Desert Ironwood

The most exciting gift I got for Christmas is some Desert Ironwood. My cousin located some on private land, and with the blessing of the property owner, we harvested some off a big, gnarly, uprooted old trunk of tree. Harvested sounds so professional. In reality, we busted chunks off with an axe and a trailer hitch. Hey, it is what we had on hand. Since we were both there on vacation, the tool scrounging continued as we broke it down into luggage sized pieces. I opted for a hacksaw, not wishing to destroy the nicer saws that we had access to. We did break one blade, but it was overall not too bad. Sectioning it at home, I have the benefit of a good vise on a stable workbench, so cutting is much easier. I still used a coarse hacksaw blade, because I prefer being able to throw away dull blades to sharpening them. With wood this hard, blades dull quickly. These pictures show outside and inside, with cut surfaces cleaned up with a rasp, and wetted to show the grain better.