AusBonsai

Good work Greg! Where did you find these?

I forgot to post this one. Gotta love that bark.

I think I have enough olives now...

It's been a while, so I snuck in a quick dig this weekend. I also found a couple of interesting hawthorns which I cut short - fingers crossed I can find them again in autumn. On the way back to the car I found a patch of hawthorn seedlings which I also cut back - hopefully nobody does any weed clearing there for the next few years.

Great score Greg like the last one
Cheers
Kirky

You are an environmentalist ridding the bush of invasive plants and I admire that!!!!

Excellent stuff Greg. I like that second one. Just pop it in the post and I leave a six pack of Wild Yak on the fridge for your next dog.


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Watto wrote: ↑November 2nd, 2020, 5:31 am You are an environmentalist ridding the bush of invasive plants and I admire that!!!!

I do what I can! Although the area I dig at has literally thousands of olives so not sure if I've made much of a dent yet.

MJL wrote: ↑November 2nd, 2020, 5:35 am Excellent stuff Greg. I like that second one. Just pop it in the post and I leave a six pack of Wild Yak on the fridge for your next dog.

Turning olives into beer - sounds like a good skill!

I do sell on most of my olives but that second one I might keep for myself. Lovely bark, and with a bit of carving it could turn into something nice.

Another quick dig yesterday - at my wife's suggestion (!!). I started and gave up on two stumps that ended up being huge below ground. I didn't want to go home empty-handed, and my stubbornness saw me spend over an hour on this one tree. There were quite a few rocks in the way, including a large one that the tree was growing right on top of (that's the triangle indent in the first photo). I weighed it after getting home and washing most of the clay off - 10kg exactly. It felt a lot more than that getting it back down the hill to the car.

Once again I softly serenaded my snoozing neighbours with the soothing sound of my chainsaw on a sleepy Sunday morning. The wood looked quite interesting so I chopped off a couple of slices. I've not done this before so I'll need to look up how to treat/preserve these; with a bit of a sand and polish they could end up looking nice. My cat seemed to approve anyway.

Let the slabs dry slowly but evenly if possible. We place them on some sticks to let air circulate under as well as over so they do not dry on one side and curl up. You can pot more sticks on the first and lay the other one on top, more sticks and some weight to try to hold the whole lot flat as they dry out. Keep them in the shade, even cover with plastic now to slow drying as much as possible. Wood that dries too fast tends to split and check.
Timber cut across the trunk is notorious for splitting but olive burls are better because the grain is interlocked and usually holds the fibres together better.
They will make great display slabs if/when they dry well.

Agree, great character in those slabs

I went back for one of the half-dug stumps that I abandoned the other week - I was hoping to get some more slabs out of it. They came out okay but don't have the same nice character as the first lot. Never mind, worth a shot. This one ended up being 17kg after I washed off most of the clay and chunks of slate.

Unfortunately for my chainsaw chain, the small grey bit in the little slab on the piece of paper isn't dead wood as I assumed it was, but a rock. It looks cool so I stuck it in with Liquid Nails.

The slabs definitely trigger something in my cat.

Geez Greg. You love an olive! I’ll have either of those last two - excellent foundations (IMO) ... and your cat is a classic ... a bit like R3’s posts ... I look forward to any shot that has your cat trying to steal the limelight! .


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MJL wrote: ↑November 15th, 2020, 7:08 am your cat is a classic ... a bit like R3’s posts ... I look forward to any shot that has your cat trying to steal the limelight! .

I did a little bit of research - turns out olive wood/oil contains nepetalactone, which is a feline attractant and the active ingredient in catnip. He's not stealing the limelight, he's getting high!

Greg:- " He's not stealing the limelight, he's getting high!"

I need to get a chainsaw like yours. Mine has a hard time just making a dent in the stump.


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