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New Cherry Lumber
Posted by Cameron Hilker on November 27, 2017 [Permalink]
We finally found something we've been looking for!
But before I tell you about it, I want to introduce myself a little bit. My name is Cameron and I've been here with Mokuhankan since early October. If you have been watching David Bull's Twitch streams, you may have seen me a few times as I often enter the shop during his stream. I also occasionally sit down and answer questions on the stream as he carves. I will occasionally be posting here on Facebook.
Anyway, as you may have heard in streams or YouTube videos, we have been looking for new wood to turn into blocks that David can carve and turn into more beautiful prints. Some of the other staff members visited a variety of lumber suppliers a few weeks back and took lots of pictures. Based on those reports and photos, David picked a couple pieces of wood he thought might be good, taking quite a gamble since he had not seen them in person.
Today we finally got them into the shop and they seem to be EXACTLY what we were looking for! David says these may be the hardest, densest pieces of wood we've ever had in the shop, and he is excited to start using them.
However, there are a few things left to do. As you can see in the pictures, these are not small pieces of wood! One thing you cannot see in the pictures is that the wood has not completely dried yet. So, we need to let the wood dry, but we also need to slice the wood so it's usable in printing.
In the near future, David has an appointment with yet another supplier, and he's hoping they will help him find yet more wood in the coming weeks. Once we have several pieces gathered together, he's hoping to get them all thinly sliced in one go instead of making several trips, but we can't take too long or the pieces we just received will warp during the drying process. We're on a time crunch!
The wood is hard to find, as many of you know, because Yamazakura is the only wood used for these traditional woodblock prints. This is not a tree that is grown commercially"”the name means Mountain Cherry Blossom, and it is only found in the wild. David is excited about the two large pieces of wood that arrived today, and we have some more good leads one where to get more, but the hunt for quality wood has gotten harder and harder in recent years.
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