Elm on my mind

We've been mostly saving old buildings recently. More of that later. We've had a storm raging here for the past two days, and I've been hunkered down, reading about Elm Timber Framing. We have several Elm stumps in the back hedge around 12" diameter. The previous owner had cut them off at 3' high, so they were neither coppiced or pollarded. They have suckered and new saplings are growing up and as we also have ash, that so far has not succumbed to the dieback, I want to help the ash, so I have cut the elm stumps off to the ground, as they will probably sprout again, and who knows maybe one day soon Dutch Elm Disease will have run it's course, and they might make it to maturity.

I have never made anything from elm, so this afternoon I started roughing out a bowl in the covered way. It is far from green now, but I had no problem, making progress with my Dave Budd bowl adze. It never seems to go blunt!

The book by Robert Somerville is a very interesting read.

The most striking thing he introduces is the variety in appearance of Elm trees. I used to live in Brighton, which is a haven for the Elm, but it seems that there may be many more around than the public perception acknowledges, according to Robert. I know of two giants locally, but maybe I'm not looking closely enough, because I mainly have eyes for oak.

Elm is known for it's interlocking grain; the reason it was used for the nave, or the hub of a wooden wheel. I remember visiting Mike Rowland carriage makers maybe 15 years back. They had a stack of nave sized chunks of elm on the outside of their workshop, seasoning. This stump, though, is perfectly straight grained, or maybe I might not have been able to cleave it.