Lord Nibbo
Established Member
On Saturday I paid a visit to an aquiantance who had invited me to his workshop a long time ago. Wow it was different, Scrit would have had a field day. One machine to catch my eye was a lathe that could handle 6ft turnings it even had it's own hoist built in to lift the work piece.
Anyway to get to my question. He showed me an old Australian tree root about the size of a small foot ball, it's appearance is a very irregular shape not unlike a ginger root but very black/brown on the outside and very bumpy almost spiky and knobbly and extreemly hard he called "Malle" (sp?) pronounced Mallay, he went on to say that the root had laid in the ground for over 1000 years, the tree had died long before but the root owing to it's location was well preserved. He sawed it in half on his bandsaw, boy did it make the saw labour, he then put the sawn face on his table sander and it took a good couple of minutes to get rid of the saw cuts before finnishing the sanding with fine sanding. He then put some sanding sealer on the face and when dry put some wax on it. I wish I had my camera with me the grain was extrodinary, infact it makes bur walnut an also ran for looks but owing to it's small area not practical for veneer, he did have some larger roots in storage and he did say you can buy them in England but I cant remember from where.
Has anyone ever heard of it? I know I haven't.
I've done a google and cant find anything, I've spelt it using various different spellings but with no luck.
For any of our Australian members, perhaps you call it something else?
I'm sat here trying to think of how to describe the root better but I'm lost for words.
Anyway to get to my question. He showed me an old Australian tree root about the size of a small foot ball, it's appearance is a very irregular shape not unlike a ginger root but very black/brown on the outside and very bumpy almost spiky and knobbly and extreemly hard he called "Malle" (sp?) pronounced Mallay, he went on to say that the root had laid in the ground for over 1000 years, the tree had died long before but the root owing to it's location was well preserved. He sawed it in half on his bandsaw, boy did it make the saw labour, he then put the sawn face on his table sander and it took a good couple of minutes to get rid of the saw cuts before finnishing the sanding with fine sanding. He then put some sanding sealer on the face and when dry put some wax on it. I wish I had my camera with me the grain was extrodinary, infact it makes bur walnut an also ran for looks but owing to it's small area not practical for veneer, he did have some larger roots in storage and he did say you can buy them in England but I cant remember from where.
Has anyone ever heard of it? I know I haven't.
I've done a google and cant find anything, I've spelt it using various different spellings but with no luck.
For any of our Australian members, perhaps you call it something else?
I'm sat here trying to think of how to describe the root better but I'm lost for words.
