Gathering and Chainsawing
As it often happens, on the way to the grocery store, Kurt asks Melody to pull the car over as he spotted a new felled hardwood, perfectly ripe for the picking. Melody gives him a hall pass on the groceries so he can head out in his truck and trailer to inspect further. Winching the enormous logs onto his trailer, saving them from a burn pile or landfill, Kurt returns home to start the process of giving the tree its second life as a piece of art.
Kurt works with local arborists to source felled trees from our urban forests, some of which are 100 years old or more. Kurt and Melody believe that these beautiful trees need to be given a second life by rescuing them from landfills, a fate they do not deserve. Kurt gathers the trees and brings them home to their wood shop where the trees guide him to cut the slabs into shapes that will be used for their new purpose – this is where the art begins.
“This Silver Maple was the most spectacular piece of wood I have ever run into, because of its color and figure and because it was so huge, over 8 feet in diameter.”
Kurt custom built this trailer in order to procure large pieces of wood. Equipped with an overhead bar for getting lift as one attempts to load large lumps of wood for the trip home. The winch was essential to load 10,000 pound logs of wood. Heavy duty suspension and tires withstand the abuse a woodturner can give his equipment.
Kurt often says ;"Honey, I brought home a little log." Melody often replies; "Is that all you could fit in the trailer?"
Once back home, Kurt uses the power of his winch to transfer the logs to the studio. Oftentimes, he will need to carve the original log down to a more manageable size. Once the raw pieces of log are pared down, Kurt starts the process of slabbing the wood.
Slabbing the wood with a 3 foot bar on a chainsaw is the first step to making the wood smaller and more manageable.
“This log is from Ft. Douglas and it was a telegraph tree and it had a rock dead center in its 6 ft diameter. So I was able to hit the rock from all sides with my 3 ft chainsaw. It was terrible, I had to continually sharpen my chains.”
Once the wood is cut in slabs, Kurt chainsaws the corners to make them round before he turns these wood blanks into a bowl. It is much quicker and easier to start from a round blank than with a chain sawed section of a tree . The next step in this piece of wood’s new life is a few turns on the lath, further turning it into a vessel. Stay tuned for the next step!