First load from the kiln for the new year

Brought the first load home today from the kiln.  It was all thick curly [tiger] maple. Most soft red maple. 16/4 [4" thick], 12/4[3" thick] and some 10/4[2.5" thick]. I do believe this will be the only 16/4 and maybe 12/4 for the year. I only have small amounts and its really well figured. It take so long to dry I just can't afford to have it sitting around. If you are looking for some spectacular stock for slab tops or something else, let me know soon. I can't say how long this will last as its only a few hundred feet of each.  It does  contain some color. Moving this stuff lets me know how old I am. Some planks are over 200# each. It was worse when we got them green though. I will be getting a big load of 8/4 material of flame birch, curly [tiger] maple and birdseye maple out on this load as well.

Bowl turners, this has some real nice width to it. Some are nice and wide. Not much isn't under 10". The price on this batch of 16/4 is 20$ board foot. You have to take the whole piece. They are 8 feet long. The 12/4 is 15$ foot for the wide stock and 12$ foot for bed post stock.

 16/4 tiger maple

 16/4 tiger maple

 16/4 tiger maple

10/4 and 12/4 tiger maple

I know I have 1 piece of 16/4 hard maple. Tight curl. Its beautiful. Email me off my web site.Or call. The info is all on the web site.
www.bobkloes.com

Just in tme for the start of winter

 The pictures above are a couple bookmatched sets of walnut slabs. The taller of the two is 7' tall and the the smaller set is a little over 5' tall. Nice crotch figure in both sets. The bottom picture is a crotch piece of mulberry. Its 30" wide and about 54" long. The color is wonderful. It will turn to a reddish brown over time. This one is only about an inch thick. Nice and flat. The edges are wonderful. I do have a thicker one that matches this as well. Email me for more info if you want. I have lots of other slabs as well. A pair of pretty curly cherry ones and lots of tiger maple and walnut ones as well.

This is a shot of "paint grade" tiger maple. It got stained while drying. The figure is really nice and some will clean up  to be white. I cannot say what the stain would do for coloring this. Some has a spalted look to it. The stock is all 5/4 and the figure is really nice. I will list the price in the wood letter. It way under the price of spalted maple and curly [tiger] maple. Its even under the price of plain soft maple.

 The picture above does not do justice to the figure, but its a pile of 12/4, 8/4 and 6/4 birdseye maple. Thick stock takes so long to dry. If you hurry it, it can have all sorts of issues. The 8/4 stock and thicker can take several years to dry right. That is why some looks so gray. It weathers, but cleans up just fine. I even have some 16/4 stock.

This is a cart of pieces left over from a job I did for an aircraft company. Its all 8/4 birdseye. Enough to fill a pallet. There is 1 piece of walnut and I think some tiger on there too. Email me if you want a great deal on this pile. Seeing as 8/4 birdseye sells for 12$ board foot, there is well over a grand worth of material on here.

Next is the pile of 4/4, 6/4 and 8/4 flame birch. Its just stunning stuff. If you follow Charles Neil, you have seen his use of some of this material. I have made several pieces over the years from it. I plan yo use it for my kitchen cabinets when I get time to make them.

This was a tavern table I made from some of it a few years back.

The flame figure is just plain stunning.
Please email me for any information you are looking for. I ship all over the country.

I wish each of you a blessed Christmas season and a great new year.

Birdseye heaven

Just got back from a trip to the mill to get a trailer load of green stock. I had asked for some 12/4 birdseye and flame birch for bed post material. I know this is super scarce. Drying takes forever and finding big logs is never easy. Plus you are going against the veneer companies to purchase those. Well, I hit the motherload. My son in law picked me up and we stated out about 6:30 am. It was a wonderful drive. Sunny and pleasant. We made good time and even stopped for breakfast. When I got to the mill, it was real quite. They work 4 10 hour days and Friday was an off day. The loader guy was working thankfully. I was told I didn't have much to pickup. I was told wrong....

The loader guy was picking up bundles and bringing them to the truck. He came with 3 bundles and told us there were more. Not on this load...The wood was all frozen together. Took some pounding with sledge hammers to get it apart. I was speechless. There were planks, 3" and 17" wide. Beautiful white birdseye. The whole trailer got filled quick. We had to hand load some to get the most on without being overloaded. We had almost 6000# on the trailer. The roads were a bit lumpy to say the least, so we strapped it down and headed out.

Unloading was no fun. Had to beat it more with sledges. Stacking and stickering was a chore. Heavy wet and icy. Some of the big planks weighed several hundred pounds. Made for some exciting stacking to say the least. No smashed fingers thankfully. Wet cold hands, but those are fixable. Hope you enjoy the pics. It was a great day to say the least. Hope to be going back in the next month for some flame birch. I hope to have this dried and ready to sell by the end of this year. Thick stock is always a slow process. This will make some great turning stock, bedposts or tables. I have never in my life seen this thick and wide of birdseye. All great figure too.

New things and a new saw

Its been a warm month of June. Have been working on some new things and some art show stuff. Got the chest back from Joan the painter. She did an absolutely wonderful job. I cannot say enough about the work she did on this piece. It is a show stopper and her workmanship and talent is evident on it.
The I have been working on a mirror frame for a client and thought it would make a nice show piece. It is a Stickley style mirror frame done in tiger maple. Nice shadow lines and a good size. My problem is, I never make just a few....I also have done a smaller , more vertical one. I'll get some pictures up at another time.
I do have one show at the end of July, Art at the Park in Appleton. Its a one day show, but last year is was 98 degrees and about 98% humidity. Kind of nasty. Then there is the 3 day show in Milwaukee at the Domes. That is in August. More to come on both of those. Lots of work to get done between now and then.

Got a new saw for the shop. 1800# of goodness. She is a Northfield sliding table, tablesaw. It takes a 14" to 18" blade. She is a beast, but something I have wanted for years. Northfield is an old family company still in business in Minnesota. New saws are still made. They are a great company to do business with. I have some work to get it working right , but it is not much. Hope to have it running soon. You can see my old 1941 unisaw to the left of the Northfield. She is going to a good home.

I didn't say much about lumber this time. I am still drying and selling. Be sure to let me know if you are searching for anything. By the way, the festool domino worked great on the mirrors.

Spalted maple and some other goodies.

Got a new load of wood from the kiln today. I also had these boards heat treated. I don't think I want to build with wood that has a live fungus or bugs in it. So I have them cook these at 145 degrees for 48 hours to kill anything in them. This was some really nice spalted hard maple I got from a friend. Years ago we  sheeted his shop with this stuff. I t about cried. He kept saying it didn't make him sad. He had some left over and I finally talked him into selling it. It is 12 feet long and 4 to 7" wide. Nice clean stock.

I have been very busy in the shop. Did a small dining room table, some benches, a vanity in black ash and some smaller pieces. It has been a good week. Got some wood to ship out this coming week.Have to get some desks made and some more benches. I want to get one of the nice tiger maple slabs in and plane to get some pictures for a guy who wants a mantle. Got some wonderful nice slabs here, along with a bunch of new 8/4 stock. Had my buddy turn some legs in flame birch and birdseye. They came out wonderful. Email me if you are looking for leg stock or some great stock for small boxes.

you just can't fool with mother nature.

This was a piece of 8/4 curly maple that lived up to its name. It was on the bottom side of as pile. Literally tons of weight of wood and concrete and it still twisted. You just can't prevent what nature will do if it wants to. I hope to cut this for leg stock. Its about all it is good for. Nice 10 foot long piece, looks like spaghetti Maybe it should go for a pine wood derby track.....

Time to surrender

You can stack and sticker and level. You air dry and pile weight on top. You band it and stack it on top of other piles.You do everything you can think ok to hold movement to a minimum.
Then you open the kiln doors and start unpiling wood. BOIGGG. Sounds like something Wiley E. Coyote would have happen.  You put 2500 feet in the kiln and put thousands of pounds of weight on it. But nature has a way of messing with your head. The pictures above are of a few pieces  of flame birch. They look like the yellow brick road in the wizard of Oz. I have one that is a half round. If I had one of those round top windows, I would not have to steam bend it.

This is some wonderful figured birch. But sometimes, whatever you do is not enough. I chopped these into shorter pieces. Then I chopped the shorter pieces into shorter shorter pieces. I ran a face over the jointer. I then moved some of the pieces to the scrap barrel. Sometimes you just need to know when its time to surrender.

I have a lot of new stock that will be going into the kiln in the next week or so. I will be taking some shots of stuff before then, I hope. Let me know if you are looking for anything.

Lumber shipping, and all the related fun

This past week has been a flurry of cutting planing,measuring, cutting, measuring, cutting cardboard,wrapping and measureing and weighing. I don't think the sisters who taught me would like that sentence. My apologies Sisters.

I have been cutting and wrapping and sending box kits out all over the USA for Charles Neil's box build. As  a one man shop, I have my furniture to build and business to take care of. Then you get about 25 orders and it kind of takes away what you are doing. Not that I am complaining at all. I love the contact with folks about lumber. I enjoy buying lumber and all the related things that go with it. Lifting , hauling, more lifting, more hauling. Hey , its good exercise.

When making up the kits, I always try and give a little extra. Mistakes happen. I have made so many, well, I am just glad I am still here.I got a list from Charles and then started going through piles and piles and pulling stock. Then you crosscut and figure and flip and flop boards. I found I had a lot of 5/4 with some heartwood on 1 side. I can deal with it, but a lot of folks don't know how. So I have a big pile of stuff for me to use on something else. That is an issue when you buy material. You can spec anything you want, but the more you want, the more it costs.
I try and give out all the material they will need and I also look at the grain and what the piece will be used for. I had some nice quartersawn curly cherry that went into some of the kits for feet and trim. It will look very nice. One thing, with small pieces like these tend to be, you kind of lost the curl figure in the cherry, because your parts are small and the figure is more broad. Flame birch wouldn't really look like much on a small box like this. You could use it for the sides. Then you will get to see the curl. But small parts are just that. Too small to show much.
I also try and mark the face or show side on the tiger maple. For whatever reason, tiger maple is the wood the shows best on the bark side of the board. The figure on the other side is never as good and does not show as well. Don't try book matching it. One piece looks great and one looks like plain maple. Its one question I really want to ask the big guy upstairs. Flame birch is kind of like that too. No issues with curly cherry or curly walnut. This is one of those weird wood facts you can use to astound your friends. Yeah, I wonder why I don't have more friends....
Anyway, I got a bunch gone and some more packed up. I am waiting on a few more folks to get back to me with some answers and then I will finish those too. Then you load the truck and drive to Green Bay,[home of the Packers], yes I am a big fan. I use Fed EX for shipping so I get to print out labels, tape them on to my wonderfully packaged wood and ship them on their way. I am understanding more why companies having shipping and packing departments and how much supplies cost. I spent  150$ just on cardboard. Then you get strapping stuff and time, well, its not a money maker. But it is good fun to talk with folks and tell stories.  Hope I didn't bore to tears, but this is part of my business too. Thanks to the folks who buy my wood. I do appreciate it. Hope you like what you get. Any issues call the boss. Thats me. I will always make it right.

The stepback is complete

Looks pretty, doesn't it? 57" wide and 77" tall. All tiger maple, including the drawer sides and all the secondary wood. I really like how this turned out. Both size wise and color. I really like the light golden brown walnut dye on the tiger maple.

It has the lift up lid on top for added secret space. It is a very nice feature. Just make sure to allow space for expansion. I added about a 1/16" on either side and about 3/32" on the front. Everyone that sees it really loves it. I hope to get it shipped out soon. Have a couple other projects to get started. I also am wanting to start some more slab tables.

Getting the top section up on the bottom and getting pictures is always hard. God bless my wife. Could not do this without her help. She helped me get the top on and take pictures. Then take it back off. She is a trooper. I am blessed in many ways. She is the biggest blessing to me.
Got the secret drawers in place and all set to go. I hope you enjoyed the photos. I have more, but nothing much different then what is here. If you have questions, let me know.

A day for dyeing....

Today was the day I dyed the lower case of the tiger maple stepback cupboard I am working on. Got all the grain raising and sanding out of the way. Got the coat of oil on and then the 1st coat of sealer. It is looking really nice. This is some incredible tiger maple I am using.

Tomorrow will be sanding and cleaning and starting with the finish coats. The weather has been just wonderful. It was almost 80 today with low humidity. Sounds like this might last for almost another week. Sure makes time in the shop go fast with the doors open and the sun shining.

Thanks for looking in. Hope to have some stories of some of the folks I deal with coming . They are pretty interesting people, at least to me. Hope you all have a great week!