Something I've wanted to do for a long time was to create wooden frames for my set of blueprints. I thought now might be the right time. Since I am doing everything by hand tools, this will be a fairly long project to get done; however, I wanted to document this as I go: both to show how it is done and keep me motivated. For the woods, I have chosen:
BattleMaster: red mulberry
Marauder: spalted maple
Warhammer: black walnut
Wasp: quartersawn red oak
Locust: black cherry
I did consider using black locust for the Locust, but that wood is apparently very difficult to work. We will see though. If I can find the wood I might give it a go.
The first one up is the BattleMaster. I chose the mulberry because I actually have the wood in my basement. Two years ago a massive branch from the mulberry tree in my backyard fell. It was large enough to have it cut into boards. I didn't know what I wanted to do with them because branch wood can be very twisty with interlocked grain, but this seemed like a good project to start. What is more, after going through the pile of wood, there is less there that is usable to me than I thought. Two boards I had originally picked turned out to be unusable as the pith was running through them -- that usually means the board will twist along its access as it moves. There was also a lot of sapwood in the boards that I had to cut around. So all in all, the minimal wood needed for the frames seems to be a good choice overall.
Mulberry is also the hardest wood I have access to, practically doesn't rot, and has this really nice gold color that mellows to a rich brown. The stuff is about 25% harder than white oak and five times harder than pine. So that seemed appropriate for an assault 'mech.
