I got an email update from Joel on some of his latest designs and a rundown of his trip to the coast to look for wood for his reel seat inserts. He gets most
of his wood from drift along the rivers and the seacoast of Oregon. He describes it as a treasure hunt. Lots of what he finds are chunks of really hard burled
stuff, roots, thick gnarled trunks and heavy branches. The kind of stuff that makes terrible firewood because you can't split it. He sent me two series of
pictures. I'll share a few of them with you. Here are two shots of some of the heavy stuff in the back of his pickup.
He said he breaks it down with a chain saw, then I think he probably uses a band saw to cut it into the small inch by inch blocks he uses. Here are a couple shots of the wood after he had some of it blocked out:
After he gets it blocked out like that, he sends it off to the guy who stabilizes it for him. He said most of the stuff in the first picture is red and white cedar and redwood. The second picture is spalted maple. You can see that it is a labor of love and that his seats truly are an American product, with plenty of American ingenuity.
dave
He said he breaks it down with a chain saw, then I think he probably uses a band saw to cut it into the small inch by inch blocks he uses. Here are a couple shots of the wood after he had some of it blocked out:
After he gets it blocked out like that, he sends it off to the guy who stabilizes it for him. He said most of the stuff in the first picture is red and white cedar and redwood. The second picture is spalted maple. You can see that it is a labor of love and that his seats truly are an American product, with plenty of American ingenuity.
dave
