Larry Jaques wrote in message . ..

On Tue, 18 May 2004 08:23:32 -0500, Conan the Librarian
brought forth from the murky depths:

I dunno, Lar. I don't seem to have that problem. :-)

Yeah, you finish a project or two a year, don't you?

Sometimes even more. Or at least I did until I got back into
flyfishing. I've been working on a hutch for SWMBO for months now.
In the meantime I've been doing smaller projects for special
occasions, but this darned hutch is my albatros now.

No stain there, just shellac. What looks like blotching is actually
some curl. Here's a photo of a different project that shows some of the
neat grain the stuff has: http://uweb.txstate.edu/~cv01/repisa.gif

Yes, better.

It's unlike any pine I've worked with before or since. I just wish
I had an idea of what it's real name is so I could try to track some
more down.

The panel in that picture was about as heavy as a maple panel of
similar size, and the wood *scraped* beautifully. Not your granddad's
pine for sure. (Well, actually it might be more like what he could have
gotten.)

Yeah, the larger pineywood forests they had 70+ years ago prolly
were nicer than the borg-a-matic pretzels they turn out now.

What we have now is tree factories. No comparison whatsoever.

Tendjew. You were starting to worry me. I was wondering if you
normally burned the stuff when you lived in lowCal.

No, those who used fireplaces ordered oak (sigh), avocado (sigh),
or yewcallapeetusez. I saw manzanita growing (small) out in the
wilds of the deserts we knew as the "California foothills". Y'know,
4-6 INCHES in diameter and 8' tall. Veritable dinosaur teeth. The
only mesquite I saw was in bags: soak 'n smoke BBQ chips. =:0

Every once in a while I'll see some mesquite in firewood bundles
they sell in front of convenience stores around here. Ironically,
mesquite was usually considered a trash wood until us yuppie
wooddorkers got a hold of it and drove the price up.


Chuck Vance