Has anyone ever worked with Russian Olive wood. I had to cut down a Russian Olive in my yard, and I saved the trunk with the thought of putting that lumber to good use. However, I have never heard of Russian Olive furniture. Does anybody know how suitable it would be for furniture, cabinetry, countertops (or firewood)? Thanks for your input.
J Day
Replies
I've used RO a fair bit. There is a lot of it in my area (Colorado Front Range), and there's a local arborist who mills and sells the wood. He sells it for $5 a board foot, rough sawn if that gives you any idea of it's value.
It's beautiful finished. It's not particularly hard to work. To my nose it smells awful. It's porous and soaks up stain like crazy, but the grain can be quite dramatic and beautiful. It's light, but pretty strong. I think it's well worth keeping. It'll split pretty badly though, if you don't seal the ends of the log right away. You'll also need to let it dry for a good long time.
Charlie
Charlie, is russian olive a real olive? I'm curious. We have lot's of bearing olives around the perimeter of our place and I get to turn and carve the wood occassionally, depending on how strong the windstorms blow.Our olive not only produces good olives, it make wood that is plain light grained or complex with figure and brown and black streaks. It burns like plutonium in the heater. It's an oily wood and doesn't glue very well, but makes great spoons, spatulas, and little bowls. It does smell to use!
Not a very close relative, no.Russian olive: Eleagnus angustifolia
edible olive: Olea europaea
You've got me stumped, I don't know. Times like this make me really miss Jon Arno. He knew everything about wood species. I know that RO is pretty dark, doesn't burn well and doesn't really have a lot of oil. It does grow little "olives" but they don't really look feel or smll like olives.CharlieI tell you, we are here to fart around, and don't let anybody tell you different. --K Vonnegut
Oops. I posted my question and then forgot to check back. Thanks for the info, it is helpful. One more question for you - I also live in the Front Range (Fort Collins) and I thought if you were in my vicinty you could recommend someone with a portable mill that I could hire. Again, thanks for the help.
Wow, cool beans! How bout this weather? Well, if you feel like driving to the Boulder/Lafayette/Broomfield area, the place you want to go is: http://www.tcwoods.com. (You may have to cut and paste this. I can never make the lonks work right.) Dan is the Man! He will also sell you any of thousands of board feet of locally harvested lumber; he is an arborist and mills the trees that he takes down. You can get willow, boxwood, walnut, locust, elm, silver maple, even a few fruitwoods, but not many of those. Check him out! CharlieI tell you, we are here to fart around, and don't let anybody tell you different. --K Vonnegut
Edited 1/23/2005 11:18 pm ET by CharlieD
It is a small world. I got on this site because I've been working with a remodeling contractor along the Front Range and we've had a few jobs removing Russian Olives (RO). They were given away by the State and CSU back in the 70's, I've been told, because they create quick shade. Now they're considered invasive, but there is no shortage of trees.
I also know Dan from TC Woods because I used to manage a reclaimed building material non-profit in Boulder called ReSource 2000 (now just ReSource). We promoted each other's business when we could. I looked up his "new" yard off Hwy. 52 and it turns out we've been driving past it when we go home to Larimer County from Brighton. We'll stop in one of these days and see how his operation is going. We're considering getting a portable mill. Lots of beetle-kill around here as well.
If you know anyone who enjoys turning, they'd probably love to have some. I've seen some beautiful bowls and "vessels" turned from Russian Olive.
forestgirl -- you can take the girl out of the forest, but you can't take the forest out of the girl ;-)
Another proud member of the "I Rocked With ToolDoc Club" .... :>)
If you've got the whole trunk you'll probably want to split it in to four chunks or find a local sawmill. Often keeping a whole limb as it dries out it'll check (internal splits) diagonally through the wood making it hard to cut out whole boards.
RO splitting
A friend just have me most of an RO tree that has been recently cut up after blowing down. I still need to seal the ends, but I have started rough sawing them into the largest pieces possible to remove most of the bark (thinking it would help the pieces dry out without splitting so bad on the ends...). Is this a bad idea? I've never tried to make lumber from logs.
**And I just realized how old these posts are...**
Any help would be much appreciated!
Thanks,
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