# where do you get your wood for turning?



## zacker (Mar 25, 2010)

It kills me to have to buy wood to turn, unless of course its something exotic or something I need right away. It also kills me to find a great chunk of wood and have to wait a year for it to dry...lol so where do you get your wood? do you scavenge it from the woods? buy from a store? look in fire wood piles of friends and family? I recently foud a HUGE stump in my yard in the woods a tree cut by the previous owner and its all spalted maple... after cutting off all the rotted, useless pieces i have a block thats about 18" by 20" by 20" drying out in my garage (it was soaked from the rain and snow and sitting under a pile of brush.) I also got the other half of the trunk, whats left of it anyhow, some sizeable pieces for pens and such..lol heres a seed pot maker I made for my wife with some of this wood... 










I also cut down a bunch of trees and one of the maples has some nice Ambrosia spots and really cool, inturned sections that look like it was growing alongside a post and grew around it.. should make a neat bowl.. I saved two long pieces of the straighter section, one to mill into a mantle for our fireplace and another to mill into a table top. I used another piece of regular maple for a bench but its gotta dry before final cutting. Now im looking for burls and maybe some sizeable Walnut, being from an area where walnut trees once were on every farm, theres gotta be some downed trees around.


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## john lucas (Sep 18, 2007)

If you make it an ongoing process you will always have lots of free wood. I have a shop full right now. 
You don't have to wait a year. rough turn your projects whether it's a bowl or a box. Put them up to dry. In my area they take from 3 months to 6 months depending on the wood, thickness, time of year etc. 
What I do is cut up wood and rough turn some of it. Put this up and then turn a thin one to completion. This sort of takes care of the I want it now fix. If you do this often in 6 months you'll have plenty of dry bowls to turn. After that, every time you rough out a bowl pull a dry one down and finish it. You get the best of both worlds.
I get wood in batches and don't have time to rough it out. I cut it into bowl, vessel or box blanks, even ornament spindle and ball blanks. On the small stuff I just coat the ends and put it up to dry. on the bowl blanks I coat the whole thing. 
Here's the process. I get the wood, cut what I can into bowl blanks or vessel blanks. I roll them in an electric skillet with Parrafin wax to coat them. Put them on the floor out of sun and wind. They won't dry but will sit there until I can rough turn them. Some start to crack. When that happens I cut them into smaller box blanks or ornament blanks, mirror blanks etc. These usually don't crack so I have shop full of dry pieces for these projects. 
Sometimes the logs sit too long in the driveway and start to check before I can get to them. These are cut up into spindle blanks, 4x4,3x3, 2x2 etc. I try to save as much wood as I can out of these. 
After 5 years of doing this I have lots of dry wood and still get the green wood to turn today or rough out. In fact I now have storage problems.


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## bond3737 (Nov 13, 2009)

zacker seems like youve got the right idea. The best way to find wood in my opinion is to drive around neighborhoods after storms hit. Thats what I did when I first started out. but eventually that wasnt good enough so I quit my job and started working for a tree service! lol may not be the most practical of choices but it has given me access to pretty much anything I can think of. Im always on the look out for burls when Im driving. Sometimes if I see a really good one Ill pull in and knock on the door and see if they would mind me taking it. Most people could care less. Also keeping in contact with as many people as possible helps a ton. Telling all your friends relatives or whatever that you are on the lookout for wood will get you plenty of phone calls. If you are passionate about what you are doing then other people tend to follow and offer help:yes: Im sure others will add to this but thats how I get mine happy turnin, 
Bond


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## Bonanza35 (Jan 20, 2011)

I don't know if there is much oilfield activity in your area but I spend a lot of time in Oklahoma and the drilling is rampant right now. When they build pipelines and power lines to service wells they cut a 30' swath through whatever is in the way and either chip it or leave it to rot...miles and miles of it. It's sickening to see what's going to waste. I'm turnin as fast as I can. Maybe that's something to keep an eye out for where you are.


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## Glidden (Dec 2, 2010)

If you have a chainsaw you can get a lot of wood for free. Most cities have a forestry dump where wood is taken after a storm comes through, you can find a lot of nice wood at something like that. Sometimes you can come across a private land owner who doesn't mind a tree or two being brought down, especially if you make them something from the tree. If there is any forested public land that allows woodcutting there is usually an administrator you can contact about getting permission, though sometime the stipulation is that you not sell any products made from the wood from public land. Last you can contact a tree removal service and see if they can hook you up with some nice hard woods from time to time.


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## tcleve4911 (Dec 16, 2006)

zacker said:


> heres a seed pot maker I made for my wife with some of this wood...


Help us out with this one.....What's seed pot maker?


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## BassBlaster (Nov 21, 2010)

I'm guessing the little rolls of paper are the seed pots. Probably for starting plants from seed? How the device works is beyond me though. Just taking a guess.


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## NCPaladin (Aug 7, 2010)

Seed Pots... yep, fill with soil, plant the seeds, sit them in a try of water (the water will wick up), plant the pot and all when they develop.
http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=EAA187E65DE68A15

Along with the other suggestions
Check with your power company on when they are trimming/adding lines. Locally they only mulch 4" and under and larger is left for the home owner to dispose of.
The folks who sell firewood come across all kinds of stuff. If you have to buy it is only a few bucks (after all it is firewood at $85 a cord). Often they will keep crotch sections for you also.

Don't forget about the free section on Craigs List and Freecycle


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## zacker (Mar 25, 2010)

bond3737 said:


> zacker seems like youve got the right idea. The best way to find wood in my opinion is to drive around neighborhoods after storms hit. Thats what I did when I first started out. but eventually that wasnt good enough so I quit my job and started working for a tree service! lol may not be the most practical of choices but it has given me access to pretty much anything I can think of. Im always on the look out for burls when Im driving. Sometimes if I see a really good one Ill pull in and knock on the door and see if they would mind me taking it. Most people could care less. Also keeping in contact with as many people as possible helps a ton. Telling all your friends relatives or whatever that you are on the lookout for wood will get you plenty of phone calls. If you are passionate about what you are doing then other people tend to follow and offer help:yes: Im sure others will add to this but thats how I get mine happy turnin,
> Bond


I wish I found some nice burls around here.... that would rock! I could go and ask for interesting parts of downed trees though, good idea. the thing is that around here almost everyone still uses a wood stove and not a pellet stove so everyone keept their wood. Although with so many people have alot of wooded acres so maybe if they have downed trees in their woods, they wont mind giving some of the parts away.. 



john lucas said:


> rough turn your projects whether it's a bowl or a box. Put them up to dry. In my area they take from 3 months to 6 months depending on the wood, thickness, time of year etc.


cool... I was wondering how to do this. I can get alot of wood around here but its mostly green and ends up splitting before its dry enough to turn.



NCPaladin said:


> Seed Pots... yep, fill with soil, plant the seeds, sit them in a try of water (the water will wick up), plant the pot and all when they develop.
> http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=EAA187E65DE68A15


yep, thats it... I saw it for sale on some site and looked into it more then found it on another wood turning site and then watched the youtube video... works good too, the little pots stay together well, and you can use a tiny slice of tape to hold the top togethre, or wrap it a bit crooked and fold over the top corner.

good advice on the tree guys... I bet they see all sorts of stuff they dont even think about. 




Bonanza35 said:


> I don't know if there is much oilfield activity in your area but I spend a lot of time in Oklahoma and the drilling is rampant right now. When they build pipelines and power lines to service wells they cut a 30' swath through whatever is in the way and either chip it or leave it to rot...miles and miles of it. It's sickening to see what's going to waste. I'm turnin as fast as I can. Maybe that's something to keep an eye out for where you are.


 
no oil drilling here but some new housing developments going up soon. the problem here is alot of folks burn wood so when these companies cut down trees they will hre local tree guys to come in and cut it and haul it off to be sold as firewood.. same thing with rock like CT field stone, they dig it out and pile it up and either take it to sell or sell it to some local stone dealer... or use it on the property for stone walls and such.


but, there are some great tips here.... now to go out and find the good stuff!!


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