What to do with spoiled slabs

[JoshNZ]

Hopefully I'm in the right forum for this question.

Just wondering what you guys do with a stack of timber that has distorted beyond where you could reasonably post it for sale without being embarrassed. Is it good for turning blanks or resawn to smaller stuff or... just the firewood pile?

I had a walnut crotch I got from a friend (laying in a paddock from a cut down tree) so, I guess it was leaning. I slabbed it up and stickered/strapped but there's nothing really salvageable with flattening now, after 12 months air drying in a shed.

[Ianab]

There's another thread that's current talking about "reject" slabs. 

General idea is that if possible you break them down into something that will be useful / saleable. 

If it won't make a 6ft table, it might make 4 x 3ft coffee tables? Or if it's crotch wood, 12"x12" turning blanks for platters? 

Last resort (and rubbish offcuts) can still be sold as dry firewood. I made $350 this weekend selling DRY mill edgings and limbs that I had stashed in the shed last year. 

[K-Guy]

Many would make cutting boards or other mall pieces out of them.

[doc henderson]

we are currently working on slabs for bar tops, and reinforcing with epoxy.  kind of pricy so it has to have the character that the customer is looking for.  





son William

[K-Guy]

@doc henderson 
Have you reviewed the child labor laws??  :D :

[doc henderson]

not lately, and I only wish I hard worked him harder, sooner!   :D :D :D  he is 19 now and a good helper, especially if I can let him go on a project.  we did the first one together, and he did the second by himself while I was at work.

[mike_belben]

make butcher block glue up cutting boards out of the end grain trimmings.  Alternate and bookmatch the walnut with a white figured wood between the walnut.  

I have one like this that i love.  

[JoshNZ]

I guess the question should be - from a monetary vs time perspective, is it worth doing anything for the return you'd take on them. Unfortunately a bit of flattening and butterfly bowties isn't going to save these slabs, they're quite the set of potato chips. Photos don't really do them justice, it shows the warping but it doesn't show the massive undulations all over them. There's swollen areas that sit an inch or so above the rest of the slab right in the middle of the board.

I don't really have the time to play with them myself, nor do I really need to now that I have my pick of a pretty good selection.



 

 

 

 

 

[btulloh]

Design a form that uses the defect. People take dead flat stuff and carve it into gentle curves and make pieces that sell for big bucks. You're halfway there. Think outside the plane. 

[Ianab]

This one I would rip into 2 pieces where the kink is. That would make live edge shelving.



The one with the bow I'd whack into 3 coffee table sized pieces that could be flattened successfully.

And there would still be some firewood left over.  :D

Remember we are in NZ, walnut is an exotic import, and good hardwoods are not easy to come by. Even small slabs will have value. 

[doc henderson]

a segmented bowl turner would not think twice on that lifetime supply of wood.  my neighbor sawdust jimmy comes to my shop and pick stuff up off my floor.  If it is too nice, he hands it to me, and tells me I can do something with that.  Or an art sculptor carver may use it.

[JoshNZ]

I guess I better bring it back indoors  ;D.

I hear what everyone is saying, when I was a youngster I would've jumped at the opportunity to have a stack like this. Now I'm timber rich and time poor, it's not so appealing.

I'll see if I can find a home for it.

[customsawyer]

If you  don't have time to deal with it, then market just the way it is at a discount. Some retired guy will jump all over it. You will put some coin in your pocket and he will be out of his wives hair for a couple of months.

[JoshNZ]

A bit of a funny update to this, I listed all of my timber today (basically said I want some but not all of it so, offers etc) and included this lot as a defective stack. It's by far the item I've had the most interest about. People go crazy for walnut slabs in NZ, apparently...