West Bridgewater Walnut

Paul Lelito's walnut tree in West Bridgewater, MA. All photos by Paul.

I met Paul Lelito two years ago at the Society of American Period Furniture Maker's New England Chapter April meeting, held at his sawmill at the Magnolia Cranberry Bog in Marion, MA. He's a former arborist and environmental consultant who now saws specialty lumber for a living.

When he was in his early 20's, he worked for Maltby and Co., a tree trimming and removal company in Stoughton, MA. They had a sawmill where they processed the trees they cut into lumber. Paul started woodworking using this lumber. He's maintained a relationship with them for 40 years.

He used to go up in the crane and look around the area for walnut trees. When he found one, he would go to the property owner and offer to cut it for free for the wood should they ever need to take it down.

This is the story of one of those trees that has finally come to fruition. Paul first saw this tree back then and has had an eye on it those 40 years. It grew on a flat spot in a small valley protected from the winds, so it was straight with no twist or tension wood.

While his patience impressed me, I was even more impressed by the story of cooperation behind this tree. This is the best of what Sam Sherrill writes about in his book Harvesting Urban Timber: A Guide to Making Better Use of Urban Trees.

This tree was a large one that had survived decades of winter storms well. But the area has been growing, and the lot was slated for redevelopment 4 years ago; it's still in the permit process. Normally a tree like this would be bulldozed and chipped and go into a landfill, since the developer's interest is simply in clearing the way for construction.

Fortunately, one of the neighbors had a business that had been a client of Paul's consulting service. The neighbor was aware of Paul's interest in the tree and contacted Paul when he saw the "For Sale" sign on the lot.

Paul contacted the property owner about the walnut, but the land was already under agreement with a developer, so he couldn't authorize its removal. The developer actually knew Paul as an environmental consultant, but was unaware of his interest in woodworking.

The developer sent Paul a copy of the landscaping plan and Paul identified the tree. However, he couldn't authorize removal either, since he wasn't the property owner yet. So the tree was in limbo.

Paul communicated back and forth with the owner and the developer over time, and the owner agreed to have the tree removed, since the developer wasn't interested in it. The owner required that the job be done by a professional with a certificate of insurance, and sent Paul a letter of permission.

Either of these parties could have said no or ignored Paul, but they chose to work with him. They recognized that they had a valuable resource that shouldn't be wasted, given someone who knew how to use it. The only thing they asked in return was to see pictures of the furniture made from it.

Late this past January, Paul had Maltby send a crew out and cut the tree down. This was definitely a job for experienced professionals. The span of the branches was 80' from drip edge to drip edge. The usable main trunk was about 32' tall, 60" across at the butt end. This required serious equipment, a crane truck and large chainsaws.


After cutting the branches and limbs, much of which will go to the neighbors for firewood, the arborist prepares to secure the crane line to the top of the trunk.


Cutting off the upper section. This contains some nice crotch wood where the large branches were.


Lowering the upper section to the ground.


Lifting out the lower section. Note the bowl-cut base, where the chainsaw has been plunged in repeatedly around the circumference. This maximizes the wood and captures the highly figured parts where the roots meet the trunk.


The two sections ready for loading.


Loading the upper section, 18' long.


Loading the lower section, 14' long, 39" across at the narrow end, 60" at the butt end. This will yield excellent wide, straight-grained lumber. Wouldn't a piece of this make an awesome conference table?

Once the truck was loaded and secure, the Maltby driver went from West Bridgewater to Berkshire Products in Sheffield, MA, pretty much from one end of the state to the other.

Berkshire Products has a large-capacity bandsaw mill, where they specialize in milling logs into large sequential slabs. Because the mill needs straight sections, they cut the upper log into 8' and 10' sections where it had a crook, then milled everything up. The video below shows some of the action.

They ended up with 3 sequential log sets, in thicknesses of 8/4, 6/4, and 5/4, up to 40" wide. One thing that Paul stipulated in the log handling was that they not use a grapple, only slings to gently lower the sections. This preserved the integrity of the bark so they could leave clean natural edges. Paul also salvaged some of the crotchwood from the larger branches for milling up on his mill.

They loaded the slabs up and took them back across the state to Paul's site in Marion the same day. He's stickered the log sets for drying in a covered open shelter where they'll need to season for at least 2 years. However, the lumber is now available for sale while still green if you'd like to dry it yourself.

Paul has invested a lot of time, effort, and money to make this unique large-slab local walnut available. This is for people who want something nobody else has. If you're interested in purchasing some, you can contact him at 508-451-9999 (cell) or 508-563-2000 (home/shop), or via email at plelito@hotmail.com.

Urban Lumbering In NYC

Milling urban trees at RE-CO BKLYN. All photos courtesy of RE-CO BKLYN.

I met Roger Benton this past winter at the Lie-Nielsen Hand Tool Event held at Phil Lowe's Furniture Institute of Massachusetts. Roger was part of the LN show staff demonstrating hand tools and their use. For the past 3 years, he and Dan Richfield have operated a lumbering and woodworking business in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, NY.

You might not think of the middle of Brooklyn as a place to find a lumbering operation (and here I don't mean just selling lumber, I mean harvesting, milling, and drying it as well). This is what's known as urban lumber, harvesting trees in the urban environment and turning them into useful lumber, as described by Sam Sherrill in his book Harvesting Urban Timber: A Guide to Making Better Use of Urban Trees.

In any urban area, there are yard and municipal trees that come down as a result of weather, disease, or construction and landscaping work. Rather than simply chipping them up or burying them in a landfill, they can be turned into perfectly good lumber for woodworking. Talk about your locally-sourced materials!


Harvesting backyard trees. This is a job for professionals.




In an office district.

Roger and Dan's business is RE-CO BKLYN, Brooklyn's only sawmill, harvesting doomed NYC trees for unique lumber. They produce live-edge slabs from storm damaged park and street trees.

This is a great alternative to combat the high environmental impact of global lumber sourcing. Dan says it reduces unnecessary logging and waste, deforestation and high lumber prices due to shipping expenses.

They work with the city parks department and local tree services to harvest trees, and have been especially involved with processing many of the trees brought down by Hurricane Sandy. While I love the whole concept of urban lumber, I'm particularly glad to see someone salvaging something good from the storm that wreaked so much destruction on people's lives.


Loading up a truck full of downed trees.


Unloading at RE-CO BKLYN.


The pile ready for milling.

This provides a unique source of lumber for area designers and makers. They're the only source in the city for live-edge slabs, full-width boards with the tree's natural shape on both edges. Because they saw, dry, and store all the lumber at their Williamsburg location, they can keep costs down for local customers.


Even humble yard trees have gorgeous strong grain.


Preparing to load the kiln made from a converted shipping container.


A finished load ready for delivery to a local woodworker.

They also feature a full furniture shop, working from a custom-design background. Roger says their design/build team has created one-of-a-kind pieces for private and residential clients ranging from local homeowners to popular celebrities as well as hotels, bars, restaurants, retail stores and more.


Working on a large custom table.


Finishing a pair of smaller custom tables.

If you're a woodworker interested in using some unique local NYC materials, or are interested in custom furniture made from them, contact Roger Benton or Dan Richfield at 347-770-5002, info@recobklyn.com, or through their website.

You can also read Roger's thoughts on the challenges of harvesting lumber in NYC in his blog post at Lost Art Press, and see Jeff Burks' photos of RE-CO BKLYN on page 3 of his galleries from the January LN Hand Tool Event at 3rd Ward, just across the street; the photos are the last 5 rows on the page.

Building A Moxon Double-Screw Vise

My Moxon double-screw vise, based on Chris Schwarz's design.

Chris Schwarz did several blog posts last year about building a version of Joseph Moxon's "double-screw vise". I immediately wanted to build one. He refined his initial design, resulting in an article in the December, 2010 issue of Popular Woodworking. The purpose of this vise is to secure and elevate the ends of boards when sawing dovetails at the workbench, so that you don't have to lean over. By now a number of people have built it.

I recently built a bench-on-bench, another solution to the same problem. So why build this one? I like to know the different ways of doing things. You never know when something will prevent you from working the way you usually have.

This can be made up from scraps around the shop. The hand-screws are turned on the lathe and then threaded with a thread-box. The corresponding holes in the vise rear jaw are threaded with a maching tap.

The screws were the main source of my delay in building this, since I had to work on developing my turning skills. I'm now able to rough a blank and smooth it, all with just a skew. I ordered the threading set from Garrett-Wade, using the gift certificate my parents had given me for Christmas.


This maple came from a co-worker's backyard along a stream in 2006. He had already cut it to firewood length. I split it with wedge and sledge, then quartered the halves on the bandsaw and stacked it in my basement. After 5 years, it's nicely seasoned. It's fun to be using wood I harvested.


Trimming up one of the quarters for a turning blank.


The blank mounted up. I could have put more effort into squaring it up for better balance, but there's really no need.


At lowest RPM, starting to rough it in with the skew.


Now at higher RPM, planing with the skew to smooth, uniform diameter.


The completed turning. Note the defect in the wood along the section to be threaded. This will cause some voids in a few threads, but shouldn't be a problem.


Using the thread-box.


The second blank did require a little more work to prepare. Using a jack to take heavy shavings and quickly square up the shape better. You can see the first screw finished, the defect in the wood wasn't too bad.

The second screw proved more difficult than the first. When I started the thread-box, it was too tight. I put some oil on the wood for lubrication, but it still took too much force to the turn the thread-box. It cut the first few threads, but then wouldn't advance. It ended up completely stripping out the threads.

I hadn't gotten the screw quite down to the proper diameter. Since I had already cut the ends off the turning, I had re-find the centers to remount it on the lathe. It had a bit of wobble, but not enough to be a problem. I took it down another 1/16" or so in diameter, then was able to thread it. So in general, it seems better to err on the side of too small.


The two finished screws. You can see the stripped out threads on the end of the one in front.


Ripping down some poplar 1 3/4" stock for one of the vise jaws.


Boring the 1 1/2" hole in the front jaw using an expansive bit and large Spofford brace. This worked fine...until the spur of the bit snapped off. The cutting edge still worked, but without the spur to cut the outer diameter, the cutter was gradually force into a smaller diameter with each crank of the brace. I had to switch to a forstner bit in a portable power drill.


Tapping the 1 3/8" hole in the rear jaw. The tap is lubricated with salad bowl oil. The gloves are necessary because this takes some force, and the small diameter of the cross-bar handle that provides the torque is hard on the hands.


Fine-tuning the first screw. It threaded into the jaws nicely with a little paste-wax on the threads, but the final unthreaded portion was a little too large in diameter. I rasped it down with a plane float as I rotated the handle.


With both screws in place and before adding the rear brace piece, planing the top of the jaws even.


Chamfering all the edges. Note the new pile of shavings!

I added the rear brace, secured with glue and screws, and tested it out. Secured to the bench with holdfasts, it works very nicely, holding the work piece solidly and presenting the end at a comfortable height.

However, the second screw continued to give me problems. It was much harder to turn than the first one. More paste wax didn't help. Looking more closely at the threads, I could see they weren't cut as well as the first ones; they were fatter, so bound up in the tapped threads.

I'm not sure why, maybe I was pushing down too much using the thread-box, making it advance too fast. Or maybe because I had reduced the diameter, the thread-box pitched a bit to one side as I turned it, leaving threads too wide.

I considered just making a new screw, since the end threads were already torn up, but I had an idea. Perhaps if I could file the threads down a little thinner, they would fit better. I mounted it back up in the lathe and used minimum RPM while running a triangular file down them. This worked great! After a few tries, the screw turned just as easily as the other one.


Chasing the threads with a triangular file to narrow them. As I run the file forward, the spinning threads carry it down the length of the screw in just a few seconds. It takes multiple passes, first angling the file to the leading face of the threads, then the trailing face. The file card sitting on the lathe bed cleans the file of dust and paste-wax.


The completed vise in action. Note my comfortable upright stance, with elbow just over 90 degrees. The workpiece is absolutely solid, no movement or vibration.

This was the last workbench appliance I've been wanting to build. Time to build some finished products! Unless Chris comes up with another gewgaw I just have to build...

SAPFM New England Chapter April Meeting

Paul Lelito's Wood-Mizer portable bandsaw mill, looking out across the cranberry bog. A  holly log sits on it ready to be cut.

I got my first sunburn of the year on a gorgeous spring day at the April meeting of the Society of American Period Furniture Makers, New England chapter. The topic was custom sawmilling, presented by Paul Lelito and Freddy Roman. The location was Paul's site at the Magnolia Cranberry Bog, Marion, MA. The attendees included SAPFM members from Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Connecticut, and Rhode Island, a mix of hobbyists and professionals.

Freddy is the coordinator for the New England chapter. It also turns out he lives half a mile from me! So I offered to drive the 90 minutes to the meeting and haul lumber back in my van.

This was the rain date, since the previous Saturday had been wet snow, and Freddy needed more people to sign up to cover expenses. Quite a change in the weather. Kudos to Freddy for pulling that off!

Freddy represents the future of high-end woodworking. Not yet 30, he graduated from Phil Lowe's Furniture Institute of Massachusetts program 5 years ago. He specializes in furniture restoration and reproductions, particularly veneer, inlay, and banding, as well as commission work. If you have some fine antiques you'd like to have restored, you can reach him at 860-670-2584.

Paul graduated from Phil's program 3 years ago, during which time Freddy was working for Phil teaching and doing museum restoration. If you're looking for fine lumber, including beautiful full flitch sets, Paul has both seasoned and green, all air-dried. You can reach him at 508-451-9999. He's also available for custom on-site milling at a day rate.

Paul was offering some good deals on lumber, so the first order of the day was prowling the stacks. In addition to flatsawn flitches, he does a lot of quartersawing. That's takes more time and produces more waste, but the resultant lumber is spectacular, especially in species with distinct medullary rays.


Attendees examing some full flitch sets.

My treasure find of the day was in the covered racks: quartersawn beech, cut in 2006. I've been looking for this for over a year now to make side-escapement molding planes. I have Larry Williams' planemaking and sharpening DVDs, and a stack of iron blanks from Lie-Nielsen.


What have we here? Quartersawn beech in the center rack, well seasoned and ready to work! I managed to control myself and just buy one board.


Big gorgeous blocks of basswood. Freddy bought one of the big ones, and I bought one of the small ones. It has lovely figure in it, almost like bird's eye maple.


A large walnut log squared up into a cant. Sawing this would be the afternoon project. Paul uses a Bobcat to move these things around.

After some brisk commerce, Paul went over some of the problems and hazards of custom sawmilling. These included drying problems, items embedded in the wood, and operator errors.


Paul presents sawmilling problems to the group. Behind him is a board that twisted up like a perfect airplane propeller when it dried.


Some of the metal embedded in the walnut log: a pulley for a laundry line, and a large screw hook. These would destroy a blade. Excising them takes a big chunk out of the log, especially when the tree has encapsulated them over the years.


Paul shows the result of trying to rush a cut: a wavy surface as the blade bowed by trying to force it through. He flipped it over to show the back, where he slowed down for the next cut. That had a fine flat surface.

Next was a short walk in the woods beside the bog to talk about tree identification. Paul pointed out holly (the biggest holly I had ever seen before was just a decorative shrub), various pines, oaks, tupelo, and beech. He said tupelo was used in World War II era submarines for propeller shaft bearings. It's so tough, he said, you can bury a wedge in it and it won't crack. However, cut thinner and dried out, it eventually becomes very brittle.


Paul talks about differentiating poison sumac from non-poisonous varieties based on its buds. Good to know before you go stomping through the brush with your chainsaw!


The view back across the bog to the mill area.


The group heading back. This is such a beautiful area, and most people just blow on by driving out to Cape Cod.


Time to fire up the mill!

For the morning milling, Paul had a short but large diameter log of holly. One of Freddy's goals for the day was to get some of this to use for inlay stringing. Holly is prized for its light color. It's also very expensive.


After removing a bark slice, Paul discusses the blue discoloration that occurs rapidly in holly due to fungus. It needs to be cut thin and dried immediately.


Paul, left, and Freddy, right, taking the final slice.


Paul stood a bunch of the slices on their sides and cut them down the center to give everybody a piece to take home.

For lunch, Paul had a big firepit going with a huge pile of chicken on the grill. There were also salads, chips, cheeses, cookies, and brownies. Nobody went hungry this meeting! This was followed by a raffle, with more than enough prizes for everyone.


Jae (John A. Ewart), who is both a professional woodworker and a professional chef, tending the chicken. Curiously, the old Coca Cola sign in the background is in French.


The raffle prizes? Everyone got to pick a stack of lumber off the side of the shed. Don't let the weathered look fool you, this was all well-seasoned wood in a variety of species. A little surface cleanup will make is shine. Here Paul Williard examines the stacks. I got the stack with the short piece of walnut on the right, as well as some more beech.

After doing the first half of the raffle tickets, Paul loaded the walnut cant onto the mill and started flatsawing. The length just fit on the rails.


Taking the first slice. This model of mill has hydraulics for loading and manipulating the log, powered saw lift for precise thickness selection, and a chain-driven carriage. The kerf is wafer-thin for minimal waste. You want that in 4/4, 8/4, 12/4? No problem, name your slice.


Even though Paul had removed all the nails he could find, there were still some deeper in the log. Here he points one out to be marked in the first board. The iron in the nails reacts with the tannin in the wood to form black discoloration, almost like ebonizing dye.


Changing out a saw blade. The sawyer has to decide if the value of the lumber than can be harvested outweighs the cost of dulled or destroyed blades. Paul buys them by the box and sends them for several resharpenings, but the expense adds up. In this case, the lumber is pretty valuable, so it's worth continuing.


Paul digs out the remainder of the nail in the log as Freddy looks on. While this damages the wood, the surrounding discoloration means some defects will need to be cut out anyway when the board is cut up. When the blade hits a nail, in addition to damaging the teeth, it vibrates up and down, resulting in a rougher surface that will require more planing later.


The color on the underside of the freshly cut board has a greenish cast along with the rich brown we normally associate with walnut. The seasoned walnut in the shed had such a reddish cast that I thought it was cherry. Freddy said that's the result of exposure to light and air during drying, but it's just surface color; planing will reveal its normal color.


A dulled blade. The teeth on these are pretty sizable; I left the blower in the background so you can get some idea of the scale.

The next blade only lasted one cut, due to more nails, of larger size. Ouch! That one was too heavily damaged, completely missing the tips of at least 3 teeth and several more severely beaten, so Paul gave it to me for blade stock, along with some old already broken up blades.

Freddy and I are going to make framesaws out of it. I'll do one of Joshua Clark's Hyperkitten design, and maybe another using more traditional buckles, and see how it works out. Later I gave Paul $20 to help cover the cost of the blade because I felt bad about throwing it away so quickly.


The boards starting to pile up on the sawhorses, stickered for air circulation.


The final stack while leaving one big slab. There are 7 boards, each 28 square feet of surface. At 4/4, that's 28 board feet; at $10/bf, each board is worth $280, for a total of $1960 for the stack. I don't know what it cost to obtain the log, but it's worth the price of a few blades, even after cutting out damaged areas.


Someone wanted to buy some large square stock, so Paul stood the remainder on its side using the hydraulics and took a cut. Chef Jae took the last piece for a workbench slab top (after a few years of drying), where the nail discoloration will add character.

Here's a video of the day's work:



After this, Paul finished up the raffle and everyone left with big smiles. Freddy and I loaded up our swag, then helped Paul as he used the Bobcat to consolidate some stacks to make room for more incoming logs and get things covered up.

On the way home, Freddy and I stopped at his shop to unload his lumber. He's a partner with Will Neptune. The shop is located in Littleton, MA, right across the street from the building I worked in 15 years ago for Digital Equipment Corporation (which became Compaq, then HP, now IBM).

Freddy showed me some of his bandings. These are complex sandwiches of contrasting veneers in a variety of patterns that are then sliced across in veneer-thickness bands and inlaid into larger pieces. Making them is very exacting work. Not many people would have the patience for it.

The other thing he makes is harps! He showed me a finished one and several in progress. The work is more like boat-building than furniture: a few straight lines, but curves and odd compound angles everywhere. Placement of all the holes for string pegs and tensioners requires a large template.

Freddy really impressed me. He's very committed to his craft, and holds himself to high standards. He told me some horror stories of poor restorations he's seen that reminded me of my 10-foot dovetails: looks OK from 10 feet or more away, but don't look any closer. Freddy's standard is more like a 1-inch distance: get right up close, and you can't see where the original leaves off and the restoration picks up.

His willingness to run the SAPFM New England chapter is an example of his dedication. He works crazy hours as a self-employed businessman, yet is still willing to put in the time to make the NE chapter a success. The high-end work he does has a limited clientele in the best of times, and the current economy makes it even more challenging. But his priority for meetings is that everyone learns something and enjoys themselves.

Next month's meeting features Peter Follansbee demonstrating 17th-century rived, carved, and pegged oak furniture at Phil Lowe's shop. I'm looking forward to it! Once again, I feel so fortunate to live in an area with so many excellent woodworkers, willing to share their talents, knowledge, and resources.