Had a black walnut (real honest to god juglans nigra, not a butternut,
for a change) go down in the woods behind my place last week.

It had been destabilized by some construction work that was being done
to "improve" our creek flow.

I figured I'd like to see what kind of figure the crotch had and went
to work with my Stihl.

Bucked it up above and below the crotch, leaving about a five foot
long piece on the ground for my experiment.

I decided to cleave the crotch at the intersection and went to work.

I've cut reaction wood before but never in this exact way. I would
have thought that the tension would not be strong on the cut that I
was making but the saw went in to about the depth of the bar and then
grabbed solid, knocking me forwards and way too close to the blade.

I was pretty damned surprised by how the wood grabbed that bar and I
could have been bad hurt by thinking that I knew what was going to
happen.

I guess the lesson is: whatever the worst thing that can happen, will
happen.

Turned out OK and the figure is interesting enough to make it worth
taking to a guy with a bigger bandsaw than I have.


Like they used to say on one of my favorite TV shows: Let's be
careful out there.







Regards,

Tom Watson
http://home.comcast.net/~tjwatson1/