Woodturning
When in New Hampshire... learn to woodwork! I first wandered into the Dartmouth Woodshop as a junior and soon became a fixture. Woodturning quickly became my favorite woodworking skill, and I favored turning live-edge bowls in particular. At Stanford, I became fast friends with the landscaping crew and was given access to their stash of freshly cut wood from on-campus trees. The bowls below are presents to relatives and friends.
Clockwise from left: Live edge white ash (from Thayer tree), Spalted hackberry, Black walnut
This wood also came from the Thayer Engineering Ash tree.
Thayer Ash tree table (incomplete)
As a Dartmouth engineer, there was a particular Ash tree that shaded the front lawn of Thayer Engineering School that I knew and loved to see. My senior winter, it was cut down because it posed a falling hazard, and I came to Thayer one day to find the tree reduced to cookie slices.
An experienced (or at least ambitious) woodworker, I convinced my friend to 'borrow' the Snow Sculpture truck to help me haul a choice slab to the woodshop, where he chainsawed it into a more manageable slice. I then made a jig to allow me to plane the tree slice into a flat table (see this article!). Over the next two months, I continued to plane the tree, monitored and guided its cracking (ash trees have very oblong cells and tend to crack more than other species) while it dried. Finally, I began treating the tree with layers of polish. When I graduated, I drove it from New Hampshire to Orange County, CA where it awaits legs.
Spring 2012. I'm planing away!