clehman20

All the ideas are terrific, I've tried many of them myself but my favourite is using a local mill to harvest "Urban Timber". My first experience was when a friend had a large walnut tree that he was having professionally removed and offered it to me. After turning him down twice I decided to go ahead and harvest the main trunk which was 30 feet long and 30 inches in diameter at the base. I paid nothing for the trunk and my friend saved the landfill disposal fee. A local mill picked the trunk up, after my friend had it cut into three ten foot logs, and they milled it to my specs, kiln dried the lumber, and delivered the lumber to my house when finished. I ended up with 500 board feet of walnut and my cost was $300.

On your request for uses of a favourite hardwood, I love using ash, white ash not black ash which is found more in Northern Ontario. I can stain white ash to look indentical to oak and I prefer the tighter grain that ash has. Occasionaly you will find some pieces with distict graining, flames, curls and ribbons, which really add character to samll projects. It is an easy wood to work with hand tools and power tools. It is a very common hardwood in my area, Southern Ontario, and readily available at local mills from highway expansion projects.