Gift for a man who used to climb this tree 60 years ago

[Twisted Trees]

Well it is not very round, has more epoxy in it than I would normally be happy with, and any semblance of common sense would have seen it either rejected to the firewood pile or at least cut it to an actual round shape for easier turning! but something about the pattern in this piece of horse chestnut made me want to spin it, and finish off by turning a fake conker to go with it.

C&C welcome, sorry about the photo's the battery lights were all in need of recharge!

[Twisted Trees]

Missed one...

[seventhdevil]

well turned and nice figuring but it's Ash not horse chestnut.

[Bryan Milham]

I love the character in this, the colour, the grain and the irregular shape. I have a sneaky feeling the recipient will love it.

[Twisted Trees]

well turned and nice figuring but it's Ash not horse chestnut.

It certainly has an ash look to it, but it came from a large piece of horse chestnut, which was felled in december, other timber from the same piece is the typical yellow tinged holly type look or pale yellow straight grain with twisted grain dark heartwood.

Doesn't help that the photos came out so dark.

[Derek]

I like it and being an irregular shape just adds character to it, and the recipient should be very proud to own it

[seventhdevil]

well turned and nice figuring but it's Ash not horse chestnut.

It certainly has an ash look to it, but it came from a large piece of horse chestnut, which was felled in december, other timber from the same piece is the typical yellow tinged holly type look or pale yellow straight grain with twisted grain dark heartwood.

Doesn't help that the photos came out so dark.

someone got their bits of wood mixed up when you were handed the timber then mate as that is ash....

i'm not looking at the colour of the wood but the grain, European Ash (Fraxinus excelsior) is a ring porous timber with confluent parenchyma as seen in the photos and in this case some nice olive figuring as seen in the image as the tree is in the oleaceae family relating it to olivewood.

horse chestnut  (Aesculus hippocastanum) is a Diffuse porous timber with marginal parenchyma almost denoting growth rings. you can see none of that in the images you provided.


believe me, its Ash...

[Mike313]

It's a lovely piece of wood and you've done it justice. The conker is a clever touch

[Twisted Trees]

Thanks for the comments, wonky bowls are in it appears  though I am now very confused, seventhdevil is never wrong about wood identification, but I took the chainsaw to the quartered trunk, used the bowl-saver to rough out the  bowls and put them all into the kiln, (ok modified chest freezer with some fans)  and I don't think I have any wet ash over 9" at the moment (this one is 12")... I am going to blame it on my age, and make another bowl!

The conker is most definitely horse chestnut as that was still wearing it's bark when I ran it through the bandsaw, and until I put the blow torch to it to colour it up it was pretty much white.

[seventhdevil]

didn't mean to confuse you, i hope you find out where someone went wrong.

don't blame old age as there's plenty of time for that....

[Twisted Trees]

Not a clue what went wrong, I only posted on the gallery because it was an exciting pattern and due to the warping and damage quite difficult and fun to turn, which was lucky as you caught that I had a stray piece of wood, which I should have recognised myself, but because it was in that batch I convinced myself I had an unusually interesting piece of horse chestnut.

I turned another which was round, had enough depth to get a traditional curve to the edge and quite a good mix of sap and heart wood, nice bowl, but very easy to turn, and to my eye boring in comparison!