My Lathe: Part III The legs

Well the following is an example of how frustrating trying to apply European woodworking techniques to Australian Timbers.

I grabbed this log at the same time as the lathe bed log. It is from a much smaller tree (obviously) and is also a messmate. From the bark there is no suggestion of any spiral grain to cause a split to twist so that is a good start. Being 8"+ in diameter it should be big enough for the four legs of my lathe.

As you can see the first split has not started so well.

This is a relatively small log. Actually it is a small log and you can see the grief it is giving my gluts. As I said before so often wooden wedges die really quickly because I am asking too much of them. The ones in this photo are red iron bark which has a janka hardness of 13 kN and maximum crushing strength of 75 MPa compared with English Oak which is 5.5 kN and 52 MPa respectively. Also the grain is not straight and is quite interlocked (for Northern hemisphere peoples imagine Elm except hard).

All the way along this split it would not run true.

The second split on the other hand was easy (relatively). I've split ash and oak and excluding situations where there are knots or other defects in the log (nails or wire for example) you can often split a log of this size with just a froe and maul. Even in half with a clean split this one required a couple of wedges to help it along.

 The second half wasn't as cooperative and while this is not such a good photo you can see the much smaller quartered section second from the left. This quarter was so much smaller because of all the split and fractured wood which I had to trim off.

Fortunately it was just big enough to give a 2" tenon to fir the augered 2" mortice in the lathe bed.

All four legs in the lathe bed and while one of them is a bit undersized I hope it will be fine. Locating the thinner leg at the tail stock end should mean that less is asked of it.