Fordgewood shafts

[elkslayer]

I see the Alaska Co. the bought the Sweetlyn shaft equipment is now up for sale along with the 10 ares and house and shop and all. Dang I wish I had the 55,000 to buy the equipment and make the shafts available again. I say someone please buy it and keep it going...I wish I had the time and extra money to do it.

[Nakohe]

The Co has been for sale for a couple years that I know of.

[snag]

The problem is the lack of a quality POC supply.

[elkslayer]

Ya he said like 75% of the wood you get ends up being waste..

[d. ward]

Got wood ?????????? bd

[Don Stokes]

I went to visit Bill Sweetland in the early 90's, and had a great technical conversation with him about his process. I had been experimenting with stabilizing wood treatments and compression. We discussed his process in detail, and when I expressed interest in resurrecting the process with my methods, he recommended against it. Apparently he never made money with it (or enough to justify the hassle), due to its complexity and the expense of production. After I researched it enough, I believed him and didn't pursue it commercially, although we made some nice stuff in our experiments, shafts that were stabilized and compressed by about 50%. I still have a few of them around here somewhere...

A really nice guy, and a very enjoyable visit.

[beagles]

I have 5 or 6 dozen forgewood shafts, and they are still straight,but are between 650 and 700 grains finished.

[George D. Stout]

He was Bill Sweetland.  Forgewood shafts.  He also had ones calle Battleshafts.

beagles, they were supposed to be heavy...the fibers were compressed prior to dowelling.  They were expensive, even in the 60's, and that is probably one of the reasons they didn't catch on to the masses.

[elkslayer]

The guy in Alaska was selling them for 45 a doz and he said he could never keep up with the orders. From what I read you heat the wood to compress and then cool it fast to try and stabilize it. It is said that if the temp afterward got over 200 degrees the wood will go back to its uncompressed size. I guess there is some danger of them getting wet as well and loosing some of their compression.

[Don Stokes]

The process involved pressing the wood at high pressure and temperature, in the 300's as I recall. On a microscopic level, wood cells are "glued" together with a substance called lignin, which becomes somewhat liquid under that much heat and pressure. The wood was cooled enough to reset the lignin in the new shape, effectively squeezing most of the air space out of the wood. The wood was stable in use, even to getting wet, when it was done right. Most any species of wood can be done this way. I added some experimental crosslinking polymers to poplar and produced compressed wood that would not change dimension in a 24-hour soak test.

He added some taper to the boards before pressing, so that there was a heavier end. The cooled boards were ripped to squares that were machined round on a lathe. The dense end was so strong that he would taper and shoot them into a piece of wood with no metal point, as a demonstration.