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Tornado damage, what next?

B

Bill Szydlo

Joined
Jun 6, 2015
Messages
42
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6
Location
Northfield, MN
I am looking for some advice. Last week a tornado went through my property. We suffered massive damage to our trees. A rough estimate would be that we lost 100+ trees. What used to be trails through are woods now look like they were clear cut with trees piled up over 7' high and impassable. Fortunately no one in the area was hurt. I am looking for advice on 2 questions I have.

1. How to store the wood for later turning? I have been turning for years and have cut blanks and then sealed them but with this volume that is impractical. My first idea would be to cut the trees into shorter lengths (5' for instance) and let them sit or stack them and then as needed cut off the checked ends and go from there. Sealing the ends is not feasible as to the volume.

2. Currently I own a Nova DVR lathe but am considering upgrading to a large lathe and basically starting a part time business making bowls. While I have the materials I am curious for those of you that sell your turnings is this a good idea? I should mention that I am retired so other work would not interfere but by the same token I don't want to go back to feeling I have to work.

Thank you and I appreciate any advice,
Bill
 
So sorry for your plight, really glad no one was hurt! Stacking logs for storage will bring about cracked logs, mold, and bugs. Maybe not too many bugs or mold this year as winter is close. Next spring will be the test. You're going to loose a foot or more on each end after some time, so 5' may not be the best method. For the fancier woods, splitting to half logs will limit the cracking a little more, but that is REAL WORK. It may be better to sell some blanks, but I find that a low profit venture. Many turners find all the wood they want, and if they can't they still don't like paying much for wood. There has to be plenty of free wood around you for sure.
Part 2 requires a lot of marketing effort. Web site, social media, professional quality photography, and traveling. The photography can almost take as much time as turning. If you type in wood bowls for a search on Etsy, you get 250 pages of bowls, 60 bowls per page. 15,000 bowls for sale on that one site! There are more art marketing sites. You'll have to do farmer's markets, regional art shows, and local holiday shows. I've found that the local holiday shows are great for items at $75 or less. You'll get a lot of small items from 100+ trees. You have to constantly makes changes like embellishments and color. A table full of brown bowls does not draw in customers. Several dyed or painted bowls will slow them down so you and talk to them. Doing shows is hard work, requires a little bit of used car sales techniques, and will bring in a little money. I also find production bowl work to be very tedious. Roughing them out is a blast, but having a stack of 100 bowls that need to be sanded can really take the fun out of it! Imagine getting rid of all the curls from 100 bowls! Good luck.
 
Wow Bill, glad no one was injured.....that's the main thing! Bill that is a lot of trees and it sounds to me that you need lot of help from friends with chain saws. Were most of the trees hardwood? If it were me I'd cut them like you said, in short (hand able) lengths and seal the ends then store them somewhere dry if possible. Then I would start cutting them into bowl blanks and seal them to try and prevent cracks as much as possible. Maybe give some of your turning friends some timber, so you would have a workable load?

As far as starting a small bowl business sounds like a good idea if you like to turn bowls. There are a lot of turners here on the forum that do sell their bowls and maybe they can add more info on that.......... I was in pen production work as a small business for 5 years and kind of got burnt out on making pens and just last year started turning bowls and plates. I really enjoy turning bowls and I'm glad I switched !:D Good luck Bill.
 
I would also suggest you find someone with a portable saw mill. Select the better woods. We took down 9 trees and I had a friend with a saw mill. I boarded some and some cut in half for bowl blanks. I’m guessing those guys will be busy, but much better than using a chain saw.
Selling: Size of bowl will dictate price. I wouldn’t expect to make living at it, but enjoy turning and nice to know someone likes your work. I just sell at craft shows. Fall better than spring.
 
The sawmill approach might return some value to the wood if you have some worthwhile species of trees that might produce some good quality slabs, Did the tornado twist the trees or just blow them over? Large tornados can really twist the trees around causing internal damage to the wood grain layers. You might want to cut a few logs first to check the integrity of the wood and then select the logs you really want to keep. You can get carried away collecting the logs, you may want to consider how much time and how much room you have to invest in this venture first. You might be able to work a deal with the sawmill owner to split some logs in half and cut a few logs into thick slabs for billets and you can cut them to size at a later date. In return the sawmill owner will want a percentage of the logs or the slabs that come off the mill.
 
Mike Johnson said:
The sawmill approach might return some value to the wood if you have some worthwhile species of trees that might produce some good quality slabs, Did the tornado twist the trees or just blow them over? Large tornados can really twist the trees around causing internal damage to the wood grain layers. You might want to cut a few logs first to check the integrity of the wood and then select the logs you really want to keep. You can get carried away collecting the logs, you may want to consider how much time and how much room you have to invest in this venture first. You might be able to work a deal with the sawmill owner to split some logs in half and cut a few logs into thick slabs for billets and you can cut them to size at a later date. In return the sawmill owner will want a percentage of the logs or the slabs that come off the mill.
Click to expand...

Sawmills will not take tornado trees. Too much of the twisting causes ring shake and renders lumber useless. That same reason may make much of it useless as bowl blanks also , but will still be some good ones there.
 
I sell about 250-300 bowls a year. I am a retired general contractor and starting this business has kept me from going stir crazy in retirement. I have a VB36 lathe. I turn bowls up to 36" in diameter and use a Oneway coring system to maximize the number of bowls I can get out of each blank. There is a comparison of all the major lathes in the AAW archives.

As to the wood- Cut the logs and stack them, but take the time to Anchorseal the ends. It takes very little time to use a 5" brush and a bucket to slap a coat on the ends. I have logs stacked up that were cut this spring and summer and will be cut into bowl blanks as soon as it gets cooler here. (90 degrees today, SC). When I do start cutting bowl blanks, I cut a lot of them, stack them up inside and cover them with large plastic bags. This keeps them from cracking. They make get moldy and wet but they don't crack and you turn the mold away. Before everyone starts telling you the mold is harmful, let me assure you it is not. It is wood fungus and harmless. I have been doing this for over 20 years and it works well. I have not found that this work is tedious. Some days I turn for 6 hours, some days I don't turn at all. The money is fine but the feedback I get from people who have my bowls is what makes this so satisfying. If I can be of any help send me a message.
 
You can always use some hardwood logs to grow some mushrooms in your back yard. Cut the logs into manageable lengths and drill holes into the logs and you can drive wooden plugs into the logs that are inoculated with the mushroom spores. Cover the wooden plugs with hot wax and the fungi spores do all of the hard work turning the log into edible mushrooms in a year or two. This is what I do with logs that can't be used for my wood working needs.
 
Thank you all for your thoughts and recommendations. We were fortunate in a way in that it appears the tornado did not touch down so a number of the trees where sheared off about 15' above ground with a number felled by the entire root ball coming out so I don't think most of the lumber from the trunk was twisted. My plan for the lumber is to select a few trees and have a bandsaw mill slab them and then cut/seal blanks from the slabs. Thanks for all your advice, Bill
 
A thought before you line up a bandsaw mill. You might want to take your saw and choose a random tree and cut a chunk to look for rink shake. If you cut a thin wafer you can determine if it's there even if it's hard to see. Any trees with shake are a no go for me as I have had a couple loose chunks while turning, luckily with me being out of the line of fire. Good luck.
 
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