Mini-Projects from American Chestnut

raymondb · May 11

My woodworking club is working with SUNY ESF professors as they work to commericialize the Darling variant of a new blight-resistant American Chestnut. A few members created pens and bottle openers from some of the wood they provided. A new group of pens engraved with "250" and the American flag were handed out to participants at an Arbor Day tree planting on the Eclipse in Washington, DC.
My husband and I are attending the AAW conference in Raleigh and decided to present a display of items created from this wood so as to further educate folks about this exceptional breakthrough to bringing back the American Chestnut to our forests. Of course, the husband cut most of the wood into 7/8" square pen blanks as club members were creating 100 pens. For me, there was no easy way to create items such as boxes from the wood on the scrollsaw. Instead, I decided to create a few compound cut pieces which also meant some serious size reductions when printing the compound patterns. I think some are printed at anywhere from 40-60% of their original size.
Thought I would share a photo of some of the items I've created to date from this Darling variant of American chestnut. The fretwork vase (Sue Mey's design) is about 3" tall (versus the pattern at 7") and created using 4 blanks. Nothing is finished as yet and the earrings still need the findings. Chestnut cuts pretty easily. I am using the Pega Super Skip blades in various sizes, a blade I've found that works best for compound cuts. I buy mine from Dennis Knappen at Artcrafters Scroll Saw [artcraftersscrollsaw.com].

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