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Spalting is the first step in wood decay and the wood starts getting soft. The Cactus Juice stabilizes (hardens) the wood where it won’t fly apart in a lathe.
This is my source for the Elm. My friend had a guy cut down her dead Elm tree. He cleared everything but left the trunk and never came back to finish it. I cut it up so I could get some of the wood for projects.
While digging out the composted material in the middle I came across some turtle eggs.
I thought they were turtle eggs. I found eleven unhatched eggs in one clutch and 23 hatched shells in another. There are a lot of rat snakes in this part of Kansas.
This is before stabilizing. The spalting is prominent through these pieces.
The stabilized wood is pretty hard on lathe tooling. This one is coated with an oil finish called Feed & Wax.
My finished project. I made five of these lighthouses for Christmas presents. The crystal is 1.25″ in diameter.
This morning I did a little work on my knife handles. I epoxied them onto the blade last night and hit the sander this morning. Still need to do some finish sanding on them.
These are Spalted Elm that I stabilized with Cactus Juice resin.
Yesterday I did some initial sanding on the limb butts and worked on the riser.
It was a very nice day so I decided to sit outside at my picnic table to work on the riser with my #49 Nicholson rasp. I was sitting about two feet from my bee feeders and every once in a while one or two would hover over the riser to see what was going on. Bees are curious critters.
I’ve never worked with Jatoba wood before.
Robin, have you ever tried catching bees with a swarm trap? I started putting some together today and will hang them out next week.
These are fiber plant buckets. I coated the outside with a water sealant and then plugged all but one hole in the bottom of each set. This will leave an entrance hole for the bees. I’ll hang a used hive frame inside, put the two bucket halves together with screws and seal the top of the seam. I’ll drill a small hole in the back end for ventilation.
The used hive frames will give off the wax and propolis odor which will help attract bees to it.
It now looks kind of like a bow.
I still need to cut out the sight window and sand the contours of the riser. Cut the string nocks and shape the tips. Sand down the edges of the limbs and work on the wedge contours. Start checking and working on the tiller. And a whole lot of finish sanding before applying a finish to it.
And then I can clean up my mess and put the tools up for a while.
Next we tap the holes for the inserts. This is a 1/2-12NC tap.
Add some epoxy to the threads and 1/4″ alignment pins and set them in place. Now we wait for the epoxy to cure.
Well, the dye didn’t penetrate the Maple strip very good but I can take care of that later with an India ink pen.
Now a trip to the bandsaw and sander.
Presto. A fat boomerang.
Went out to try calling in a coyote or other critter today and swap out a couple of trail cameras. I didn’t get any takers on the free meal offering so I wandered the woods looking for shed antlers. Strike two. If the bucks have shed their antlers they hid them.
I put out a brand new Wildgame trail camera two months ago. It has great video but the trigger is so sensitive I think a bug would set it off. The LED lights are also flickering and dimming. Within the past week it almost filled a 16GB card and completely drained the batteries four days ago. I have it in a baggie of desiccant to see if it might have gotten damp.
A old time tree stand that’s seen better days.
And a view of the woods beyond it.
After soaking up the Cactus Juice I wrap the wood in a thick layer of aluminum foil and bake it in a toaster oven for 2 hrs at 200-210*.
After cooling down and unwrapping. The resin is cured hard and the rough edges are very sharp. They are ready to be sanded down.
My Jatoba riser wood was delivered this morning so I laid out the riser shape on it.
Then marked the cut line for the accent stripes. I’m going to use two strips of Maple with a black dyed strip sandwiched between them.
Meanwhile I have another project in the works. I bought a knife blade blank and am going to put stabilized Spalted Elm scales on it. They are in the vacuum chamber soaking up Cactus Juice and will stay there overnight and then get baked tomorrow.
