Day 199: Olneya Tesota

I've had my eye on this tree for several years, I thought it was a Mesquite and was standing dead along side the road a couple miles from my house.  It recently fell over so I pulled over to check it out and see if it was worth salvaging and it turns out that it's Desert Ironwood not Mesquite.

Tonight me and a friend and fellow turner went and cut it up.  The bad news is that it wasn't huge, it had a fair amount of rot, and that there was less heartwood than we expected so much of it was left behind.  What we did take were a couple of fairly large log sections, a couple smaller log sections, and the 2 stumps.  Jeff took everything but the stumps which is fine by me,

 It's hard to get a sense of scale in these photos, but each stump is well over 100 pounds and are probably 18-20" across.  The roots should contain some very interesting grain. 

The rest of my evening was spent loading the car for tomorrow's demo.  Wood, lathe, tools, woodburner, table, chair, are loaded and ready to go.  I'm planning to be out there no later than 8 AM which means leaving by 7:30 AM which means it's my bedtime.