Take a quick look through the garden section of your local home improvement center. Check out the handles of the wooden handled tools. Then, drive to the nearest sports supply store and see what kind of wooden baseball bats are in stock. While you are at it, head to a house wares store and take a look at the wooden bowls and cooking utensils.  There’s a very good chance that  you are looking at ash in action.

“Ash is one of those woods you see a lot in your everyday life, but rarely pay attention to,” said Eric Poirier of Bell Forest Products. “That’s a real shame, because it is a very handsome wood, and, when you think about it, it’s the kind of wood you can use extensively in your woodworking.”

Different species of the genus Fraxinus can be found in Europe, Africa and Asia. They  are closely related to olive trees, and Norse mythology often referred to the European species of ash as the mighty tree that supports the heavens, while its roots reached down to hell. One of the more common woodworking varieties is the white ash – also known as the Fraxinus Americana.  These trees grow extensively in the central and eastern United States, as well as the southern areas of Ontario.  Individual trees can grow as tall as 100 feet with a trunk diameter of two to five feet.

The wood itself looks almost like a very light red oak. The grain pattern is quite visible, creating cathedrals in plain-sliced boards. It works similarly to oak, and can be sanded or planed to a very smooth surface for finishing.

One of ash’s real strengths is its shock resistance.  “Louisville Slugger – the famous baseball bat company – mostly uses ash in its famous bats. This is mostly because it is flexible enough to take a great deal of shock from hitting baseballs, and its high strength-to-weight ratio. A strong, light bat helps the hitter get the bat on the ball faster, possibly turning a foul ball into a good hit.”  This property would be great if you were building children’s toys that were going to have a lot of loving abuse thrown their way.

Another great characteristic of ash is its ability to bend. Before modern aluminum and composite materials, most tennis rackets were made of steamed and bent ash. Add to that wooden frames for fishing nets and wooden snowshoe frames. The flexibility of the boards makes the easy to bend from a steamer, and an outstanding choice for bent laminations.

While ash is one of the most commonly planted and managed hardwoods in the United States, danger looms on the horizon for this popular tree. A pest from Asia, the Emerald Ash Borer – was accidentally imported in the 1990s. This insidious beetle lays its larvae inside the bark of ash trees of all species in the genus. While the larvae grow, they tunnel through the sensitive xylem and phloem of the tree, preventing these tissues from transporting water and nutrients from the roots to the leaves and vice versa.

So far, this pest has killed between 50 and 100 million ash trees in the United States and Canada, and poses a clear and immediate threat to the nearly 7.5 billion remaining trees. “The potential impact to the ashes in North America rivals that of the Dutch elm disease and the Chestnut blight that felled so many of those species,” said Eric. “I hope that the horticulturists find an effective way to control these things before they do too much more damage. It would be a shame to lose another classic North American hardwood for future generations.”

While the future does look cloudy for this species, you can bet your ash that it’s one wood you should be working with.

This past weekend, my oldest son came up to me while I was drinking my morning coffee. “Dad, would you like French toast for breakfast?”

Who was I to turn down this offer? The young man is becoming quite accomplished in the kitchen, and, shortly after I said ‘yes’, he was hard at work, mixing up the eggwash, stacking slices of bread and preparing a pan for the cooking to come. And, in very short order, a stack of steaming hot slices of goodness appeared at my place at the table. The only thing left to do was reach for the bottle of maple syrup to make the goodness complete.

“That is one way to enjoy maple,” said Eric Poirier of Bell Forest Products. “And, I can’t get enough of the stuff on my pancakes in the morning. But, woodworkers also have other reasons to love maple.”

Hard maple is one of the classic North American hardwoods used since early colonial times, and is found most typically in the northeast and upper Midwest United States well into Canada. It’s so representative of Canada, a red maple leaf was selected to adorn the country’s flag.

Mature trees grow from 80 to 100 feet tall, with some specimens growing taller still. One of the most striking features of the tree are the vibrant orange, yellow and red colors the leaves turn during autumn. “A hillside of maples with their autumn leaves is a sight to behold. No wonder the roads are crowded with leaf-peepers every fall.”

Maple was a popular choice for the Shakers. Those communities further north used the wood extensively in their chairs, tables and cabinets.

The wood itself is a very light creamy color with a subtle grain pattern and occasional darker mineral streaks. It’s also a very hard wood. “Hard maple is one of the hardest domestic hardwoods being harvested today, with a Janka test score of nearly 1,500 pounds. That’s why it’s a popular choice for hardwood floors and other high-wear items.”

While at first glance maple may seem kind of pale and plain Jane – you may want to look for some special eye-popping pieces. “One thing that we specialize in here at Bell Forest Products is figured maple. We love the stuff – and so do our customers.” Figure in maple can range from lazy waves to intense bird’s-eye features throughout the board. Some boards can exhibit several different types of figure, such as the board I used to top off my Nakashima-inspired bench.

Maple also has a very tight, closed pore structure. When combined with its legendary hardness, maple becomes an ideal material for building cutting boards. “If you build a cutting board out of an open-pored wood like oak, the liquids in the food will be drawn into the board by capillary action. That’s not good if you are cutting something like raw chicken on your board. Maple’s tight grain significantly reduces that process, making for a more sanitary surface to work on.” The edge grain of maple is fine for a cutting board, but nothing beats an end-grain butcher block board for durability and appearance. “The cutting board kits we sell all feature hard maple and another contrasting hardwood to make a plain kitchen tool a stunning highlight in your home.”

While cutting into my French toast, my son disappeared back in to the kitchen and came out with some fruit he had just cut up on the maple and walnut cutting board I had built for our kitchen. Even after several years of service, it still looks great and is holding up to daily wear. Who knows, my son may even try to take it with him when he leaves to start his own household.

That would be pretty sweet.

There are lots of ways to know that summer is approaching. The Florida heat gets cranking. Local reporters call for hurricane stories. And, suddenly, the boys and Rhonda have a lot more time around the house.

The surest way for me to know that summer is coming can be found in the produce section of my supermarket. That’s where I can find the summer fruit. The peaches, nectarines and plums are delicious, but my favorite are the cherries. I can snorf those little red fruits down all day. They are a little tart, but oh, so sweet. I have to frequently battle the kids for a chance at the cherry bowl.

But, that’s only one way I love cherry. “Cherry is a classic for fine woodworking,” said Eric Poirier of Bell Forest Products. “It works very well, makes great looking furniture and has a very handsome color. There’s a very good reason why it’s popular.”

American cherry trees grow throughout the east and midwest United States, primarily in Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Virginia and New York. The trees can grow from 60 to 80 feet tall. Cherry heartwood is a beautiful red to reddish-brown with very pale sapwood. “The one surprise for many woodworkers is that the heartwood becomes darker when exposed to sunlight. So, say you build a book shelf, you’ll be surprised to see that when you move the shelf, the wood behind the shelf is lighter. It can be very pronounced.”

Cherry can also show some curly figure. “It’s not as common as curly maple, but when you find a piece of figured cherry, wow. You are in for a real treat.”

Bring cherry to your workbench, and you discover that its workability is legendary. “What kind of joinery do you want to cut? Hand cut dovetails? Machine cut mortise and tenon? Biscuits and dowels? Cherry’s going to give you very sweet results no matter how you choose to go.” It’s a great choice for chairs, tables, cabinetry, chests and many other pieces. It’s a classic for Shaker style projects, as many Shaker communities were established in areas where cherry was plentiful.

And, when it comes to finishing, cherry gives great results whether you plane, scrape or sand. “You may find some small gum pockets in the wood, but they won’t leak resin like pine will. Those add visual interest to the piece if you choose to include them.” The one place you might be surprised in the finishing. Cherry tends to have a wavy grain structure, which can lead to blotchy finishing. The best way to prevent a blotchy finish is to apply a 1# cut of dewaxed shellac, sanding it thoroughly with 320 grit paper once dry. From there, you can apply the finish as normal. This prevents the uneven absorption, giving a much better look.

Cherry is readily available and is moderately priced, but projects built with it look like a million bucks. “If you are looking for a great wood for your next project, you can do a whole lot worse than cherry. Treat yourself to this sweet looking wood.”

When last we left Kyle Barton, he had just relocated to Dallas to help run his company’s operations in preparation for the potential impact of Hurricane Ike.

After roaring through the Greater Antilles, Ike grew tremendously in size, becoming one of the largest storms ever recorded in the Atlantic basin. While this increase in size translated into lower wind speeds in the hurricane, the area the storm covered increased dramatically.  So, while the storm was blowing at Category 2 on the Saffir-Simpson intensity scale, the impact was far greater than anyone had expected. When the storm was nearly 300 miles away from Florida’s west coast – moving due west away from the Tampa Bay area – we still had storm surge from the massive system.  Ike didn’t pull any punches when it made it to the Galveston/Houston area, eventually becoming the third costliest hurricane in American history – behind 2005’s Katrina and 1992’s Andrew.

“The morning after landfall I picked up the USA Today left in front of the door at the La Quinta we were staying at. The front page showed a picture taken from an overpass on I-45 looking south toward Galveston. The highway was littered with boats and all sorts of debris, and there in the picture was the off ramp that went to my community – Bayou Vista. My first thought, was not for my shop but for my house. I had no idea what kind of shape it was in.”

Kyle later saw pictures of his community taken from neighbors who had foolishly stayed behind to ride out the storm.  All of the homes in Bayou Vista had flooding of at least six feet in their ground levels. While he could see the damage, it took nearly a week to get clearance to return to his home. “My Shop and downstairs storage area was a real mess. The OSB walls I had just put up were warped and growing a funky mold in places, the floor was covered in a slippery black mud, all the doors were swelled shut, and everything that was left downstairs was all jumbled together.”

“One funny thing was that I had left a roll of paper towels on my bench. The roll was still there; dry just like I left it. But the bench it was on had moved from the back of my shop to the front. So I knew the water had “gently” risen up to about six feet and then gently drained back away.”

Kyle had his hands full over the next months stripping his entry foyer and shop back to the studs, dealing with debris clearance, working through the insurance process and getting things back to normal. Since insurance was not going to cover his Jet planer/jointer, he set about restoring that tool by himself.

Initially, he had used a product called CorrosionX, which helped to keep the rust to a minimum.  “All the cast iron was covered in surface rust. It only has one tiny subsurface pit on the out feed table. I completely disassembled the entire thing into its 383 parts – don’t ask me how I know – then I soaked all the parts in Evapo-Rust. I went through 4 gallons of the stuff.  I then replaced the motor, switch, cables, belts, and all the bearings. All in all it cost about $500, but it runs like a champ, has zero snipe, and there’s nothing I don’t know about that machine.”

Kyle bought other tools to replace the ones lost in the flood, and he was also able to  rearrange some storage areas in his old basement to make the shop a little larger. Today, his shop is a comfortable place to get some woodworking done. “The shop now is bigger, brighter and more functional. Except for a finishing room, I have all the space I need or want.”

Knowing that disaster recovery for a workshop – whether from a hurricane, tornado, fire, flood or other hazard – is possible, I wanted to leave the last few paragraphs for Kyle to share the lessons he learned with each of you.

“The biggest and corniest piece of advice is ‘Be Prepared.’ But also know what the worst-case could be and allow for it. That is where my preparations were lacking. Every year at the start of Hurricane Season, I call three local movers and confirm the cost and lead time they need to pack-up and move my heavy machinery to a secure storage facility. I visit a couple of storage facilities and confirm availability, space and costs. And I also check out box truck/trailer rentals in case I have to move everything myself. All of my heavy machinery is on wheels and I have bought a Harbor Freight Shop Crane to assist me in moving things and evacuating.”

“Next, check your insurance policies and know what is covered – and what is not covered –  for all types of disasters. You may be able to buy supplemental insurance to cover claims your current policies do not. In my case, I still can’t get coverage for my downstairs shop. But anything I can get upstairs – small power tools, hand tools, and the like – will be covered. Also document and photograph all your tools and kept that inventory in more than one location. In the cloud via Dropbox or other similar service is highly recommended.”

“Finally, know that if you do lose everything, you can recover and make your new shop better than the one that was lost.”

Remember, the Atlantic Hurricane Season runs from June 1 through November 30. The time to prepare is now.

This week, I’m instructing at the Florida Governor’s Hurricane Conference. Now, I’m sure you have got to be wondering why I’m letting you know about this. After all, it has nothing to do with woodworking and you may not even live in an area vulnerable to the impact of these storms.

Add to the fact that the last time a hurricane made landfall in the United States was during 2008’s Hurricane Ike, and you may believe you are starting to see me reach for a topic.

Not so. Last October at the Woodworking in America conference, I ran into Kyle Barton, a Galveston, Texas area woodworker. Kyle is very much your average hobby woodworking kind of guy. “Like most folks, I did some home remodeling and considered myself pretty handy. So when we were looking a buying some furniture I said, ‘I can build that better and cheaper.’ Now as we all know, it’s never cheaper, but it is better.”

His shop was in the basement level of his home – which actually sat up on 14 foot pilings to elevate the living area above potential storm surge flooding levels. “The shop was about 12’ feet wide but 36’ long. The sad part was I had just finished insulating and putting up walls. For the first couple of years it was uninsulated. The shop had an A/C and dehumidifier – a necessity on the Gulf coast. For lighting I had four T-8 fixtures from Home Depot that had 4 tubes per fixture. The walls were OSB, screwed into the studs, and painted with white oil based paint.”

He had built his shop around a Bosch bench top table saw and an assortment of other routers, a planer, dust collector and other hand tools. “Nothing too serious…” But, one of the tools he had just purchased – and was most proud of – was a Jet 12” jointer/planer. “A great tool… I had just bought it, and was discovering what it was capable of.”

This was a great place for Kyle to build all kinds of furniture. Cabinets, tables, maybe a few chairs in the future.

Now, Kyle lives in a very vulnerable area of the country for hurricanes. The Texas Gulf Coast, much like the west coast of Florida where I call home, is flat country next to the bathwater warm waters. “It had been more than 20 years since a major Hurricane – Alicia – had impacted Galveston. And according to some neighbors that lived there then, only a couple of inches of water got into any of the houses. So, why I knew it was a possibility – actually, a certainty over long time period – I never thought I would have major water in my shop.”

“I was putting on the last coat of paint on the walls of shop when I first heard of Ike. We had just has a close call with Gustav earlier in the season. Ike was still a ways out, but the projection look like it was coming straight for us.”

Knowing that he would not be covered by insurance for anything that got damage in his shop, he moved all of the small tools upstairs into the house. “The only thing left in the shop was the table saw, jointer/planer, dust collector, router table, drill press, and spindle sander. The only thing that wasn’t on a stand of some sort was the jointer/planer. I put that on blocks in case I got a foot or so of water in the shop.”

Kyle also had the presence of mind to do a complete shop inventory before he left to go to work. Photos and a list of the items in the shop, just in case. With this in hand, he headed to Dallas to prepare for his company’s relocation to a safer area.

As he pulled away from his home, Kyle’s last thought? “I just hoped I would not get any water on the baseboards, because I really didn’t want to have to replace them.”

Hurricane Ike, apparently, didn’t share Kyle’s feelings toward his baseboards.

Come back on Wednesday to read part two of Kyle’s story about Hurricane Ike.

If you have been following the news in recent months, perhaps you noticed the story of the Egyptian cobra that escaped from its enclosure in the reptile house at the Bronx Zoo. For a week, the venomous snake slithered around, closing the facility until it was captured.

If I had followed my career ambitions in second grade, I might have been the guy who went in to catch him.  Yup, I had been on a field trip to the same reptile house that year, and I became totally fascinated with all things herpetology. I’m not sure what it was that caught my imagination.  Maybe it was the the way they moved so fluidly on their bellies, with no apparent way to move themselves. Maybe it was how menacing they could look  if they were threatened.

But, I’m sure it was the stunning appearance of their scales. The rattlesnakes, coral snakes and cobras I saw back then had exotic looking scales in a bewildering array of patterns, colors and textures.

While my days of wanting to play with snakes are way behind me, I am still fascinated by stunning patterns in natural products. That’s why I was so excited when Eric Poirier of Bell Forest Products brought snakewood to my attention.  “It’s a very rare and exotic wood that’s tough to work with, but once you get it into shape, it’s something to see.”

Snakewood comes from small trees found in Central and South America.  Initially deep red in color, snakewood changes color to a rich reddish brown upon exposure to air. “The color change is pretty dramatic, but nothing like the figure you will find in the wood.  It is comprised of dark and lighter specs that resemble the scales on a snake.  It’s some wild looking stuff.”

An extremely dense hardwood, snakewood can be somewhat challenging to work with. It splits fairly easily and tends to be splintery. It’s also hard to cut and drill. “This stuff can be a challenge even to the most experienced woodworker. The key is to use very sharp tools and take your time.  Believe me, your patience will be rewarded.”

And, yes it will be. Snakewood turns well and polishes beautifully, showing its dramatic color and figure.  “Any project with snakewood in it is going to attract attention in a big way. You will want to put those  accents in a prominent place.”

While it can be a bit spendy (actually, one of the more expensive woods out there), a little bit goes a long way. “It’s generally sold in small blanks and is best used in making items such as bowls, vases, knife handles, pool-cue butts, and the like. Some times, you have a splurge a little bit, but the pieces are so small, it won’t break the bank.”

Don’t be surprised if you find snakewood slithering its way onto your list of favorite woods.

What makes something strong?  It’s character? It’s bulk? A certain Je ne sais quois?

In the case of basswood, its true strength can be found in its weakness.

“Basswood, also known as linden or lime wood, is some pretty plain looking stuff,” said Eric Poirier of Bell Forest Products. “No real showy grain or figure, a very light color and – well – it’s just beautiful in its simplicity.”

Now, how would such a plain looking board be considered beautiful? “If you are looking for an excellent wood to carve, there are few as good as this one.” For centuries, woodcarvers have been slicing into basswood, creating absolutely crisp detail with minimal tear out. How intricate? Well, this picture is from part of an altar carving made by German artist Tilman Reimenschneider back in the early 1500’s…  Wow…

These and other artistic treasures can still be found all across Europe at cathedrals and palaces. The wood is highly stable, making it less prone to movement and cracking over time.  “Along with its ease of carving, the neutral color of basswood doesn’t detract from what’s being carved into it. It becomes – in effect – a blank canvas for a woodcarver to work on.”

What else is basswood good for beyond carving?  Plenty. Its light weight and tonal properties make it an excellent material for electric guitar bodies and wooden instruments such as recorders and is also used when creating drum shells.

Basswood’s light weight also makes it a natural for wooden blinds and shutters. “Imagine the weight that can be kept off a set of hinges using basswood over other common species. That means less stress on the hinges, significantly improving their lifespan. If you are looking to build a set of plantation shutters for your home, basswood is an excellent option.”

So, while its reputation is as a lightweight, give basswood a chance. You might be surprised just how strongly you will rely on it in your woodworking.