Plum wood

[Greg M]

Apologies if this has been talked about, but a search here only turned up passing references to plum wood.  I have a plum tree that I planted about 12 years ago that is getting to its end of life.  Between black knot and plum curculio and my daughters no longer climbing trees,  I'm thinking it's time for it to go.  How good of a wood for shipbuilding is plum?  Comparable to cherry?  If there's value to it, what's the best time to cut it down and how should I treat it after cutting it down?

 

It's an Asian Plum (Shiro) grafted on European rootstock.  The trunk root stock is about 2-1/2 feet long and 10 inches in diameter before branching.  The primary limb coming off the graft is about 6-8 inches in diameter.  Plenty of wood, just wondering if better for the firepit or modelling.

[Jaager]

Any fruit wood is usually an excellent choice.  The best time to harvest is usually when the tree is dormant.

It will probably be harder that Cherry,  close the Apple - which is King.

For hull planking, you will have to see the actual planks re: the color and uniformity. But for anything else, fittings, furniture, catheads, beams, etc. it will be excellent.

The harvesting technique has been covered in this form several times.

The short list is:

seal the ends - old paint will serve  do it ASAP

debark - insect larvae that bore live there.  Drawknives were designed for this but freehand bandsaw is less actual work, but can cost more wood

Get it into billets soonest if you can.  A free standing bandsaw is the more efficient tool to do this.

Sticker - good ventilation and air circulation - in a covered location or an atic  Access to a kiln gets the seasoned wood more quickly. Air drying = 1 year per inch in thickness.

[Louie da fly]

Agreed. Fruit woods in general are very good. And for carving, as well.

[Jim Lad]

The only caution with fruit wood is that I've found some citrus woods to be rather prone to splintering.

 

John

[Louie da fly]

Yes, not sure about citrus - I was mostly talking about the fruits like plum, nectarine, apricot etc and pomes (apple, pear). 

[Greg M]

17 hours ago, Jaager said:

Any fruit wood is usually an excellent choice.  The best time to harvest is usually when the tree is dormant.

It will probably be harder that Cherry,  close the Apple - which is King.

For hull planking, you will have to see the actual planks re: the color and uniformity. But for anything else, fittings, furniture, catheads, beams, etc. it will be excellent.

The harvesting technique has been covered in this form several times.

The short list is:

seal the ends - old paint will serve  do it ASAP

debark - insect larvae that bore live there.  Drawknives were designed for this but freehand bandsaw is less actual work, but can cost more wood

Get it into billets soonest if you can.  A free standing bandsaw is the more efficient tool to do this.

Sticker - good ventilation and air circulation - in a covered location or an atic  Access to a kiln gets the seasoned wood more quickly. Air drying = 1 year per inch in thickness.

 

Thanks very much.  I wasn't sure if there were any special considerations for plum versus other fruitwood regarding harvesting,   Sounds like I have another month or two to see if I can track down or jury rig a kiln.

[Jaager]

3 hours ago, Greg M said:

jury rig a kiln.

I made a simple one that worked for some Holly,  but It was nowhere close to being a spec based kiln.

 

1" foil faced sheathing cut up to make a 4 sided box.  The end pieces were Home Depot craft 1" Styrofoam.  It was in a wall shelf, so it was just a push fit.

Heat source - 200-300 Watts of incand. light bulbs.  The bulbs ought not to get close to the foam or touch the wood.  I only had wire clamp bulb fixtures, but next time I would get ceramic fixtures -

I used a computer muffin fan for exhaust of water vapor.  The loose fit was the air intake.

There are low cost probe moisture meters and I used a battery thermometer that saved the highest temp.  It was in my garage, so the temp was affected by ambient.

 

I did not want to cook the Holly, I just wanted the temp to be higher than what Blue Mold would like.  I was in no hurry to season it, but that mold invades quickly.

It was already too late for the stock that came out of my cousin's wood pile,  But unlike what mold did to some Apple I stored incorrectly (oatmeal instead of wood in structure) 

infected Holly is still sound.  It is just not white.  But my cousin's Holly is yellowish anyway.  Like Apple,  Plum is going to have sugar in its transported water.  My take home lesson from

the long ago Apple experience =  slow seasoning of 6-8" logs will have problems from mold as well as being prone to splitting - especially if the cut ends and branch cuts are not completely sealed.

I was in my early 20's and had never seen a bandsaw, much less know what one was for.

[Charles Green]

Parts of small dimension cut from limb wood are subject to warping due to stresses inherent in that type of wood.  The limbs of deciduous trees form "tension wood" on their upper halves, conifers form "compression wood" on the lower halves of their limbs.  Both types of growth provide extra strength to help support the limb's horizontal load but result in a surprising amount of "walk" when limbs go through the mill.  Don't count on much straight wood from the limbs.  

[Greg M]

Thanks guys.  Charles, thanks for tempering expectations.  I remember about 15 years ago finding a couple logs of cherry from a tree that my father had taken down 10 years before and about half the wood cupped when I put it through a bandsaw.  I always wondered why not all of it behaved that way.

 

jaeger, thanks very much regarding the kiln.  I found some other sources online building a tent and using a dehumidifier for the same purpose.  I have one in my basement office that I use in the summer and fall that I could repurpose during the winter and spring.

[Roger Pellett]

In 1975 a guy who worked for me offered me the wood from a pear tree that he had removed from his property.  The logs were cut up by a small saw mill and the rough planks sat around until I finally sawed and planed them into billets several years ago.  When they were originally sawed, I knew nothing about flat sawing, quarter sawing, etc. so the dried planks were cupped and twisted, with streaks of rotted wood.  Even after losing perhaps half, I have enough usable billets to last me the rest of my life.

 

The point is that small blocks suitable for model building can be cut from warped and cupped wood that would be useless for other applications.  In my case, billets that I cut have remained dimensionally stable.

 

Roger

[Gaetan Bordeleau]

I had 1 plank of plum about 30 years ago. The color was very nice and it worked well. Wished I had more.

[Carlos Reira]

Any prunus species is going to have nice wood with a fine texture, that's almond, plum, cherry, apricot, peach, etc.  I've seen ornamental plum trees 60' tall and over 2' diameter. Obviously, a 12 year old tree with a 10" trunk is going to be wide grained. I have more experience with Japanese cherry varieties, Yoshino and Kwanzan, and that wood is very nice even with wide growth rings. With any of them, you're going to get ray flecking on perfectly quartered surfaces, exactly like maple and holly. That can be distracting in a scale model. You don't get that as much with pear and apple.