Indeed. My dad is a wood hound, he's got a storage shed out behind the house with 500 board feet of various types from Oak, to Cherry, Ash, Maple and a few others I think.
I hope to add a new dimension to the hilarity of my shop today, pics to follow later tonight.
Sweet Mark, that stuff looks nice whatever it is. Looks like it's hard enough that we could machine it.
I'm currently waiting to hear back from a client who is trying to sell his house, part of which is an old barn where he kept a bunch of wood that he used to build boats. There are some huge planks there, some 2" to 3"+ rough sawn and 10' to 15' in length. I'd love to get even a little of it to use for various projects and it sounded like he might just want to have someone come haul it all away.
Assumption is the mother of all fuckups. A good friend of mine growing up, who was well trained in firearms use, assumed a hand gun that he was cleaning was empty and shot the fridge in the kitchen. Thankfully it and a bottle of milk (I shit you not) were the only casualties.
I've heard at least some rumblings of display issues with the 27" series of iMacs but they were also allegedly addressed with two firmware updates about a month ago.
Apple claims iMac display issues are fixed | MacFixIt - CNET Reviews
My 2
If you bolt it down to the slab just be sure to use some sort of shallow embedment anchor since most residential garages are probably going to have a 3 to 4" thick slab.
As far as the custom extension cord goes I fully endorse that plan and suggest something like the following:
Total cost should be ~$40 depending on cord size (ga.) and length. It'd be super simple to screw the housing to a bench, like I did with my lathe.
Don't question Dr. Wood, it's Wenge.
I've got a little Flip HD so I'll see about setting it up in the shop and capturing the madness when I put tool to metal. As far as removing the center material is concerned the tail stock of the lathe has a drill chuck so I'll simply drill a pilot hole and then go to work with the boring tool just like I did with the wood. My rate and depth of cut will probably be slower but otherwise I think the technique will be the same. Working with the Al really shouldn't be any more difficult than wood, or so I'm told, and it went really well with this first set. (famous last words)
Got to know my new lathe a little bit better and finished roughing out a set of cups for a friend. The two primary outer and inner diameters are within .005", not bad for wood. I've done a grand total of 5 minutes of sanding on these, they should finish up pretty nicely. Next stop, aluminum...