Making Useful Items from Reclaimed Woods

When my wife and I first moved into our house in 2017, there was a massive buckthorn tree in the backyard. Buckthorn is an extremely invasive shrub in the Midwest, and we knew we were going to remove it, but once we cut ours down, I realized the wood was gorgeous. I couldn't bring myself to burn such beautiful wood, and I had been doing woodworking for years so I wanted to create something out of it, but I didn't know how to go from an assortment of small logs to any finished product. 

I started looking up ways to use logs and other ‘unwanted’ wood, and quickly realized a lathe was the way to go. Some of best wood for turning is logs and offcuts that you find and salvage, not wood purchased from a lumberyard. You can literally go from a log, to a finished, functional piece in less than an hour (depending on what you're making). Most importantly for me, I'm able to use wood that is destined for bonfires, wood chippers, or just being left to rot, and turn it into something beautiful, and useful. 

That’s what I plan to keep doing, using woods from local sources, felled for reasons other than lumber. Trees are taken down for construction, storm damage, and disease constantly and that wood can and should be put to good use.  Hopefully I can continue to bring new life into unwanted pieces of wood, and allow people to realize and experience the beauty of the wood growing all around us.

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