The old birch tree

Several years ago we had our weeping birch taken down. It was infested with something that made the leaves curl up and turn brown. We had it sprayed once, guy with the hazmat suit, warnings to the kids next door to stay out of the front yard for a few hours, the whole nine yards. The next day I saw a yellow warbler sitting in the tree. The guy said the poison dissipates fairly quickly and isn’t a danger to the birds but somehow the image of him in the hazmat suit made me skeptical and we determined that we weren’t going to do that again.


The tree was okay for a while and then whatever insects had infested it the first time came back. It was an old tree, probably planted when the house was new, which was 1954. Trees have a lifespan and we figured this one was getting close to its end so we had an arborist come and take the tree down. At my request he saved a bunch of logs for me, mostly the trunk and bits of the larger limbs. I duly went and bought some sealer and painted the ends with it and stacked them in the garage. I’m calling them logs because I don’t know what else to call them. I always think of logs as really long pieces of tree and these pieces are only about two feet long. I guess we do talk about logs for firewood and they’re short.


The Retired Teachers Art Show is coming up in a couple of weeks, and as usual, I’m doing things at the last minute. I decided it was time to haul some of the logs into the shop and see if I could use them for bandsaw boxes. I’ve worked on three so far and they are pretty badly checked despite the stuff I painted on the ends, a sign I should have done something with them sooner.


I was a bit apprehensive about working with them as a friend to whom I had given some of the birch said she had a lot of trouble trying to cut the pieces on her eighteen inch bandsaw with a powerful motor. Mine is a fourteen inch saw with a smaller motor.


The first thing I had to do was figure out how to get the bark off. I used my belt axe on the first log. That worked pretty well but it really made my hands sore the next day. There were splits between the bark and the wood of the second log and I decided to try an old chisel of my grandfather’s to see if I could get it in the cracks and further separate the bark that way. I have a wooden mallet that Richard turned so I used that to whack away at the bark. It came off more easily than with the axe and it wasn’t as hard on my hands. I did use the axe towards the end of the process to get the last bits of bark off.

Stripping the bark

I have a contraption for the bandsaw that I bought specifically for resawing, i.e. making boards out of logs. It works quite well, although it’s a bit of a pain to get it set up. I’ve been making bandsaw boxes for a long time and I’m pretty comfortable guiding wood through the saw manually. My bandsaw boxes are seldom square so they often involve cutting a slice off a curved form. I decided this time to try to make one side of the log flat enough that I could comfortably hold onto it while I fed it through the saw.


On the first one I used the axe, then a draw knife, then a scrub plane, and then a smoothing plane on that face before taking the log to the saw. On the second one I used the axe, the scrub plane and the smoother. On the one I worked on tonight. I used the axe, put the side I was flattening on the floor to see how much it rocked and then took the axe to it again. I further refined my technique by getting a piece of aluminum angle iron to use as a straight edge against the face. Then I marked the high spots with pencil and used the axe some more. I’ve quit for the night and it’s not completely flat at this point. I’ll have a look at it in the morning to see if it’s flat enough to cut.

Creating a flat side

As I mentioned before there are lots of checks in the wood. I think I may fill some of them with epoxy and leave them as part of the finished box. That isn’t to everyone’s taste but I want to respect some of the tree’s imperfections by leaving them in. I’ll lose a lot of wood if I only use the parts that don’t have splits. I may make some boxes with the cracks filled and some where I use the small amount of wood that isn’t cracked. I don’t think I'll process any more logs at the moment. I need to put a thinner blade on the bandsaw to actually make the boxes and changing blades is a bit of a pain. Besides, I could get carried away milling logs and not get the boxes done in time for the show. I have only two weeks and it’s time to focus. I really hope I can turn some of the logs into pieces I’m proud of. I want the beauty of that old tree to carry on in a different form. Stay tuned.

Grandad's smoother

January had been large. I learned that term last year from a Newfoundlander. Rather than physical size ‘large’ refers to impressive, generous, substantial, or intense. January was certainly the last two of these.

Bruce reminisces during our last visit 

My uncle, my mother’s only brother, died in the middle of the month in his hundredth year. Bruce was the last person to have known me as a baby. While we often lived in different cities he was a steady influence in my life. Those of you who know me well also know that my dad was explosive and, while he never took out his anger or frustration on either Mum or me, he often broke things and when he was doing a project there was always a point where he cussed loudly at the nut that wouldn’t move or the piece that wouldn’t fit. I don’t think he actually swore, but the loud explosions and banging of tools as he tossed them away were enough to make me fold in on myself in an attempt to become invisible.

Bruce was different, measured in his responses, gentle and thoughtful. I never heard him raise his voice although my cousins, David and Heather, could probably tell you that he did, sometimes. Even when I was little Bruce gave me the same kind of focused attention he gave adults and I never doubted that I could go to him for help if I needed it.

Once when he and Grandma took a trip to Florida, he brought back a stuffed baby alligator, and a conch shell for me. He also gave me a pogo stick at some point. He knew me well enough to bring me gifts that interested me. He never brought me dolls which, according to my mother, I used as hammers.

I remember sleeping over at Bruce and Grandma’s place when I was in early elementary school. Staying over was a really unusual occurrence. Now that I think of it, it might have only happened once. Bruce gave me a couple of plastic figures of hockey players. I took them to bed with me and when I woke up in the morning I couldn't find them. When he came in I was in tears not because of the figures themselves, but because I had lost his gift. He found the figures, handed them to me and said, “I thought something serious had happened to you.” I knew he was glad nothing serious had.

When Bruce and Phyllis were married, Phyllis asked me and her sister, JoAnn, to be bridesmaids. I was nine and that was the only time I was ever part of a wedding party. From then on we became part of Phyllis’s extended family and spent many Christmases and Thanksgivings with her parents, siblings, their spouses, and children. I loved being part of that large adopted family.

I don’t remember calling on Bruce for help very often but when either Richard or I almost put a foot through a rotten board on our deck, Bruce came over to help me repair it. He could build just about anything and when I became interested in woodworking, he gave me a number of my grandfather’s tools. My grandfather died before I was born and I’ve always wondered what it would have been like to watch him work. While I don’t actually use many of his tools, seeing them makes me feel as if I knew him.

When our shop was finished Bruce gave me Grandad’s try plane, and his tongue-and-groove planes. When he and Phyllis moved into a seniors’ residence Bruce allowed me to go through his tools and pick out the ones I wanted. Most days in the shop I use something of his. Bruce moved a small tool box with a few screw drivers, wrenches, and the like with him. He also kept Grandad’s wooden smoothing plane.

When we visited in December we knew Bruce was dying. My cousins needed to clear out his office in order to move a bed in so someone could stay with Phyllis to offer support during the night. The smoothing plane was in Bruce’s office, not with the other tools. David offered it to me and I wondered about its significance. What made this plane more special than all of Grandad’s other tools? Maybe I can make a guess. 

While the other planes have the names of my grandfather and my grandfather’s uncle stamped into them, this smoother has only my grandfather’s name and the name of the maker: D Malloch of Perth Scotland. Grandad’s name is stamped into the plane in six places. I wonder if he bought it new and exuberantly used his tradesman’s stamp in as many places as he could. Did the plane cost him many week’s wages? Was it special to Bruce because it represented a milestone to his father, this young man who moved with his tools and his skills from Scotland to make a new life in Canada?

The plane has its scars

Crack in the side

Chip filled with sawdust and glue

The plane is now in my keeping. It has been used hard. There is a crack in the side and it wouldn’t take much use for that crack to work its way through the body of the plane. There is a chip on the toe that has been filled with what is probably sawdust and glue. The wooden wedge that holds the blade in place is compressed from the repeated hammer blows needed to seat the blade. While I don’t know the precise significance to Bruce, I know he valued it. Now it sits on a shelf in my study beside my clock where I see it many times a day. Each time I see it I remember Bruce.

Bruce and I had a running joke in the last couple of years. Whenever it was time for goodbyes, I would hug him and say, “You’re my favourite uncle, you know.” He would smile and reply, “I’m your only uncle!” Both of us were telling the truth.

My favourite uncle 1926 - 2026