Makin' sawdust...

I love making spearguns for myself. I only get the opportunity to work with timber every couple of months, so I need to make it worth my while when I do. Acquired some nice timber in recent months and there's a bit of a process to turn it into usable stock for gluing. Thought I'd share a few pics of of some very unusual Australian timber I got. Can't wait to turn some glued up stocks into spearguns this weekend

That redhead is "speckled" Mackay Cedar. Normally dark red with some faint yellow streaks. But on a very rare occasion you get very pronounced streaks. The bloke I got it off has been milling exotic/unusual australian timber for 20+ years and in that time he has only cut up 3 logs like that. I'm going to use some as accents on the side of a gun, and at a later stage glue up a stock which will be mostly mackay cedar.

The other "pure" redhead is Australian Scented Rosewood. Awesome timber to work with and smells bloody fantastic.

The rest of the ladies are Silver Ash, Hairy Oak, Zebrano, Snakewood and Northern Silky Oak

Quarter sawn silky oak or lacewood as you guys call it looks sensational. Over here there are two types, northern and southern. The northern is the Cardwellia sublimis where as the southern is Grevillea robusta. Different tree families. I've used the southern quite a bit in the past and this will be the first time using northern. The southern has a deeper red colour.
Here's a cannon I knocked up a while ago which had some quarter sawn southern in it...

Quote from Don Paul

That's a looker mate.:thumbsup2: Thanks for the info on the Northern and Southern lace wood, mine is the reddish one, i didn't know about the lighter one. When Greg Pickering came over to dive with my club(20years ago) he was surprised by my gun. I was tellin him how rare the wood was here. Then he said ''well back home they build shite houses from it some times, it's common''.

Cheers, Don

The southern stuff is very common. There's a boutique timber supply place in Sydney that used it as framing for shelves to rack the other timber! So a silky oak dunny (shite house) wouldn't surprise me at all haha

The northern stuff can be hard to get because most of the remaining trees are in or border on national parks in Queensland... Supposed to give a nicer finish and lustre than southern silky

Goes both ways Don. What's rare for you, ain't rare for us and vice versa. I searched for a long time to find some purple heart and have a nice little stash now. There's a few other timbers you can get in the USA I'd like to get my hands on but can't...

I've seen Mike N use some yellow heart in his guns that looks great! So some of that would be nice. And...come to think of it, I can probably track down most stuff

I did find some birds eye maple a while ago, which had a distinct lack of birdseye :confused1:

Huon pine with birdseye from Tasmania is similar but denser, great in a marine environment too (boat building). Looks great but you pay thru the nose for it.

I have stayed away from various maples and oaks imported from the USA because they can be a bit unstable. Our silky oak is not a true oak at all.

While I'm the bandwagon, teak is so bloody boring...

That dyed timber looks sensational too! Any idea of how they do the dying process? Water based?

Things are starting to take shape... Nice little arvo session with the spokeshave and sandpaper.

Every set of guns I've made have been different; evolution you might say :cool2: These are no different. New type of mech, new shape etc. Striving for my "perfect" gun. There was a massive crack up the guts of the Mackay Cedar slab. So I ended up with a couple of boards 110x25mm @ 3m long and a few shorter length boards. Didn't have the heart to cut up the nice board in previous pics for an "evolutionary" gun so used some shorter lengths. If these turn out well, ie they shoot straight and hard plus look shit hot then I'll make copies using a majority of the boutique timber in the stock