Not-so-dead wood:
Mike Farrell brings new life to wood that most people would just walk by
Seven years ago, Mike Farrell’s daughter Michelle bought him a turning lathe for Father’s Day. He explains simply, “I needed something to do in the winter time, to get out of the chair in my house. I just enjoy doing it – you never know what you’re going to get.”
Mike had been “kind of a carpenter,” as he explains it, having made a 36”x36” butcher block countertop to go over their dishwasher, along with other butcher block projects. He says, however, “My only training was in high school – I hadn’t turned a lathe in 55 years.”
“Even old dead apple trees I’ve been cutting and saving. You use what you’ve got.”
Mike is no stranger to starting from scratch. He bought his farm in 1974, and got straight to work.
Located near the small southwest Wisconsin town of Mount Hope, Mike says, “I had a tractor and six cows – and not a stick of hay on the farm.” Through hard work and perseverance, he gradually built up his operation, and he and his wife Mary raised their two girls there. Michelle is now a pharmacist in Richland Center and Boscobel, Wisconsin, and Megan lives in Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin and works at Universal Forest Products.
With his new lathe, he got to work as well, and decided that along with butcher block cutting boards, he would also make wooden bowls.
Wood has been recovered mostly from his 320-acre property, all dead falls and trees along the edge of the field, and what people have given him. With the help of a friend with a bandsaw, he’s been able to get a good supply of wood planks for his projects.
“My only training was in high school – I hadn’t turned a lathe in 55 years.” – Mike Farrell
“There’s probably about ten different kinds of wood in my sheds. Hickory, ash, soft maple, oak, walnut, cherry. Lot of dead butternut trees I’ve cut in the woods,” he says. “Even old dead apple trees I’ve been cutting and saving. You use what you’ve got.”
Someone he knows approached him and said, “I know you’re looking for cherry burls.’ So, Mike says, “We went down on a Sunday and went through the woods – and he said, ‘you can cut wherever you want to cut,’ so I, my brother and another guy went down and we cut thirty-two burls.”
“What I want to do with the cherry burls is make oblong bowls, and I’ll have to chip the wood out. But that will be a winter project.”
A friend cut him twenty-six large cedar logs – 6 feet and longer. “That’s where I got my cedar,” says Mike. “The rest of the stuff is just stuff I pick up.”
Correct moisture is key
Any green wood that he cuts has to set for 2 to 3 years before it is ready to be worked into one of his projects. He needs the wood to be under 14% moisture, with 10% being ideal. Some pieces that he has cut have been around 30%.
Mike explains, “If you’re turning something over 25%, there will be too much moisture – there’s water coming out of the wood.”
He has dried smaller pieces of wood by putting them in paper bags full of wood chips from previous projects.
One time, he shares, “Six weeks later, the chunk I had put in there was down to 5%. You have to use a paper bag, if you use plastic, the moisture can’t get away. You learn all different types of tricks.”
All woods are not the same
“Some of the hardest are red elm and oak,” says Mike. “Cherry turns nice when it’s green. Red cedar works well for bowls – it’s not as hard and is one of the easiest to turn.”
One of the more interesting-looking woods he uses is spalted maple. Spalting, or a streaked coloring in wood, happens with pigmentation from fungi, usually found in dead trees.
Mike explains, “I let the logs lay on the ground for a couple of years, but turn them every once in a while so they get that marking in them. People say, you must have painted them – and I say no, they’re not painted. I don’t do any coloring whatsoever.”
The process
When making a wooden bowl with the butcher block look. Mike explains, “I glue the pieces together, then turn it and once you get it turned you sand it on the lathe. And then from there I treat it with butcher block oil.”
When starting with a chunk from a log, he says, “You put the faceplate on the back, try to get it centered. Using a chisel with a tungsten tip, I’ll probably chisel it down, take another quarter inch off the whole thing. After you go over the sides, you start working on the middle. I use sanding blocks – use an 80 grade first, and then a 120 grade and then I go to about a 400 grade. These save a lot of fingers, because I used to do it all with a flat piece of sandpaper. It would get so hot it would burn my fingers.”
To finish his bowls and boards, he has typically used butcher block oil – a mixture of linseed oil and beeswax. But, he says, “My son in law did some research and said the best thing to use for retreatment is food grade mineral oil. Over time vegetable oil will get rancid.”
He has stopped discarding much of anything he finds – using epoxy to fill any holes, which end up giving the pieces a unique look and greater character.
“Someone once said to me, ‘You don’t throw anything away,` and I said ‘no’. If it’s wood, it’s going to get cut, especially if it’s laying right there on the ground.”