February 2023 Chatty Thread

In contrast, where I am in Minnesota it hasn't rained for a long long time.
On the other hand, I'm saving a fortune on fuel for my mower; I've mowed twice this whole year. Usually I have to mow every four days starting in May.

Thanks for the photo. That’s a great explanation of the various cuts. 

I’m trying a new way (for me) to post pictures using my phone. 
Looks like it worked. 

Back to the wood for just a second, when you look at all the nicest vintage furniture from maybe the Craftsman period or "arts and crafts" or "Greene and Greene" sometimes people will say...you almost always also hear the term "quarter-sawn white oak". It just cost more to have men cut up the logs and analyze each chunk and figure out which way to run it through the saw to create the lumber that they wanted for that furniture. It wasn't as much of a problem, though, when you could buy a man for a dollar a day or whatever. Labor is much more expensive now, so they just lay the logs on the saw and it goes back and forth like slicing bread, and you get that "flat sawn" or "plain sawn" grain we see in oak cabinets of these days and the last few decades. Even more so, most of the time they are oak-veneered plywood, and the most cost effective way to cut the veneers is, believe it or not, they spin the log and peel the wood off with a huge blade, like unrolling a roll of wrapping paper. That creates a grain pattern even more yucky in my opinion, but you see it everywhere.