Seeds Sown in Hope Grow on Every Front
Today was another busy day. My square checked my work relentlessly and legalistically. Seeds fell from the Giant Sequoia cone onto my benchtop and I wondered how a tree 50-80-meters high could grow from so small a seed.
This small section of European redwood is 124 years old this year; there’s 2 3/4” of growth from its centre of origin to the outside of the sapwood. 1890 since its seed fell to the earth and started searching through soil to tap into the forest floor somewhere inside Northern Europe. How people can despise pine I cannot know. This grain grows in dense, tightly formed rings and I stop myself from work at my bench to look at the life there. Common pine. Should I treat it without respect. Friends have asked me to make caskets from this wood and when they died I dovetailed the corners as I would a well-made box of any kind. The pine wood returns to the earth as do the friends I lost over the years. The wooden handles and the calico lining seem fitting somehow. Unpretentious. The Sequoiadendron giganteum has tiny seeds .5mm thick, 3.5mm across and 4.5mm long (1/64” x 5/32” x 3/16”). The seeds lie inside cracks in cones that have beautiful markings and in the seed itself there is crimson speckling few if any ever see.
My class is going well. We start another project tomorrow and we talk about many things related to wood. We sharpen planes and chisels of course and when we begin working in oak we cover scrapers and planing techniques for oak that we must at least consider. The dovetails came out really nice. Not mine, theirs. Mine came out fine too, but I have made a few now, many hundreds at least. Phil’s workbench stool is almost done and soon John will start his drawers for the tool chest. They do many other things too, don’t forget. My own tool chest is glued up and the top and bottom panels with the raised panels is ready to glue up tomorrow so I too will be starting drawers. I also have a another bookcase to build, so I will do that one this week too. Lots going on.
We don’t think about it much, not enough anyway, but life is all about seed and growth, death, birth, regeneration. We should dwell on life more than we do. That seed is something else when you think about it. Imagine, 280 feet into the sky! How about that!
a nice caption for your picture of you in front of sequoia “I think Ive Brought the wrong saw”
” I’m going to need a bigger saw!”
I asked for a ham sandwich and all I got was this saw!
Another great blog Paul. i too work a lot with pine and I do not understand why a lot of people think of it as junk wood. The grain is alway pretty and the smells while working with it are wonderful. And to continue with the caption for the picture: I hope I don’t need this saw to cut that ham sandwich I asked for. :-).
Exactly. Just because its widely available it’s disparaged. The Sequoias are majestic trees and a treasure. So is the Redwood pine and all pines. I’m fond of the pair of butt-jointed pine bookcases I made as a boy…my very first woodworking project. Still have one of them and cherish it.
I think part of the reputation of pine being “junk” comes from the very soft eastern white pine, which is about all we know here in the NE United States. It is so very soft that it dents with a finger nail, and this compressibility makes joinery work with it suspect unless carefully done. It also accepts stains and finishes poorly. It has its uses, and no wood is truly junk, but I find most other woods, even cheap and sometimes considered ugly poplar, to be better for most uses.
In Australia, or more to the point Western Australia there is no local softwood available to speak of other than introduced plantation Radiata pine which apparently was the most appropriate for our conditions. I believe it was sourced from the coast of California (could be wrong on this one so don’t quote me) and while it serves a purpose- the majority being rougher construction work it is not the most endearing timber with some pretty fast growth, lots of knots and a tendency to do an s bend in no time at all-sometimes with a twist! In saying this there are clear grades available with a tighter grain structure from more the east coast of Australia and New Zealand that are a world of difference in terms of workability. Yes, it can be a pleasure to work with too. Junk comes in all forms, I went to a timber yard to get some jarrah (usually associated with a premium product) windsor pickets and some of the “feature grade” had dry rot in it and many of the packs had been left in the weather for way to long and it was showing. There really wasn’t a good explanation as to why it was being sold and I got the impression they weren’t interested either. I think it is what you get exposed to and the attitude that goes with it. That was a one tpi tenon saw you packed wasn’t it Paul? This could be the seed for a competition.