Curly Grain Redwood
My first encounter with Curly Grain Redwood was at the Vine Hill Road site in Sebastopol in 1998. The guidelines for this extreme hippy palace were to use only reclaimed salvage and sinker log redwood for everything we were doing inside and out. I got to create many of the stunning exterior features and a good portion of the interior wainscoating and arches. Somebody else got to do the kitchen and the big bar/counter that divided it was a four inch by 24 inch by 8 feet long slab of curly redwood. It was going to be cut from a slab that was wider and longer and there was an L-shaped leftover piece that I was able make a deal for and take home. That's what I made Carol's mantle out of. Beautiful. Across the width of the original slab we counted 800 rings and from the looks of the vertical end grains the distance to the center of the tree must have been at least twice that.
Curly grain redwood comes about in two ways that I know about. The most common is a tree that was bent over while it was small and the curliness was the result the wrinkles, like the wrinkles in your skin when your wrist is bent over. The curly wood goes for a short way up the trunk to where it could grow straight up. You find partially curly boards among a stack of milled lengths of redwood dimension lumber. The effect will peter out before it gets to the end; beautiful though.
The other type is genetically curly. The curliness begins in the burl and extends all the way to the very top and to the tip of every branch and twig. Take a look at these photos of a chunk from a tree of that character. The curly is consistent through every cubic inch.
I know where this tree grew and how this piece of it, and many others, came into my possession.
The man who milled it is a transplanted Scotsman named Scott. For decades he has occupied the large barn alongside the road in Nicasio Valley in bucolic West Marin County, a half mile from where he lived. He has made his living largely from the salvaging of driftwood logs off the beach, back when it was legal; and downed trees from wherever they might fall. He had a "boom truck", which is a makeshift crane with a cable winch. He was the go-to guy in West Marin when a fallen tree was blocking a roadway. He would arrive with a chainsaw and his boom truck, clear the way for traffic, and take what logs he could make use of up to the quarry where his milling machine was.
A "Woodmizer", is a portable lumber mill. It's built on a 20 foot long trailer. It has a bandsaw powered by a small gasoline engine that rides on a track the length of the trailer, allowing the miller to slice any given thickness of wood off the top of a log. Once milled, he hauled the pieces down to the barn where they could dry and season for years.
About twenty years ago, an unusual redwood tree had come down during a storm up a mountainside in the Nicasio watershed. Scott was the one allowed to claim this treasure. It was 700 feet from the nearest road, it was huge, and it was genetically curly. He was able to chainsaw it into 16-foot segments and winch the logs all the way through the forest.
When I met him, about 2007, he had already milled and sold off stock for a number of projects, including a whole room of curly paneling that must have been dazzling. I purchased a few choice pieces that I used to make my stereo cabinet, CD cabinets, shown below, and parts of the Ganesh alter.
In 2013, about five years later, he had a 18 inch by 2-foot block about 12 feet long sitting on his Woodmizer up at the quarry. I asked him to cut me a slab 4 inches thick. I had in mind that I would find an opportunity to make a mantle like the one in Carol's house.
Well, I'm still living here, I'm not going anywhere and I still have that slab, so I suppose it's for sale. And one more thing about that guy Scott: He never killed a tree; they were all laying down before he met them.
Uncle John's Garage Sale is just the name of the book.
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mail@unclejohnsweb.com
My first encounter with Curly Grain Redwood was at the Vine Hill Road site in Sebastopol in 1998. The guidelines for this extreme hippy palace were to use only reclaimed salvage and sinker log redwood for everything we were doing inside and out. I got to create many of the stunning exterior features and a good portion of the interior wainscoating and arches. Somebody else got to do the kitchen and the big bar/counter that divided it was a four inch by 24 inch by 8 feet long slab of curly redwood. It was going to be cut from a slab that was wider and longer and there was an L-shaped leftover piece that I was able make a deal for and take home. That's what I made Carol's mantle out of. Beautiful. Across the width of the original slab we counted 800 rings and from the looks of the vertical end grains the distance to the center of the tree must have been at least twice that.
Curly grain redwood comes about in two ways that I know about. The most common is a tree that was bent over while it was small and the curliness was the result the wrinkles, like the wrinkles in your skin when your wrist is bent over. The curly wood goes for a short way up the trunk to where it could grow straight up. You find partially curly boards among a stack of milled lengths of redwood dimension lumber. The effect will peter out before it gets to the end; beautiful though.
The other type is genetically curly. The curliness begins in the burl and extends all the way to the very top and to the tip of every branch and twig. Take a look at these photos of a chunk from a tree of that character. The curly is consistent through every cubic inch.
The man who milled it is a transplanted Scotsman named Scott. For decades he has occupied the large barn alongside the road in Nicasio Valley in bucolic West Marin County, a half mile from where he lived. He has made his living largely from the salvaging of driftwood logs off the beach, back when it was legal; and downed trees from wherever they might fall. He had a "boom truck", which is a makeshift crane with a cable winch. He was the go-to guy in West Marin when a fallen tree was blocking a roadway. He would arrive with a chainsaw and his boom truck, clear the way for traffic, and take what logs he could make use of up to the quarry where his milling machine was.
A "Woodmizer", is a portable lumber mill. It's built on a 20 foot long trailer. It has a bandsaw powered by a small gasoline engine that rides on a track the length of the trailer, allowing the miller to slice any given thickness of wood off the top of a log. Once milled, he hauled the pieces down to the barn where they could dry and season for years.
About twenty years ago, an unusual redwood tree had come down during a storm up a mountainside in the Nicasio watershed. Scott was the one allowed to claim this treasure. It was 700 feet from the nearest road, it was huge, and it was genetically curly. He was able to chainsaw it into 16-foot segments and winch the logs all the way through the forest.
When I met him, about 2007, he had already milled and sold off stock for a number of projects, including a whole room of curly paneling that must have been dazzling. I purchased a few choice pieces that I used to make my stereo cabinet, CD cabinets, shown below, and parts of the Ganesh alter.