Hello spearos!
Firstly let me say what a pleasure it is to have been invited to take part in this venture. I believe that this is the first time a spear gun has been built in this way. When I was first asked about this I wasn't sure it could work but you gang look to proving me wrong yet again. Your imagination is the only limit to what we shall end up building together, so I hope to see plenty of discussion to come. Please if you have any ideas that might be built into this new gun then speak up early so you all may discuss them together. It does not matter how small and idea or how insignificant it may seem, from small acorns do mighty Oak trees grow. Remember I am only the hands controled by your collective input.
Let us begin then: I have been informed that you all decided on Burmese Teak and Brazilian Purpleheart as the timber of choice. This is quite a good choice, the Teak and the Purpleheart have quite similar physical properties so they will expand and shrink at similar rates. This is good if we are going to mix woods, otherwise we will end up in the future with steps along our gun or even worse in extreme cases total de lamination. Armed with this knowledge I took the drive out to a lumber yard where on a normal day is held a huge stock of Teak as well as a small selection of other tropical timbers. As luck would have it on this day we were faced with a tiny stock of teak on the racks as shown in the photograph below. The boards that were available unfortunately were much to big to buy just to make one gun. They also displayed some very erratic figure which is not what we want for our gun. After some time moving and inspecting these boards it became clear that things were not getting off to a good start. At this point in time I was feeling a little despondent, Teak is not the easiest timber to find and not the cheapest of timbers either. The lumber yard owner was unwilling to rip off half a board for us to use the best half of the board so it was beginning to look like we would have to go further afield to source our material.
If we had been building furniture then that timber would have been just what we would hope to find, large clean boards of attractive Teak. Our gun needs the exact opposite, very plain straight figured wood, simply put, very boring. Why is this we may ask? To explain why we must think about the tree from which the timber came from. It grew from its small beginnings having to put up with a prevailing wind, it had to grow differently in places to support heavy limbs. All these things define the tree itself, all these things are held in the tree's memory when it is cut. We must imagine how much strain was put on the trunk while supporting that heavy limb. When we cut that tree into planks or strips some of those stresses will be released, mostly very quickly but some will be released over time. From this we can see that straight figure in the wood generally will mean less stresses and a straighter finished product.
This was my dilemma, the wood was not good and at $250 £128 €165 a cubic foot it was a disaster. Never one to dwell on things like this I turned on my heels toward the doors only to come face to face with some thin strips of 3/4" x 2 3/4" x 98" or 20mm x 70mm x 2500 very straight grained quarter sawn Teak, exactly what we were looking for! This had by the account of the yard owner been there for some time, excellent news for us as it means that all the stresses that would have been released at the cut have now dissipated and we do not have to wait for this which moves on the build very nicely by a few weeks. See the second picture for the Teak as I found it. The wood was too long to fit in my car, so I had it cut into 1500mm and 1000mm pieces as can also be seen below. Also to this we have acquired a nice piece of Purpleheart more than enough for our needs. Again this is very straight figured.
Now for the next week this timber will be allowed to acclimatise to my workshop before we proceed with the next step which of course will be the machining and gluing into our fledgling gun.
See you all next time spearos!
Firstly let me say what a pleasure it is to have been invited to take part in this venture. I believe that this is the first time a spear gun has been built in this way. When I was first asked about this I wasn't sure it could work but you gang look to proving me wrong yet again. Your imagination is the only limit to what we shall end up building together, so I hope to see plenty of discussion to come. Please if you have any ideas that might be built into this new gun then speak up early so you all may discuss them together. It does not matter how small and idea or how insignificant it may seem, from small acorns do mighty Oak trees grow. Remember I am only the hands controled by your collective input.
Let us begin then: I have been informed that you all decided on Burmese Teak and Brazilian Purpleheart as the timber of choice. This is quite a good choice, the Teak and the Purpleheart have quite similar physical properties so they will expand and shrink at similar rates. This is good if we are going to mix woods, otherwise we will end up in the future with steps along our gun or even worse in extreme cases total de lamination. Armed with this knowledge I took the drive out to a lumber yard where on a normal day is held a huge stock of Teak as well as a small selection of other tropical timbers. As luck would have it on this day we were faced with a tiny stock of teak on the racks as shown in the photograph below. The boards that were available unfortunately were much to big to buy just to make one gun. They also displayed some very erratic figure which is not what we want for our gun. After some time moving and inspecting these boards it became clear that things were not getting off to a good start. At this point in time I was feeling a little despondent, Teak is not the easiest timber to find and not the cheapest of timbers either. The lumber yard owner was unwilling to rip off half a board for us to use the best half of the board so it was beginning to look like we would have to go further afield to source our material.
If we had been building furniture then that timber would have been just what we would hope to find, large clean boards of attractive Teak. Our gun needs the exact opposite, very plain straight figured wood, simply put, very boring. Why is this we may ask? To explain why we must think about the tree from which the timber came from. It grew from its small beginnings having to put up with a prevailing wind, it had to grow differently in places to support heavy limbs. All these things define the tree itself, all these things are held in the tree's memory when it is cut. We must imagine how much strain was put on the trunk while supporting that heavy limb. When we cut that tree into planks or strips some of those stresses will be released, mostly very quickly but some will be released over time. From this we can see that straight figure in the wood generally will mean less stresses and a straighter finished product.
This was my dilemma, the wood was not good and at $250 £128 €165 a cubic foot it was a disaster. Never one to dwell on things like this I turned on my heels toward the doors only to come face to face with some thin strips of 3/4" x 2 3/4" x 98" or 20mm x 70mm x 2500 very straight grained quarter sawn Teak, exactly what we were looking for! This had by the account of the yard owner been there for some time, excellent news for us as it means that all the stresses that would have been released at the cut have now dissipated and we do not have to wait for this which moves on the build very nicely by a few weeks. See the second picture for the Teak as I found it. The wood was too long to fit in my car, so I had it cut into 1500mm and 1000mm pieces as can also be seen below. Also to this we have acquired a nice piece of Purpleheart more than enough for our needs. Again this is very straight figured.
Now for the next week this timber will be allowed to acclimatise to my workshop before we proceed with the next step which of course will be the machining and gluing into our fledgling gun.
See you all next time spearos!