jeez ... the good luck just doesn't stop

[Paul Hinds]

Went down to the wilds of PA last week to visit my friend Mark Peet who is a bit of a wood scientist, a bit of an urban sawyer, and avid collector of wood samples. He loaned me another set of samples from his collection for me to take home and process, which is what I was expecting when I went down there to return the last batch he loaned me.

As I was leaving he surprised me with 3 boxes of wood that I didn't even have time to look at since he was pressed for time and was politely shooing me out. When I got home I was like a kid in a candy store. I thought it was going to be mostly domestics but right away I was seeing such native PA woods as Brazilian tulipwood, Indonesian rosewood, Australian river redgum, Mexican bocote, and on and on.

I am at the moment hugely frustrated by the fact that we are having a cold snap that makes it pretty much impossible for me to work in my unheated garage, so I now have another new batch of formal samples (not pictured) from Mark, a batch of 40 or so formal samples that I bought for myself from one of the better sample vendors, about 10 samples for David Clark of Australia who has them shipped to me for processing before I forward them to him, and now this fantastic batch of unprocessed samples from Mark which is going to take the most work of all.

My work is cut out for me and I can't even get started. I think I'm going to either cry, laugh, scream, or cuss, or possibly all four pretty much at the same time !

Anyway here's most of the new haul from Mark. Not shown are another dozen woods that are not going on my site and the couple-dozen formal samples he also loaned me.

mp1.jpg

mp2.jpg

[Bruce Volden]

Paul,

I don't quite know what you mean when you say "processing". I have a fair collection of different woods / grains etc.
I like to resaw them for inlay work. Keep us posted.

Bruce

[Bill Space]

If my luck was good I would be afraid to post a thread title like that!!!

[Paul Hinds]

Paul,

I don't quite know what you mean when you say "processing". I have a fair collection of different woods / grains etc.
I like to resaw them for inlay work. Keep us posted.

Bruce

If you look at the pics on my site it will give you an idea of what I have to go through. Here's an answer I just gave on WoodWorkingChat:

For formal samples that I get on loan, I may or may not sand off the label and I may or may not need to sand the other side, but for all samples I make sure that one side is sanded to 240 grit unless there is some reason not to, and I sometimes go to 400 grit.

I don't generally cut wood down to "formal" sample size because I'm not a collector, but I don't like the chunks in my sample boxes to be much more than formal size, so bigger stuff (if it's mine) I may cut down some. There's no finishing agent or preservative added. I only work with dry wood.

I clean up one end enough to get a decent pic, then I take a full set of pics ... both sides, an angled end grain shot, and an end grain closeup. Then I do my end grain "update" process:

http://hobbithouseinc.com/personal/w...DATE/index.htm

and take a close-up of the end once it's fine sanded. I do the not-fine-sanded because it's what most woodworkers will see and I do the fine sanding to get detailed anatomy pics

THEN ... I color correct all of the pics and create HTML to put them on the appropriate page on my web site, put them on the site, type in any pertinent comments, and do a site mirror from my hard drive to the web server (the mirror is done in bulk automagically using a VB.NET program I wrote to do FTP upload of any pics that have been added to my hard drive or changed from what's on the web server).

SO ... it takes a bit of time all told

EDIT: Oh, and I left out the step where I create 3 different sizes for each image (and HTML has to be generated for each, so all told a single sample leads to 15 images and the associated overhead)