Local Historic Trees Salvaged and Brought to Life
Penn State Elm
I have been using Elm for smaller boxes, letter openers, and pencil boxes. The
logs were salvaged from the Penn State University Park campus during
the winter storms of 1995 and 1996. Many trees were removed after being
severely damaged by the heavy snow.
Elm is one of the rare
woods in which the pores are arranged in wavy bands, and often give the
wood a feather-like appearance. Its color is usually a light brown to
gray, but depending on the tree can have some dark brown areas and even
a creamy brown color in the sap wood.
I make a variety of different sizes and designs from Elm, all of which came from the Penn State University campus. The specialty piece is the Elm pencil box with the Lion profile (as seen below). All other boxes have the traditional Shaker box "fingers" or swallow tails, while the fronts of the Elm pencil boxes show a Lion profile.
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The Majestic Courthouse Maples
From the Centre County Courthouse in Bellefonte, PA.
I have been making the smaller boxes, stamp boxes, and letter openers from the Courthouse Maple trees.
I
was shocked to open up the morning paper and find the trees on the
Courthouse lawn had been removed to make way for renovations. Later
that morning I stopped in at the County Commissioners office to get
information on what was to happen with the wood. Much of it was cut
into small pieces and scheduled to be hauled to a landfill. After
several phone calls, I had convinced the contractor to dump the wood at
a friends farm, where I could work on salvaging pieces for lumber.
Another local woodworker, Robert Martin, was also interested in
obtaining some of the wood, so we agreed to share the trees in hopes of
preserving a small piece of Centre County history.
The Sugar
Maple was the last remaining tree from the original planting of the
Courthouse lawn in the mid-1800's. In nearly every photo or postcard
I was able to find, this tree shows up almost as a part of the
courthouse.
I have always enjoyed looking at the history of the
trees I get to work with. But can you imagine, 143 years in such a
focal point of Centre County, the people who may have stopped in the
shadow of this majestic tree on a hot summer day?
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White Oak from Pine Grove Mills
This tree was taken down in October of 2011, and had to be taken to a larger mill to be quartersawn. The tree provided five 8' long logs, the largest was 32" in diameter and the smallest being 23". This was the tallest and straightest tree I have been able to salvage. It was taken down with great care by Ed Meek, who I thank greatly for loading it onto my trailer.
Will have the lumber back from the kiln in late February, and am excited to see what interesting ray fleck shows up in the grain due to being quartersawn.
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White Willows from Talleyrand Park
I have been able to make boxes
in several sizes from trees salvaged from the Willows in Talleyrand
Park. The history of these trees date back to the earliest settlers of
Bellefonte.
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White Oak Burl
This White Oak burl was cut on a friends property near State College.
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Ginkgo
This tree was salvaged from East College Heights in State College, where it was taken down due to overcrowding with other trees. I had never seen a piece of Ginkgo wood, much less had a chance to work with it until being able to salvage the pieces of this tree. I would have to describe the wood as a cross between Pine and Poplar. The grain looks very similar to Pine, especially towards the center of the tree, although some of the grain tends to have a green and yellow tint similar to Poplar. Even the smell of the wood when it is cut is almost a combination of those two woods. One piece of the slab wood after being cut in early 2008 remained damp, and eventually started to form small branches. I covered it with sawdust and they continued to grow throughout the summer. It will be interesting to see if the section turns green again this spring.
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