Natures work bench...

[offroadmick]

As I was driving home the other day, I saw a tree surgeon at work in a front garden... He had cut down a massive tree and was resting up with a cuppa....

I stopped and asked if I could have a cut-off from the trunk to use as a work surface in the garden for axe work, and he couldn't have been more helpful. He cut a large slice for me and loaded it into my car... I had some trouble getting it back out as it must weighed about 10 stone!!!!!
Got it in the garden now and I love my new work bench... I even made a quick spoon on it.
So there you have it... A free and interesting, natural work bench!

Just thought you might like to see it

 

[Toddy]

Oh very nice
Mine's a two foot high section of the trunk of a silver birch

cheers,
Toddy

 

[offroadmick]

Oh very nice
Mine's a two foot high section of the trunk of a silver birch

cheers,
Toddy

I think mine is a bit less than 2ft thick... looks quite thin in the pic, but its just a funny angle...
I bet yours weighed a Ton!

 

[John Fenna]

My "heavy work" work bench (my railway track anvil is pinned to one side of it) is a chunk of Ash that fell across the road outside our garden. It is a forked section , upside down so the branch forms a leg....

 

[offroadmick]

I don't know what type of wood mine is.... I forgot to ask...! It's orange now, but getting lighter as it drys out...

I counted the rings and its 66 years old!

 

[lannyman8]

cool, i need me some of them...

not sure the wife would think so though.....

 

[Toddy]

It's awfully handy
I was taking the hard shell and inards out of a big fomes today and used it to work on Just makes life easy
Mine's nowhere near as wide as Mick's though, more like a stump.
Definitely a good thing

cheers,
M

 

[lannyman8]

we have the grass back in the garden now as we might be moving AGAIN soon.....

will just get 6 or 7 when i buy my dream house in Wales with 150 acres of wild meadows and small woods...

###########i can dream cant I?????##########

 

[stinger]

thats a great idea. mate of mine is a tree sugeon must get him to keep a look out for me.

 

[Ian S]

I don't know what type of wood mine is.... I forgot to ask...! It's orange now, but getting lighter as it drys out...

That suggests alder to me. Alder wood is white, but the sap oxidises to a vibrant orange-red, and then fades (slowly) to a middle orange. Is the bark greenish-grey, with diamond shaped pock marks in the bark, sort of joining vertically so it sort of looks like a zip fastener opening? Alder grows well in damp conditions - where was it growing?

A big bit of tree makes a grand work surface!

Cheers

 

[Tjurved]

I love these kind of work benches and I gotta say you got some nice tools!

 

[offroadmick]

That suggests alder to me. Alder wood is white, but the sap oxidises to a vibrant orange-red, and then fades (slowly) to a middle orange. Is the bark greenish-grey, with diamond shaped pock marks in the bark, sort of joining vertically so it sort of looks like a zip fastener opening? Alder grows well in damp conditions - where was it growing?

A big bit of tree makes a grand work surface!

Cheers

It's faded to a lighter orange in the heat today, but the bark is quite ordinary looking... You can just see it in the first picture...
It was growing through the paving in a front garden near me in ilford.

 

[Kerne]

I got a slice of tree in much the same way. I was driving to work and saw some guys felling a big sycamore in a residential area. As I drove home that night, they'd gone and left all the bits - from twigs to large bits of trunk - and some of the residents were collecting them for firewood. As they weren't interested in the large bits i put one in the boot and use it for chapping stuff on. I reckoned the workmen leave it there overnight on purpose, knowing it will be liberated and that they will not have to cart it away the next day.

 

[Hedgehog]

Nice one, it does sound like Alder to me too.

I scored a similar sized bit of English Elm (a rare thing these days) from some tree surgeons at the end of my street a few weeks ago. I grabbed a few 3' x 12" lengths for carving too.