thanks, chris. already own a pressure washer and also have a line on 3 barns that went down last year in a windstorm. i am guessin i have about 600 b.f. of pine still in timber form. i picked some up in the spring and milled it with my chainsaw and table saw. i built some pretty nice end tables and some picture frames with it, but now i have a computer desk/hutch i want to build out of some of what i have now, but i really dont want to waste any more of this beautiful wood.
i have been doin some form of woodworking for a long time and have never seen growth rings so tight. i was sittin in the shop one nite lookin at the end of a 6" by 6" post, sanded the end down a bit and started counting rings. i got up to 70 before my eyes went goofy and i still had about 2" to go. i noticed some thing about the growth rings, too. there were some areas where the rings were so tight i could barely make them out as more than one. some areas of the growth rings were a little more spaced and there was one that was a grayish color. well, figgerin that a lot of the beams were hand hewn monsters, i thought they probably didnt travel too far from where they were cut and started lookin up history of forest fires in the area. seems that during the great chicago fire, there were some fires ravaging michigan( there was a huge one out around jacson that, when the smoke went acroos detroit, the people thought it was from the chicago fire) and there was one in this area around 1860. i am guessin that that is where the grayish ring came from.
found out there was some weather recorded from the 1800's and there was a really cold spell for about 10 years in the early 1800's. guessin that's where the tight rings came from.
