elm

We finished two chinese elm cutting boards. The first is a single slab. The second is larger, laminated strips. We also milled 3"x6" beams for chris out of poplar and wound up with some beautiful slabs. The poplar looks likeit has a fungus and spalted and produced the purple and black stains.

Finished

We finished up hauling chinese elm logs from town today. We now have a giant pile. We also finished the ponderaosa pine burl table. It has a green alabaster inlay and a black walnut base. The alabaster is from torrey and the walnut from in town.

logs

Yesterday we hauled a bunch of pear wood from the mulberry grove subdivision. Today we hauled some huge Chinese elm logs from 100 north downtown. They were large and wet. They were all less than 30years old and giant. Chris was instrumental, loaning us his big trailer (ours would have broke in half) and moving everything with the forklift. Notice the wheels off the ground! Thanks Chris!

Krista

Krista joined the crew and helped with the ponderosa pine burl table. The solid black walnut base is finished and oiled and the top is almost done. Look for the final pic tomorrow. The inlay came out well and the grain is crazy.

Katy cut out some jewelry pieces on Scott finished a juniper burl bowl we found with Duane the other day.

Table

We slabbed this ponderosa pine burl that our neighbor found and matched it up, cut and glued it together. We cut out a rough block of green alabaster and ground it down into the shape of the knot hole. The knot hole was routered out then to match the stone (you can see all the sharpie marks trying to get it right) The stone was set in place and the edges set with epoxy to hold it. The more intact knot hole was also filled with stone and sealed in epoxy. It set late last night and we ground off the lower part to see the pattern. Today we will grind down the stone and the table top
and sand and finish it. The base will be a large block of black walnut.

Burl

We dropped off this table at Earth Spirit. The table is sycamore slab with a maple base. Both trees that were cut in town. It is inlayed with richolite. Duane found a tree stup with burls while he was looking for antlers so we went back out and picked up three nice juniper burls.

walnut

We milled a black walnut stump that we dug up this past summer. Clint wants gun stock blanks and we cut those out of this stump. We got a lot of other nice cuts too..Some 2 inch slabs for tables/counters some 1 inch boards for spoons, and some nice chunks that came off the outside for bowls! The grain is amazing.We found another stump on the way home that was being dug up!

dogbane

We cut dogbane today.It is a small woody plant, a close relative to milkweed, for making cordage. It is strong and more durable than hemp. The indiginous folks used it for traps and snares. We use it for the cord of out necklaces. It lasts a long time and softens quickly. We stripped the small branches off and bundled the stalks for later processing.

bowls

Scott finished two burl bowls the other day. The light colored one is pinon pine burl and the darker one is a juniper burl bowl. Both were found up in northern Utah where Scott works. They will be featured at Earth Spirit in Moab along with other wood bowls, alabaster lamps, tables and some jewelry.

mantle

Eric installed the mantle we made in the house he is working on. It turned out well. The walls get painted soon and it should look amazing.

farm

We looked at some farm land sunday that is in town. We want to have land for the sawmill that is close to the city trees, an orchard, greenhouse, big garden, chickens, etc.. This land has millcreek running through it with a dry pond.

comb

We crushed most of the comb up and heated it on the wood stove on a double boiler and then strained off the honey into jars. Pictured is round one. Then we put the wax back and keep heating for several rounds and finally we will be left with just wax for candles and furniture finish. We also saved some of the best comb and picked out a mason jar full of bee pollen!

bees

Today started off as a regular sort of day, errands moving stuff around etc and then we went with Jerry and Jen to reinspect a tree down the street. The tree was a globe willow that had split in two exposing a hive of wild bees. We hauled off the log of the broken section a few days ago. this fall when it split jerry put mite strips in and sealed it up from the full exposure. Unfortunately for the bees they did not survive the winter. Fortunatly for us they left lots of honey. We started digging in and pulled out pound after pound of honey comb, wax and some pollen. It was beautiful and amazing

honey

We collected a lot of honey and ate it the whole time. It was so amazingly good, there was honey in several stages from very recent, old, crystallized, light colored, thick, thin, dark, sweet, sharp. it was incredible. We collected all we could. The hole was several feet into the trunk in both directions. We finally took our cache and resealed the trunk in the hope that some other swarm might decide to colonize this spot.