People always ask me where I get my wood from. Well, yes, I get my 2x 4’s from the hardware store like all of us, but what about the Koa, the Milo, the Hau or Jackfruit and many others ?.. I like to hike, to scout places and in so doing since many years I know “my trees” but the big majority of those are not for cutting .But others, which needed to be cut down either for liability or landscaping reason, I often ask the tree cutting company to let me have the wood. Not all tree cutting companies like to have to mulch or dump the more rare and exotic trees. And it so happened lately that I got a phone call about a huge Monkeypod tree to be cut in Mokuleia and whether I would like to have a look at it once the tree is on the ground. To my enormous surprise it was not a Monkeypod tree but a Cuban Mahagony tree. The base of the trunk was 5 feet wide. Part of the heart of the trunk was rotten but everything else was really beautiful . Nearly all the wood making up the trunk was fiddleback curly. It took me 4 week ends to chain saw mill that tree. Do I have a lot of Magagony ? Enough to last me a life time.
I’ve always enjoyed the moment when you have just taken a raw log portion, sawed it into rough planks, planed it smooth, then put some laquer thinner on it and the wonderful wood grain patterns emerge, almost glowing.