Sunday 9 October 2011

Oak & Apples

For a while I've been toying with the idea of a primitive crossbow, the short wooden bow would allow me to experiment with off cuts of timber and suchlike.
A crossbow stock wants to be heavy and stable, sounds like Oak to me. I went down to the woods and found a nice big fallen Oak limb, it looked much too big and much too rotten with the undergrowth established over it. The bark just crumbled off all black and manky, the sap wood was a white spongy mass, but I could see where the limb had split conveniently along the length the heart wood was solid as ... a chunk of Oak. I mean we used to build ships, barns and all sorts out of the stuff.
I sawed a 3' length, and took it home on my shoulder (it was getting heavier with every pace).
The bandsaw soon shaped it into two nice blanks for use at some future date.
Working the Oak also reminded me of project I'd been mulling over for a while, a machine for chopping up apples to make apple juice and cider. Another piece of that Oak soon became the roller for the machine, Oak works nicely when wet (and makes less dust). You can see from the pic that it's a nice chunk of Oak, cut from a quarter of the log so that the centre isn't in the block so hopefully it won't split as it dries. The roller has loads of stainless steel screws protruding from it to mash up the apples as it spins round, powered from an old 12V Dc motor I have lying around.
Anyhow here are a few pics rather than writing a load.

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