Sawing salvaged sailboat keel in Southern California

[newoodguy78]

What a cool thing to be a part of. Very few can say they've worked on a piece of history. 

[Walnut Beast]

On kind of the same note. This was just in the news's. Battleship wood resonates great for guitars. 

https://www.1011now.com/2022/11/26/lincoln-resident-turn-battleship-wood-into-electric-guitars/

[tule peak timber]

A few years back I did a similar thing with Fender, fleeting profits........ :D

[Don P]

Battle axe?

[caveman]

Rob, it looks like Blakeinla chose wisely on who to take this to.  It is good to see the effort being made to properly and respectfully saw and repurpose this piece of history.  Thank you for sharing the pictures.

[tule peak timber]

Battle axe?

No , the traditional split face veneers on the strato and the other one. Also, cases for their amps. Very tough company to deal with, and they have an AMAZING facility in LA cranking out something like 1500 guitars a day. I cannot produce pallets of consistent parts for pennies on the dollar. Oh well.... ;D  

[tule peak timber]

Rob, it looks like Blakeinla chose wisely on who to take this to.  It is good to see the effort being made to properly and respectfully saw and repurpose this piece of history.  Thank you for sharing the pictures.

Our sawdust glitters like gold from all of the bronze.

 

 

[bigblockyeti]

Are those 7° DH blades or Turbo 7's?

[tule peak timber]

I checked the box and they are 10 degree double hard

[bigblockyeti]

That's interesting, I'm working through a box of 9° double hard blades and they seem to do well except when I hit metal.  Even if the blade is still sharp enough to cut okay, the set is usually off by enough it wants to dive or raise while offering a diminished surface finish.

[tule peak timber]

I'm setting and grinding after just two feet of travel in the widest parts of the keel.  Bronze actually does cut while steel just wrecks the blade. It took 3 blades to cut the keel up. Never met metal in wood that I did like! :D

[blakeinla]

So amazing to watch this whole process.  And so happy to have met Rob.  Really can't wait to see what he does with his share of the wood and now I'm trying to figure out what I'll do with mine.  I was re-reading the history the Highland Light and and saw this photo of the boat before it sank.  I think this photo is in the Long Beach marina where it sank:

[Joe Hillmann]

It is kind of a shame you didn't leave all the bronze in and be able to saw through it all.  I find soft metal in my boards to be a selling point.

I have thought of wrapping a tree with a spiral of copper wire, let it grow for ten years then mill  it to see what it produces just to be able to have a bunch of boards with a lot of metal in them.

Ive also thought of doing similar with a maple tree, drill lots of tap holes in a single tree, fill the tap holes with plugs, let the tree heal for a few years then mill it.  It would give interesting lumber.

[tule peak timber]

Joe,,,,stay tuned!

[Andries]

 :P 8) :P

[tule peak timber]

It's been almost a year but I've decided to build a couple of entry doors from my share of the keel wood. After more days of metal drilling, drift pinning, pulling, and removing the last of thousands of screws ,lags ,spikes, and pins this one-of-a-kind wood is ready to dimension. I have a tentative drawing, given the pieces I have for two doors that will honor the wood the best way I can. It kills me to cut up such big pieces of mahogany but the only other use would be for a bar top and I'm not interested in selling this wood to anyone. It was mindboggling today trying to figure out where to drill a drift pin hole on each of the big bronze spikes that had blind ends going into the timber at compound curved angles. Driving out the foot long barbed bronze spikes, whole or in pieces backwards was a killer.
 Clean enough to face and resaw for the door parts/pieces.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Ron Scott]

It will be a great conversation piece. 

[newoodguy78]

Looking forward to seeing this project progress.

[tule peak timber]

This week I collated the materials into 3 door builds and started with the smallest one first. This door has a "veneer" of keel wood as it uses up the remaining scrap materials and will be used as a bath passage door. A couple shots of the edge banding on a "resaw and flip" core made from sycamore. One pic shows the copper accents for the panels with patina and a coat of epoxy to seize the colors fast. I looked at bronze plate for the panels, but it was cost prohibitive, so I'm faking it with copper roll. M&T dry fit in the pics, and yes the joints tighten up! Cheers  WOC

 

 

 

[tule peak timber]

I have 2 of the 3 doors ready for detailing and finish. Some shots of the scribed joinery and the basic design that will carry through on all 3. Only one will have the baked on lead oxide bottom paint, super weathered look. I cannot begin to imagine how much arsenic has been soaked into this wood from the various preservatives used over the last century. When you cut it, it takes your breath away, literally. One of the joints I am referencing to wood that is not even there; notice all of the imbedded copper and bronze hardware and I'm not going to change that. The limited amount of material that was my portion of this keel had compound, complex curves, rib lets and other interesting flaws and features, which I am trying to preserve as much as possible. A note on the hardware; the cleats will be door pulls that I salvaged off of the SM 1 in 80 ft. of water off of Point Conception, almost a 1/2 century ago. The SM 1 sank in 1961. The leaded crystal knobs are from a centuries old Italian house my uncle was born in. My uncle brought these with him as a kid to America and he died 35 years ago, just short of 100 years old. If you do the math, these crystal knobs are a good match for a mahogany tree that was cut sometime around the same time, give or take. I want these doors to have a story of the rich history from which they came. Cheers! WOC.

 

 

 

 

 

[Andries]

Some guys have to best lumber 
Some guys have the best machinery
Some guys have the best imagination 
Some guys can take scrapcrap and turn it into functional art.
You're the rare woodworking craftsman that rolls all that together into one package.

[thecfarm]

I like the hardware story.

[shaneyho]

You doing it all by yourself or getting some help?

[tule peak timber]

I have help with the sanding, other than that, the design and fabrication is just me. I run quite a few jobs in parallel in the shop and I enter the stream when appropriate.
A couple pictures of the old growth mahogany. It has a luster that just glows in the daylight. There is a thin coat of tung oil with jap dryer to get the colour to pop. Next week build up coats of 2k poly for protection.
Happy Thanksgiving!

 

 

 

 

[Southside]

Well someone didn't have a Happy Thanksgiving!!   :D