Ash

I have a book entitled Red Oaks & Black Birches: The Science and Lore of Trees by Rebecca Rupp. It is full of all kinds of information about various trees. Some of it it useful, some of it is trivial, some of it apocryphal, but all of it is interesting. And, since all the base and most of the top of my bench will be made of ash, I thought I would pass along some of the more interesting tidbits about it:

- Hank Aaron hit his 755th home run with an ash bat
- Beowulf and King Arthur toted ash spears
- A cord of white ash delivers about 20 million BTUs of heat; or the equivalent of 204 gallons of no. 2 fuel oil
- Ash is a member of the Olive family, Oleaceae, which includes the olive, privet, jasmine, forsythia, and lilac
- The original ash in Norse legend was Yggdrasil, the Tree of the World; Odin the one-eyed king of the gods created the first man from an ash tree and named his "Ask" (the first woman was made from an alder which is a birch)
- In Works and Days, Hesiod describes how Zeus created the third generation of men from a collection of ash spears
- The Algonquian Indians believed that humankind began when the Creator shot an arrow into the heart of an ash tree. Human beings, both male and female, then emerged
- Black ash, or hoop ash, splints were used to make barrel hoops, chair bottoms, woven mats, eel traps, fishing creels, baskets, and animal muzzles.

Heavy milling

As a refresher, these are the original two slabs I posted back before Christmas.


This is a long view of one of them. Each was 12' long.


I broke them down into approximately 79"/65" lengths


Here is the Woodmizer. You can see the stack of wood on the ground near the loader.


This is one of the bench top slabs being readied for cutting.

The slab again. Also, on the loader, you can see what will become the legs. It is white oak. This is some pretty rough looking stuff. It already served one full life as a clamp pad for rolling and emptying railroad cars. Then, it spend some time on the ground and has some real rot on one end.

This is the finished product. It has been roughed out with the Woodmizer, jointed, and planed to thickness. It took pretty much a full 12 hour day to get to this. (Including pulling out and setting up equipment, putting equipment back up, etc.) From left to right:
Board 1 - Base, contains 2 feet
Board 2 - Base, contains 2 top pieces
Board 3 - Top, Center slab 1
Board 4 - Top, Center slab 2
Board 5 - Base, Contains 2 risers
Board 6 - Base, Contains 2 risers
Board 7 & 8 (stacked on top of each other) - Stretchers