Working with Natural Edge for First Time. Advice for needed tools and Technique

[Bryan S]

As I mentioned in a previous post them beam we acquired is to be a mantle and has the natural edge, even has a bit of bark still on it. Now, I have never worked with a natural edge and I am not sure the best way to go about this.

What we want to do is get the sapwood off down to the heartwood, yet maintain the curve and irregular shape of the outer trunk. It is hard to tell in this pic, but the sapwood seams to get thin at the knot, which should really accent that part of the mantle. Now for the question of the hour, What is the right tool for this job? My first thought is a draw knife, am I on the right track for this or do I need to think differently?

View image in gallery​

View image in gallery

​

There are going to be many first with this project and i am sure there will be a few more questions along the way.

 

[b4man]

That's gonna be beautiful!
Would a card scraper be too aggressive? You can get them with varied profiles.:eusa_thin

 

[chris_goris]

Doesnt that defeat the purpose of natural edge by removing it?

 

[scsmith42]

A draw knife would be my first choice as well.

Two of our members - Touchwood and Kooshball - have both done something similar in the past few months. Hopefully they will chime in here with their advice.

 

[kooshball]

When I made my coffee table (link below), I only removed the bark to show off the spalted sap wood but on the other side I "simulated" a live edge texture...this may be what you are looking to accomplish.

http://www.ncwoodworker.net/forums/showthread.php?t=45031&highlight=Live+edge+coffee

I basically got the cheapest chisel that I owned and started in at the end grain to create a split. I then let this split propagate down the length of the slap to create a riven edge that was irregular. This was then refined with a gouge to give the edge some texture.

let me know if this makes sense or if you have any other questions.

 

[Jeremy Scuteri]

http://www.cn-woodworking.com/creating-a-live-edge/

 

[walnutjerry]

I would agree with the draw knife to begin with to hog off most of the sapwood and finish up with a spoke shave and pattern makers rasp. But why destroy the "natural" edge?

Jerry

 

[Tim Sherwood]

That's a nice hunk of wood Brian. I like the idea of keeping the sapwood intact. The contrast will accentuate the fact that it is a "natural " edge. Wouldn't anything else is be a "man made" look?

 

[bluedawg76]

i think the basic idea would be to rive the edge so that the split follows the natural grain direction as David did. Any type of wedge driven into the end grain would work such as a hatchet or large pry chisel. Drawknife will work as well but from the photo, it looks like that knot is a few inches into the board, so I'd imagine this to be the most labor intensive, especially if the wood is dry.

 

[Bryan S]

I knew I was going to get the questions about why and I fully understand why that would questioned. Stripping off the sapwood here is removing the true natural edge and saying natural edge may not be the best term here. I know many people like that look of the sapwood being there and some would call it sacrilege, or worse, to strip it off. I have seen many pieces where it worked and worked great and the table in the thread David liked to is a great example of that, but I do not think it will work here.

The part of the mantle that is first seen when walking into the room is the edge facing the room. In this case, unlike a table where a little of the sapwood will accent the table, it would not be an accent here, it would be all you see . The rich color of the cherry would be hidden behind the lighter sapwood. I personally would rather see the cherry color all the way through. The second reason is, the misses does not want the sapwood there, so who am I to argue. :no:

 

[Touchwood]

I've done a bunch of natural edge benches in both oak and walnut. The bark comes off easy if the wood is good ande dry..I used a dull chisel, but some just popped off with a screwdriver.

The natural edge on walnut, once the bark is off usually has lots of little "spikes" sticking out where branches started to form. I used my 4 1/2" right angle grinder with 36 grid disc to remove them, and it worked so well, I removed a lot of sapwood too..still kept some for contrast, but I could have easily and quickly removed it all and at the same time followed the contour of the natural edge,

The cherry sapwood would be much like the walnut. You might want to do this outside,..there's going to be a lot of grinder dust.

After the grinder I just used a 6" RO sander with 50 and 80 grit and then regular RO with higher grits to get the smoothness I wanted. Even though the grinder is fast, it's a very controlable process.

Hope this helps

Don

 

[MikeH]

That's gonna be beautiful!
Would a card scraper be too aggressive? You can get them with varied profiles.:eusa_thin

Speaking of card scrapers check this out...http://www.stewmac.com/shop/Tools/S...ate_Scraper.html?actn=100101&xst=3&xsr=341220