Features Overview

HUON PINE BURL LOG

This magnificent old burl log was salvaged from the Teepookana Plateau in western Tasmania. The log was probably part of a big Huon Pine tree cut down in earlier harvesting operations, perhaps 120 plus years ago and this part was discarded in favour of the straighter, clearer timber above and below this burl that was favoured for boat building and furniture making.

Because of the Huon Pine’s phenomenal resistance to rot these logs can remain buried in forest litter and earth for thousands of years and still be perfectly sound timber.

More detailed information and interesting facts and articles relating to Huon Pine and other special timbers as well as the history of timber getting on the west coast of Tasmania can be found at Tasmanian Specialty Timbers, a company famous in the Tasmanian timber industry and a great resource for people wishing to buy rare and special Tasmanian timbers.

I bought this log through a tender process managed by Island Specialty Timbers (IST) in Strahan, Tasmania, a Tasmanian Government enterprise that manages the salvaging operations for special timbers in Tasmania. This log was shipped to Queensland for use by myself in my Fig Tree Pocket workshop.

But first the log had to be cut into manageable portions. Usually I use a big chainsaw to rip the logs into slabs (see below) and then cut again into sizes that suit my specialty of large form work.

In this instance, Heritage Tree Care generously made their large Lucas Mill available for me to use because they genuinely love timber and to see such a rare and exotic example of an iconic species being milled was for them a pleasure.

So the log was positioned under the mill and a chainsaw attachment fitted to enable the wide log to be slabbed from bark to bark, about 1 metre at its widest.

The slabbing process is quite strenuous. The Lucas Mill has a wide chainsaw blade attachment that can make a cut of 1200 mm and that’s a lot of cut happening at one time and its a manual process, no automation here!

Feature 3

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