A Request to Arborists, Tree Crews, and Sawyers
Cedar, pine, and fir. Any diameter, in lengths from 7 to 10 feet, in the log or already milled. They become hollow wooden surfboards, built with local students.
What I Need
Sawyers: the same wood in board form is just as useful to me. Knotty cedar, pine, or fir, 7 to 10 feet long, an inch or thicker, air dried or green.
Softwoods. Cedar is the prize, but pine and fir build beautiful boards.
One straight section is all I need. Longer is fine, it can be cut down.
Small logs give clear strips. Big ones give wide planks. Both get used.
Storm drop, hazard tree, land clearing, or knotty stock off the mill.
What Makes a Good Log
Mills want clear, knot-free timber. I want the opposite. Knots, burl, and the color that runs through a tree that lived a hard life are what make a board worth looking at. So do not sort on my account. If it is a softwood and it is sound enough to hold together on the mill, it is worth a photo and a call.
Where the Wood Goes
These builds are run as education projects with local schools. Students take part in real stages of the work, learn to use hand tools, and learn where the material came from. A board that started as a storm-dropped tree down the road teaches more ecology than a textbook does. If you point me to a log, the students will know whose tree it was.
What I Can Offer
For an ideal log I am glad to pay a fair price. Tell me what it is worth to you.
Whoever supplies a tree is credited in the project literature, on the placards that travel with the board, and in the school materials.
Every build is shared as it goes: social media, local news and broadcast, and an exhibition at the end. Writers have followed this work for twenty years, from WoodenBoat to an AP wire story to a feature coming in N Magazine. A company that supplies a tree gets named in all of it.
Send a photo of the log or the stack, the species if you know it, roughly how long and how thick it is, and where it is sitting. I will come and look, and I will handle the cutting and the hauling.
Email me about a logRich Blundell, wooden surfboard builder