Before any of my walnut becomes a table leg or a guitar body, it is a log on a trailer. This is where it comes from: a morning at the portable sawmill with Molly’s Uncle Bob, deciding how each cut should come off.

Look at the grain before you decide the thickness

When the first slab came off, the grain direction was exactly what I want for legs and other structural parts. That is the moment to decide what the rest of the log becomes, not after it is all cut.

Check for rot as you go

There was a little rot showing on one face. The question is always whether it runs all the way through. You do not know until the next cut, so you keep milling and watch the faces.

Thick stock for legs, wide stock for guitars

I had Bob cut 8/4 for leg stock, and I pulled some wider pieces from the other side for guitar bodies. Thick stock gives you options later. You can always resaw it thinner. You cannot make it thicker.

Shop talk

Somewhere in the middle we got to talking about grinder guards, and about the scar on my finger from a table saw in 2020. It still works. I keep bumping it.

Where it ended up

The walnut is stickered and drying in the barn with the rest of the lumber stash. What should it become? Legs, a guitar body, something else? Tell me in the YouTube comments.

If you want the whole morning, the uncut session is still up.

Follow along

One guy in a small shop on his father-in-law’s property in Lindsborg, Kansas. IT Director by day, maker by obsession. Equal parts problem solver, craftsman, and curious human. If you’re the kind of person who takes things apart to see how they work, or watches people who do, you’re in the right place.

Uncut shop sessions go up on YouTube and I stream on Twitch. Everything is @carverwoodworking. There is merch in the shop, or you can buy me a coffee.