You never know when you are going to need a pick up load of humongous rusted band saw blades. I picked these up at an auction in the bottoms. These things are about an inch and a quarter wide and make a circle with a diameter of about five feet. I don't know what I am going to do with them. I know it won't have anything to do with what they were intended for. I have a couple ideas already. Stay tuned to future blog posts. There is a quote by Thoreau that goes like this: "a man is rich in proportion to the number of things he can afford to let alone". I am afflicted by an admiration of that idea. Sometimes I wonder to what extent it has dampened my potential to rake in more of the substances of living. But that is a digression. A person who, like me, is sometimes possessed of a mad creative impulse, may very well be rich in proportion to the number of strange things he can afford to drag home (or to some designated location) and put in a pile in the yard till an inspiration strides. Ahhhh, yes, I know the danger of this very well. Having spent huge amounts of energy getting rid of piles of crap I once thought I would use. But how can you go wrong with massive rusted band saw blades? For the past few days I have been pillaging the ruins of a place called Seldom Found Architectural. Once featured in the Kansas City Star, the kind of operation I watched unfold and thought, "damn, I should have done that" but which has now, sadly, gone under. Seven months ago I went down to said business and purchased an old hunk of timber for a client's "rustic fire place mantle" and gave them 40 dollars for a cedar beam. Today, and for the past few days, I have been going down to said location and loading all the timber hunks I can get in my little red truck. For free. of course.
I am not taking the gargantuan ones. I just don't have the gumption for that anymore. But I am walking off with 10 inch by 10 inch by five food hunks of wood. This wood that looks like grey garbage until you run a cheep hand planer over it and maybe hit it with a little belt sander action, maybe a little danish oil, maybe some clear coat, and then, you have art. Beautiful wood with character and personality. something you look at and go, "on my god that is stunningly beautiful." So. though I am pitifully ill equipped to store, let alone move around, such things. I can not stop myself from taking what is there for the fools of love of lustrous old growth lumber.