Page 73 - Wood Review Dec 202 Full issue

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periphery (photo 5). On the tangential surface they show as long lines sharply pointed at either end (photo 6).
I was quite taken by the rich colour and looked for something to make that didn’t involve any intricate shaping. I turned some up for handles and found it easier to turn than I expected, and what impressed me most was the magnificent, very tactile surfaces I achieved, very easily. Pretty soon I was putting bull oak handles on any tool that stood still long enough.
Bull oak (sometimes spelt ‘buloke’) has a wide distribution through much of inland Australia. There is the usual variation from tree to tree, but wood I’ve collected from as far apart
as Victoria and western Queensland was remarkably similar. One lot I obtained from a mature tree near Echuca (killed and partly shattered by a lightning strike) had quite fine rays and finished with the smoothest, most lustrous surface that just begs to be handled (photo 7).
Working with rose sheoak
That experience got me thinking about rose sheoak and if it was useful for other than firewood. By starting with green wood, sawing immediately, sealing ends, and drying it very gently, I got plenty of sound wood from the first batch I harvested.
The rays are a bit smaller on average than bull oak’s. The ‘rose’ colour of the fresh-sawn wood turns to a dark brown after a few months of exposure (photos 8, 9)
The wood of one tree from the old family farm on the Atherton Tablelands had a fine fiddleback figure forming a herring-bone pattern that gives the wood a shimmering quality. It’s the only time I’ve seen this pattern in a casuarina (photo 10).
A. torulosa is a little bit easier to work than bull oak (but still plenty tough), and takes an equally nice finish. Although I thought it might be a bit too fissile to take heavy impact,
I used some to re-handle my socket chisels and they have stood up as well as any other wood I’ve used (photo 11).
The largest casuarina: river oak
A. cunninghamiana is the largest of our casuarinas, and grows abundantly along the watercourses draining the eastern side of the Great Divide from north Queensland to southern NSW, wherever they haven’t been choked out by introduced Chinese elm and camphor laurel.
A tree fell into my hands (almost literally) when a storm blew it over into our backyard. It had been dead for some time, and had a few splits as well as a large hollow, but what intrigued me was the jet black inner heartwood. The normal coarse grain structure was completely obliterated and it looked like ebony. I rescued what I could and put it aside to dry.
Unfortunately, most of the black wood split to matchsticks during drying, despite my care, and I managed to get
only small pieces of it that remained intact, but the spalt
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