http://pegsandtails.wordpress.com/2012/07/18/future-proofing-my-exploits/
It was a great morning with some lovely Elm boards coming off a superb log.
After Mr and Mrs Plane had left, I kicked the mill in the guts again and met with another Plane who's company was not anywhere as entertaining. In fact I wish we'd never met.
You see I had a London Plane log which was promising to be quite a good specimen that I had ripped in two ready for the mill. I swung the flitch onto the machine and took the first waney edge off the top. About 3/4's of the way through, the familiar and teeth gritting 'zip' noise of the saw hitting something other than wood, bounced back at me. I slipped the slice off the top and was relieved to find that the blade had only just nicked the very edge of the top of a bullet head nail, just under the skin of the sapwood. That was lucky........
Spoke too soon didn't I. You can see the nail hole where the 3" nail was removed. Well a suspicious bump just in front made me chop the top off that bump and Voila! another 6 nails in a nice little clump! I guess Little Johnny was given a hammer and a pack of nails that year for Xmas......... hope he hit his thumb.
No matter how I turned that log on the machine, I hit nail after nail after nail. The unusual thing was that usually nails are only encountered in the first 6"or so of the trunk. These nails went all the way through. I stopped counting after the 20th and stopped trying to dig them out too.
Here's the pile I did remove. But despite the nails and the damage they left behind, after working with London Plane over the past few weeks, it was all worth it in the end. Now I just have to hurry up and wait 'til it dries. Irony is I have a hell of a lot of nailing to do in the mean time!
Might want to ask Santa for one of these...
ReplyDeletehttp://www.amazon.com/Woodworking-Detector-Lumber-Wizard-III/dp/B0015QWO0C
... or something similar.
Stay JOLLY!
D
As much as we enjoyed ourselves last Sunday, it's probably just as well V. and I beat a retreat when we did. I can imagine the air was blue with the discovery of all those nails and, being the delicate flower that I am, I wouldn't have known where to look!
ReplyDeleteThat metal detector looks the business, but perhaps you could keep an eye on eBay for a second-hand MRI scanner: One of those babies could suck a one-inch brad straight out of the centre of a two-foot log!
Thanks Dave and Jack,
ReplyDeleteIt's been a while since I wielded one of those gadgets and thought I wouldn't again, but I think the time has come to buy one.
Twas a good thing you weren't there Jack, I may well have had to produce the smelling salts....I wonder if Timberking are thinking of making a MRI attachment for the B2000 model???
Cheers
Glen