some new wood in

Joe picked up two trailer loads of freshly cut lumber from our guy in Illinois this week. Poplar is not very photogenic, but persimmon looks better fresh cut than it does dry. So here is a shot of some persimmon:

The true color is the dry patch in the upper left. The black bits will all be checks and of course when dry it might look more like a pretzel.

We set aside a birch log last spring to spalt. Our track record on purposely spalting wood is not perfect, but this baby came out just fine thanks. I managed to sneak a picture before more got stacked on top of it:

The spalting goes the full length and we will have a number of these in 4/4 and 8/4 when dry. Joe even scavenged a few offcuts that the sawyer would normally not bother keeping for us:

It will be late fall or next year before this stuff is dry and in the bins for sale. But it is okay to start dreaming now.