Timber sourcing day trip

I need great figured timber for my woodworking projects, sayas, handles and magnet knife bars. You are almost guaranteed to get nothing from hardware stores, and timber sheds in the city are more geared towards large quantity uers like furniture makers and decking / fencing guys. There are some higher end timber vendors, but usually the mark up is too big for my little wallet.

So once in a while, a trip to the country is needed, to visit those little timber mills hidden in the bush and convince them that I need their best stuff (usually sitting in their little tresure box). After meeting a nice timber supplier at a timber show, I decided to take a trip to their mill a few days ago.

A country road climbing into the mountains — It is always a pleasure to drive into the mountains.

Panoramic view from a lookout on the drive — Stopped half way to check out a little look out place

A gum tree with bark blackened by bushfire — The famous bushfire here in Australia means you can always score a ton of charcoal afterwards, thats probably we love our backyard barbeque here?

A handful of charcoal picked up after a bushfire

The castle style towers of a single lane bridge — Also came across this awesome looking one-lane bridge

A pile of large redgum burls at the timber mill — Upon arriving, the very first thing that caught my eye was these huge burls pile. These are redgum burls, so tends to have lots of voids here and there, I would be laughing if there were Mallee or Coolibah burls ;p

Logs and sawn slabs scattered around the mill — Lots of huge logs and slabs scattered around, but these are not what I am after either

And....

Black wattle and blackwood boards laid out on a workbench — this is what I am really talking about! Black wattle and blackwood with A TON OF FIGURE (but you may not see it just like so) ;p

A rough board with fiddleback figure starting to show — Can probably see some fiddleback patterns now (rings)

A planed board showing strong fiddleback figure — So here is what they really look like, after just going through and thickness planner :)

Another planed board with fiddleback figure

Can't wait to work on them now!

[Restored October 2026: this 2015 post was lost in a site migration and has been brought back from the Internet Archive, with its eleven original photographs as first published.]

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