A really nice weekend..

Keep your mineral spirits handy with that tamarack. You can burn a gouge by heating the resin, and there's more than enough of that! With conifers, the light touch means even more than with hardwoods, because you can crush so easily when transitioning from late to early wood. Don't despair, though. It's a bit more friendly when cured than green.

mineral spirits?? as in paint thinner, or what, George?? ya have to remember that I'm a learner here.. *g*

I had an interesting conversation with a neighbor who's a contractor last night... he was over for coffee and we were sitting around the shop/garage/pub/sports bar and I mentioned that I had been getting a strange taste in my mouth when I was working these logs.. I thought it was my imagination, or something else... maybe something that I was eating or drinking, but 3 days in a row was quite a coincidence.. He said that it was from the tamarack.. asked me if my fingers or hands were numb or tingling!! (not yet)

According to him, it's the natural insecticide in the tamarack that we smell (now that we know what it is) and that when working with kiln dried tamarack

mac

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SHEESH, that's what's written on the container!

Well, tamarack's not as bad as the more durable woods as far as natural insecti/fungicides go, but there's enough terpenes to leave an aftertaste, that's for sure. Never heard of neuropathy, and I've done some multi-hour sessions dogging and/or bearing tamarack off the saw without experiencing it. Makes you wonder. If cedars weren't "natural," would they ever make it to market with all the chemicals in 'em? Much less some of the tropical durables?

Just spun a 16x5 out of some cherry that was marinating in the sun, and the smell of almond - hydrocyanic acid - was pretty strong. They used to make spring tonics and cough syrup out of both cherry and tamarack.

ok, that's what I thought, but what I was asking is "what for?"

It's not sappy, like the pine we got, more like just wet.. (get a combination of shavings and water flying off them), so I don't think you mean to clean the chisels, right?

mac

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We are talking tamarack - Larix laricina? Renowned for its resin content, and feared for the heat of its combustion, which is said to be capable of warping iron stoves?

Unless you've got stuff down a bit, or some other tree referred to as tamarack, you'll need to clean those tools, and everything that touches the hairs on your left arm will adhere unless you bathe in the stuff.

hmm.. I'll have to take some pictures this afternoon... it doesn't seem to be leaking resin/sap very much... not nearly as bad as pine, which requires hand cleaner later to get the sap off your hands..

This has a fairly thin, kind of waxy feeling bark and pretty tight grain... BTW: probably no real relevance, but we got it off of Tamarack Summit.. lol

mac

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Just thinking ...SHUT UP ARCH... if you're collecting only softwoods, you're not collecting the Tamarack we know and love. Perhaps they call western larch tamarack as well. You're out to the left?

Our eastern variety is as dense as cherry, loaded with resin, and while not tolerating wet feet, doesn't mind a bit of casual water here and there. If you were in an area with L laricina, hardwoods wouldn't be too far away. Mine give a run for the sun with maple and cherry where they have sprouted on upslopes.

Was the preferred timber for mine lagging in the hard rock days.

This wood was at about 7,000 feet... most hardwood (what little there is in our area) stops at about 3,000 to 5,000' and mostly pine, fir, etc. above that..

I turned a 9" bowl last night and hit the first sap, but only in a few places on the outside bark.. probably where branches were trimmed..

LOTS of water, though.. I took the walls down to about 3/8" at 840 rpm and was getting soaked... not just the tools, but my arm, shirt and wife, who was wood burning at the bench.. Before I bagged it, I took it up to 1,200 rpm for about 20 minutes and it was SPRAYING water out of the end grain! Left a line on the floor mats for about 3' on each side of the lathe..

I posted some pics on ABPW..

mac

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Sad to say, my ISP doesn't get a tenth of the binary on that group. Saw the text message.

As to water, after the new lathe arrived, stand built and located, I wanted to do was swing some big wet stuff. Last thing I thought of was rust on my tablesaw, which was now in "the zone," rather than the cleverly covered belt/disc sander. I now have a purpose-built cover for both, though I haven't turned on Blue for almost two months.

I'll try to get some time together tomorrow and post the pics on a page with link..

mac

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I'm betting it's either an immature White Fir or Subalpine Fir. White's generally have needles in the 1.5" to 2.5" range, but could be as short as 1" - so I'd tend to lean more toward Subalpine.

(You didn't venture into the Santa Lucia Mts. / Los Padres NF by any chance?)

ok, replying to my own post, so I'll top post.. *g*

for the news feed impaired, the pictures are available at:

mac

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Certainly not Tamarack as we know it. Rounded needles and smooth bark say spruce to me. Firs have flattened needles.

hmm.. I don't know if we have spruce here, but we must... ol' howard hughes built the "spruce goose" in Calif...

mac

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Hi Mack

I have been away for a few days and only now skimmed through the latest posts

Read your ? about the wood and had a look at the pic. you put up, the wood is definitely not tamarack/larch, the needle pic. is the real give away on that, I am not sure what it is, to hard to tell from the picture, for me it is often hard enough when able to look at the trees in real life, in this case it could be a number of trees, like whitebark pine or one of the Firs that grow in the western mountains.

The Tamarack and Thuja, Junipers etc. do all have a natural decay resistance build in, but not many people have problems with the natural chemicals when just handling the wood, but breathing the dust apparently can be a real problem.

Have fun and take care Leo Van Der Loo

mac davis wrote:

Leo... My wife received the book she ordered, ("trees of the western forests, or something like that) and is pretty sure that it's "baltic fir"...

mac

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