'Tis the season


Bombarde16

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...that a lot of us will welcome a juvenile conifer into our homes.  So, I have to ask:  Once Saint Nick has made his yearly rounds, has anyone ever made anything out of the wood in a Christmas tree?  (Aside from smoke...)

 

Ours this year is an 8' Fraser Fir.  Figure on a "bole" of maybe 6" max diameter getting skinnier and skinnier from there.  It'll be sopping wet, knotty as all get out and include the pith running through the middle.

 

My first random thought was to auger out the pith and then turn some sort of decorative vessel.  Perhaps split it down the middle and make miniature bowl blanks?  Turn ornaments for next years tree?

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I used to put up 12 to 16 ft Christmas trees. A fresh one will fit through a 3 ft front door. After it has dried up a bit when you pull the lights and ornaments it is stiff and 8 ft wide at the base. So I would lop the branches off and burn the thicker chunks with the trunk sections in the fireplace. It was the only times I ever burned soft wood and boy does it burn fast and hot.

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My Mom and Dad used to buy a live tree every year for Christmas a different kind every year until they passed. The house is no longer in the family but the tree's are still growing on the property some are 70'-80' tall you could mill them up and, build houses out of them if you wanted to.

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We used to sink them off my uncle's lake house dock for crappie cover.  It was a great excuse to get in one more day of holiday beer drinking.  Then my wife got all environmentally conscious and bought an artificial tree.  I tried to explain to her about tree farms and how the manufacture of plastics is probably more environmentally damaging blah, blah, blah...save your breath fellas.

 

I can't imagine the wood being "good" for anything, but carving little ornaments out of select chunks sounds like a neat tradition to start...if you like carving.

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We used to sink them off my uncle's lake house dock for crappie cover.  It was a great excuse to get in one more day of holiday beer drinking.  Then my wife got all environmentally conscious and bought an artificial tree.  I tried to explain to her about tree farms and how the manufacture of plastics is probably more environmentally damaging blah, blah, blah...save your breath fellas.

 

I can't imagine the wood being "good" for anything, but carving little ornaments out of select chunks sounds like a neat tradition to start...if you like carving.

In my area the boy scouts go around and collect them and sink em in the lakes at our conservation club. Great habitat for baitfish, which in turn attracts the bass.

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  • 7 years later...

(A zombie topic rises from the grave!)

image.thumb.jpg.032f94473da3c26a7e9043da1f56866d.jpg

So, seven years later, I'm finally going to give this a shot. This is the wreckage of my girlfriend's 7' concolor fir. (long, grayish needles, smells like citrus) I've also got a 6' fraser fir that will come down later this week for a similar reckoning with the band saw.

The goal is to process this into strips which I can then chop up for a segmented turning of some sort. Perhaps a sphere? Stickered and stacked in the basement. Now we wait to see how badly they're going to self-destruct. I'm betting I'll know within a month whether or not this was a stupid idea.

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