Life has been busy over the last year, but in addition to finishing the shop cabinets I found time to source some wood for chair making. The local commercial suppliers were pretty much a bust, though Scott Wunder of Wunderwoods does have some options for sourcing green wood.
But I recently rejoined the St. Louis Woodworker’s Guild and met Les. Les lives about an hour west and north of me, and as we were chatting it turned out he had some white oak trees on his acreage that needed to be cleared out. So one early Saturday morning at the beginning of February I drove out to see what was up.
The most promising tree was a white oak that was still alive last Fall, though it had fallen in a wind storm. Harvesting some log sections was complicated by the fact that the tree had fallen across the edge of Les' pond (unfortunately, this blurry picture is the only one I have showing it well)
We spent a couple of hours with come-alongs hauling the tree toward shore enough support it so Les could cut the top of the tree loose.
We then hauled the trunk all the way onto land.
After sectioning the trunk, I sealed the ends with green wood sealer, to help reduce checking and splitting. Then Les brought down a riding mower with a small trailer for us to haul sections up to his driveway.
We loaded three sections into my Subaru, strapping them together to stabilize them.
We then loaded the remaining sections onto a pallet, and after I left Les covered them with a tarp to keep until I could go back to get them.
Once I got them home, I unloaded the sections and stored them in the garage.
I went back a couple of weeks later and retrieved the remaining sections, which are stored on one of my firewood wood racks, covered with a tarp.