Curly Redwood

I never considered redwood to be anything other than fence material. Until last week I was at the Lowe's in Castle Rock, CO, and saw some 1x3 boards with a distinct curl. $3 and I was taking the board home.

I chopped a piece off and ran it through the planer. 3 quick coats of rattle can shellac and I got what you see in the pic above.

Wow! It's beautiful!

Ideas of all the wonderful things I could make went rushing through my head. Beautiful furniture! Candle holders! Binders!

Then I ran some of it through my jointer with new sharp knives. Chipout all over. More runs through the planer got "scooping" in the weaker grain areas. Also, it's REALLY brittle. I was able to easily snap it in half along the grain when cut down to 1/4".

Sigh.

I'm going to try it on this binder:




The middle is curly maple with a blue mahoe inset. The outer edges are pieces of the redwood planed down to 1/4". I plan to round all the edges and apply a nice wipe-on poly finish. We'll see just how delicate (or not!) it is in a daily use item.

I hope it works out! I really want to use this stuff!