Sawing salvaged sailboat keel in Southern California

[blakeinla]

Update:  Thanks for all the help everyone!  With the help of a gantry at the marina, I was able to load the sailboat wood onto a vehicle trailer and get it down to Rob at Tule Peak Timber.  Rob was great, and says the wood is Mahogany.  He cut and sanded a piece and it's just beautiful.  Lots of copper and brass nails and bolts, which will take a day to get out.   Can't wait to see what we'll get from this piece of history! 

  

[Walnut Beast]

Definitely sounds pretty exciting! 

[tule peak timber]

So we started diving for embedded foreign material (efm) in a small 4 foot section today and came up with 5 pounds of copper and bronze, wads of flax/cotton caulk and various broken off pieces of the hull. Cleaned up the symmetry of the keel lets for the ribs and planking shows that whoever crafted this piece knew what he was doing. I'm touching the work of a 3D craftsman from 100 plus years ago, absolutely awesome!   

 

[Crusarius]

I definitely want to see a finished product. this is gonna be amazing.

[tule peak timber]

A great deal of time metal diving for bronze screws, lags and big pins. The metal ranges from lead sheet to copper brads to 1/2, 3/4 and 1" bronze pins. Tremendous amount of imbedded material, so much so that after a couple of weeks of digging and pulling we finally just to send the keel parts through the woodmizer and found out that the standard 7 degree blade cuts right through everything. Pleasantly surprised! We are on the last big piece; have veneered out the smaller pieces inside to find white oak, mahogany and some kind of engineered timber. Obviously, a repair job from decades ago. This saw job is more a labour of love and certainly not one of production.

 

 

 

 

 

[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........

[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....   

[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!

[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]