re: Russian Olive Bowl (#53)

Nathan, I’ve got a 10” bandsaw, which can only handle a 6-1/8 inch piece of wood, and the blade is getting dull so it ends up cutting jigsaw puzzles. With a 10” blade on the table saw, I can cut bigger pieces (halfway through from each side), and even with a 1/8 inch kerf, I end up wasting less, because the blade doesn’t deflect at every little knot. The only snag is that zeroing the blade tilt still has me at 86-87 degrees from the table, so my theoretically rectangular boards are parallelograms.

But again, it’s less waste than I get with the bandsaw until I get a new blade for it.

This wood is from Russian olives that are 40-50 foot tall, and most are over a foot diameter chest high. They’re growing in the bosque by La Cienega (just south of Santa Fe), and the guy owning that land wants to remove them all and get cottonwoods growing in there, as it natively was. But if you’re in / near NM and want a BUNCH of Russian olive, let me know and I’d be happy to hook you up. He’ll even drop the trees and help load your pickup.

There’s also a gihugic cottonwood. 4-5 foot diameter, and a straight trunk section 60-70 feet long, but it’s been down for four years. Doesn’t look too spalted, but I’d be shocked if there wasn’t a bunch of rot on the side I can’t see.