If you're asking what grade ? I guess a couple might be grade 3 , a couple grade 4 ? Irrespective, i like the last two grain wise , but not a fan of heartwood ....but pretty nice sticks if you were after two tone bats . Do you think these will be representative of most of the clefts , or did you manage to get some all sapwood or all heartwood clefts ? ( would be interesting what you think the differences, if any , in performance are between these ( especially since they are possibly from the same tree).
Hi Biggie,
Thanks for your thoughts, yeah, in the real world I think your Gradings are probably spot on. There are various knots, marks and imperfections, along with the whole 2-tone thing. I'm going to see the other clefts tomorrow and think there are some less 2-tone examples to follow. However, the trees have a significant heartwood core, which in most cases means that the clefts pictured are representative. In truth, this is in large part due again to my making pretty much every possible mistake during the processing! I was paranoid about the clefts warping, so I deliberately cut them massive. Doing so meant that I cut off more wood than necessary from the outside, forcing the cleft closer to the centre of the willow wedge. This increased the percentage of heartwood and inevitably drove up the weight as well, by using more of the dense core of the tree.
You live and learn! 2nd time around has been far more professional - literally. I called for support from people who know what they are doing and the resulting yield is greatly increased, simply by splitting and cutting more carefully, understanding how best to use the wood.
I'll keep you up to date with developments.
Cheers, Justin
Author
Topic: First 5 clefts (Read 4352 times)