'd still take the log as there was about a six footer left, around 44" in diameter  ;D 

When I went to pick up the log the next day, I was really worried I wouldn't be able to get this thing on the trailer.  Managed to get it loaded and dragged it off the trailer with the skidsteer.  A few weeks ago I quartered it and got it ready to go on the mill.  The outside of this log was also really bumpy like the whole thing was covered in burl   

Looking at the end grain and the grain from quartering the log it was clear that there was no burl on this log.  I q-sawed the first two quarters, and by the time I got to the third one I noticed some unique figure in the flat sawn face...some bird's eye.  It was only in a few spots, and I assumed it didn't run deep, so I q-sawed that piece, too.  By the time I got to the last quarter, there was even more bird's eye figure so I decided to flat saw it just for giggles.  Well, it turned out the figure ran the whole way through the log  8)  One member here mentioned that flat sawn sycamore is tough to dry without warping, so I decided to cut a bunch of 2" thick slabs 15" wide.  Anyone run into much b-eye sikkeymore  ???

[ARKANSAWYER]

  Nope! Do you have photos.  We's like to see some.

[ohsoloco]

Arky, I knew that question would come up  :D  I dusted off my battery guzzling digital camera this morning to take some pictures of it, but the birds eye won't show up on the grainy digital pics  :(  Any pointers on taking pictures of this kind of thing   ??? 

Looking at the boards again this morning, I noticed the figure isn't nearly as heavy in the heartwood, but it's all over that slab with the sapwood.  Usually any board I try and dry with a lot of sapwood in it will really move, should I be worried about this one?

[Tom]

You can get the best pictures of figure by using the camer's Macro lense feature, if it has one.  Most now-a-days do.   It allows the taking of close-ups.  To use them you must be acutely aware of distance since it is required for focusing.

To make the figure of boards show up for photographs, remove sawdust and wet the board.  Water will work.  Wetting the board gives it the appearance of being finished. 

Put something on the board to show size.  Use someone's hand or finger or put a quarter on the board.

Take the picture in non-glaring light.  Avoid shadows.   A good place is under a tree if you don't get the shadows of the leaves.   Harsh light, like out in the open sun, will generally obliterate detail in the picture.

When you crop the picture, crop it fairly close to the board and the figure that you want to show.  This allows the figure to take up more of the picture and be larger than if you included backgrounds.

[ohsoloco]

Thanks Tom.  When I went home this afternoon I tried taking a few more pics of the boards.  The little screen on the camera doesn't show much, so I'll have to upload the pics to the computer and see what they look like.  I did wet one of the boards down to help, but I'll definitely use some of your tips to snap a few more pics before I stack the lumber tomorrow. 

I don't know if this camera has a macro lense feature...would that be the same as using the zoom  ???

[Kelvin]

Tons of weight on that stack!  i've never seen wood move like the QS sycamore i did this summer.  Really nice stuff, veneer quality, and all of it is no good now.  The whole stack lifted and moved like crazy.  All curled, and cupped.  Never seen anything like it.  Be warned!
Sounds cool though.

[Tom]

macro isn't the same as zoom.   Usually Macro is a fixed feature.  you dial the feature depending on your manufacturer and then use the view window to focus by moving the camera closer or farther away.  Most will focus down to about 4 to 6 inches but no further out than maybe 30 inches.  A lot depends on  the amount of light and the aperature.  Lots of light means a deep depth of field.  Little light means a shallow depth of field.   Depth of field is the amount of the picture that is in focus relative to the distance from the lens.   example.   A lens focused on someone's nose at 3 inches might have the nose as sharp as a tack, but the eyes out of focus.

[ohsoloco]

Tom, I was looking on my camera last night and found the macro focus thingie.  Snapped a few more picures of the board this morning before heading out to pick up some white oak logs    Just got done uploading them to the computer and they turned out pretty nice.  Also just downloaded the trial version of XAT, so I should be rolling here pretty soon.  Don't have time before work to mess with optimizing and re-learning how to post pics, so I'll read up on DanG's post tonight and get this figured out  ;D

I still need to find the time to sticker that lumber, too  :D

[ohsoloco]

Geez, I thought I had this all licked, and now I'm stuck  :-\  I snapped some more pics yesterday afternoon and just uploaded them to the computer.  All of these pics are over 500k, and by the time I compress them to under 20k they look like someone spilled a bunch of water colors  :( 

Any pointers for compressing these pics  ???  The only pics that seem to turn out nice are the ones of my dog  :D

Also, the figure shows up really nice on the software that came with the camera, but when I open the same pic in XAT it doesn't look near as nice even before compressing the thing  >:(

[Furby]

First off, are you doing any cropping?
Some pics simply won't crop with out screwing things up.
Second, make sure you RESIZE to under 400 pixels wide or tall BEFORE compressing.

[ohsoloco]

The pics of the birds eye I didn't try to crop, I got some pretty tight shots.  I tried resizing one pic to 350 pixels wide, and it looked pretty DanG small  :( 

After having no luck today compressing those pics, I splashed some more water on that slab to take some more pics.  Up until now I was taking pics with the "super fine" picture quality, thinking I would get the best detail shots.  Figgered I'd try snapping a few on the "fine" and "basic" qualities this afternoon to see if that makes much difference to the file size  :P

I'll try again tomorrow 

[asy]

Ohso,

Another really easy way to fiddle with the photos is to email them in their full, uncompressed glory to either Tom, Furby, or even me (now that I've figured it out!)...

I'm happy to have a go at getting them viewable for you. (Coz I'd sure like a looksee!)

asy :D

[Furby]

Yup, the "fine" setting is huge compared to the normal setting.
Great if you are going to blow the pic up, but a real pain to compress.

[ohsoloco]

asy, I'm REAL close to doing just that...I've been thinking about it all week  :D

I haven't uploaded the new "basic" pics to the computer, hopefully I have better luck with them  ;)

[ohsoloco]

Alright, I FINALLY got my picures into my album  8)  Furby, cropping the image really helped with file size before compressing, and the basic pics also started out at around 70 or 80k instead of the 500k  ;)  Now, let's see what I can do here.



This first pic is of one of the outer slabs.  The whole log was bumpy like this.



Not a real great shot here



Here's some of the figure



And another



And finally a shot of some boards & slabs.

[Percy]

Hey! Thats my quarter... :D :D :D :D

I like this  one the best. A guy could make a nice...... uhhh...... somthin outta that piece.  We dont have Sycamore around here. Once I cut some Arbutus(SP) that kinda looked like this..... 8)

[Norm]

Now that's some nice looking wood ohsoloco!

[ohsoloco]

Percy, that's the board those two close ups are from 

I finally got to stack the lumber this morning (it rained all day yesterday).  Problem was the board that's in the picture is 6/4, and all of the other stuff is either 8/4 or 5/4....had to stack it near the top  :(  Got 26 concrete blocks on top of the stack. 

Norm, I'm not sure what I'll do with it, but think it would make a nice table, or better yet a headboard.  Problem is I don't have any long pieces for the side rails.