Beauty under load
When you least expect it, you’re sometimes reminded that wood really has two main purposes: as a building material and a source of beauty
You never know where you’ll find an attractive piece of wood.
Our neighborhood is constantly growing, with the developer building several dozen new homes every year. My wife and I walk a lot, and our favorite 2-mile route takes us on a short service road past the developer’s base area where they keep equipment and vehicles.
They use a lot of flatbed trailers to move machinery and such, so there’s usually a couple parked there. These are real beasts — steel construction everywhere and thick oak planks on the beds. Walking past one of these over the weekend, I spotted some really nice wood.
This particular trailer had several planks that were quartersawn, plus some with outstanding figure. Now, the developer is very tolerant of residents who use the service road for hiking so I didn’t linger, climb up for a better look, or even touch the trailer. There are surveillance cameras, and I didn’t want to jeopardize the developer’s good will toward hikers, so I just snapped a quick photo of the nearest of the figured wood and immediately continued on our way.
We woodworkers prize figured stock and are happy to pay a premium for it. But wood’s main purpose is utility — especially strong, sturdy oak for an application like this — and when used that way, no one pays attention to how nice some of the lumber may be. The good-looking stuff gets used right next to plain stuff.
Which is kind of nice, really. When you least expect it, you’re sometimes reminded that wood really has two main purposes: as a building material and a source of beauty. To see both in such a mundane piece of equipment made a good afternoon hike even better.
A.J. Hamler is the former editor of Woodshop News and Woodcraft Magazine. He's currently a freelance woodworking writer/editor, which is another way of stating self-employed. When he's not writing or in the shop, he enjoys science fiction, gourmet cooking and Civil War reenacting, but not at the same time.
