Hi, the name is Ken and I make a bit of what gets called bush furniture, although I think it's more correctly referred to as stick furniture - ie made using small poles. I have lots of regrowth wattles and eucalypts growing on the bush block i live on, the kind of stuff that more often gets wrongly referred to as rubbish.
I jumped into the forum here with some comments about wood borers - something I am very familiar with and perhaps one of the reasons the wood I use is usually considered worthless. I've had good success using "borax" (actually that is a trade name for one of a variety of boron compounds) to treat the poles. I'd love to talk to some timber scientists about what I've been doing because experienced timber guys have insisted it can't be done, that sufficient penetration, even with pressure can't be reliably achieved; certainly I've never come across anyone using the treatment method I use. Given how abundant smallish wattles and saplings are, how fast growing and how pretty the stuff looks finished it seems like a useful and sustainable resource just goes unused. Whether it can be potentially valuable is a question, beyond the occasional sale of my hobby level production.
I'd also like to chat with people familiar with kiln drying - I don't know if what I use could be kiln dried or if it would be superior if it were; the acacia/wattle has a lot of splitting as it dries. Spotted gum, much less so but it can still be significant. Would a mini kiln drying setup for the small scale I operate on be both feasible and improve the quality?
Not the right thread to go into all this, but should give an idea of what I'm interested in.
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