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now what do I do?

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now what do I do?

Postby sunnybob » 12 Sep 2021, 12:29

I have a section of olive tree.
It was cut down about 6 months ago and left out in the open air in 40c weather with no rain.
I've cut off a small piece and sliced it just to see if I could.
Turns out I can :lol: :eusa-dance:

But what next?
The picture shows the pieces from the smallest section, about 16" long. Do I need to stop them splitting or warping?
The larger section is about 3 feet long with 10" diameter.

Should leave it as a trunk? I have no ide what to make with it all yet.

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Re: now what do I do?

Postby Mike G » 12 Sep 2021, 13:43

The cross grain slices are just going to do what they're going to do. You could try plastering them with old paint or PVA or somesuch, to slow things down. The long grain stuff.......the inside faces will be damper than the outside faces, so I would leave them stacked up with sticks between, or clamped in pairs with the inside faces out and some sticks between. Again, painting the ends will help. I'd be leaving them for 2 or 3 months in your climate, I reckon (but absolutely NOT in the sun). Then, as an experiment I would plane and thickness just one of the boards, measure it carefully, and bring it inside just to see what happens to it over the course of a few weeks. All this presuming you don't have a moisture meter. If that board shrinks, splits, or cups, then you know it's all be a little premature. If it doesn't, then feel free to crack on with the rest of the stock.

Lovely wood. I've always liked olive.
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Re: now what do I do?

Postby sunnybob » 12 Sep 2021, 16:48

I dont have the space to put wood into stick, Mike. My entire woodworking area is 15 square metres. I dont even have any outside area I can use for long term storage. :(
I was hoping to use it virtually as is with only some minor care. :eusa-doh:

As its free wood, I might just play with it as I havent yet worked with olive. If I kept the "planks" thick (20 mm or even a bit more) would a generous coating of shellac seal it?
Clutching at straws, i know. :eusa-whistle:
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Re: now what do I do?

Postby AJB Temple » 12 Sep 2021, 18:47

Empty house next door. This is free storage. Indoors.

PS: watch out for the snake.
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Re: now what do I do?

Postby sunnybob » 12 Sep 2021, 19:50

I do have an empty house next door :lol:
Trouble is its a concrete shell with no walls and open to anyone who wants to walk in and take anything they fancy. :shock:
I put stuff in there rather than throw it away. Nothing of actual value goes in. I might try to stick it (hah), but my ADD isnt going to let me wait a year before i play with it :eusa-whistle:
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Re: now what do I do?

Postby AJB Temple » 12 Sep 2021, 22:13

You think people with take your olive stash? Possibly the most common and abundant wood in your area?
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Re: now what do I do?

Postby sunnybob » 13 Sep 2021, 05:37

Actually, it isnt abundant at all as firewood. :eusa-naughty:
The trees live forever and are a tremendous cash crop. Branches get trimmed, yes, but this is the first piece of tree trunk I've been able to get, and I know a local man who had been "eyeing" it up for his log burner. :eusa-whistle:
A bunch of nicely pre cut planks on show wouldnt last long.

Theres a large garden centre down the road a piece that has a whole orchard's worth of olive trees for sale that are so old they could be used as a haunted forest film set. Most are hollow and well over 2 foot diameter. When I asked the price of one I was told they started at 6000 euros. :eusa-hand:
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Re: now what do I do?

Postby sunnybob » 13 Sep 2021, 07:56

I've just gone back out to my workshop and the olive wood is so wet I can feel it on my hands. That wasnt apparent yesterday when I cut it. :eusa-naughty:
So I have no choice but to stack it next door and wait because even I know I cant work with it that wet :lol:
I've stored it as far from prying eyes as I can, and will just have to see what happens.
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Re: now what do I do?

Postby novocaine » 13 Sep 2021, 08:31

are olive trees a protected species in Cyprus? this is out of interest more than anything else. Tunisia, it is illegal to cut one down and you have to have a license to prune them (so I'm told). Which leads to interesting locations of trees, like the one in the middle of the company camp. Was pretty nice to be able to stop at a farm and buy fresh olive oil for the equivalent of pennies though.

That, along with harissa and goat were the highlight of my time in Tunisia. :D
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Re: now what do I do?

Postby sunnybob » 13 Sep 2021, 09:04

Not as far as I am aware (I will ask the landowner who still comes around occasionally to tend the small orchard behind us), but their value as a crop producer is so great that only a fool would chop up a healthy tree.
The site I live on was once an olive and mixed fruit orchard. When the bulldozers moved in, the farmer sold every endangered tree as a going concern.
As a slight aside....I am currently tending a pomegranite tree that has flowered from a wild seed over the last two years. Its now 8 ft tall and there are two pomegranites on it this year.
Somehow I dont think the tree will increase my pension fund :eusa-naughty: :eusa-naughty: whereas my olive tree (singular) will produce 40 kilos of olives most years.
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Re: now what do I do?

Postby sunnybob » 13 Sep 2021, 09:11

Just done a quick internet search and I found a 1959 law stating that carob, olive, and fruit wood can not be sold without a licence.
Fine of 5 pounds and confiscation of the wood as a penalty :o
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Re: now what do I do?

Postby novocaine » 13 Sep 2021, 09:15

As a heavy user of olive oil, I hate the fact you have your own olive tree. :lol: I consider fresh bread, olive oil and harissa a wonderful meal (my wife disagrees, mainly because she can't have the bread and doesn't like chillis).
the quality of oil in this country is pretty crap, doesn't matter if you spend a fortune at some boutique supplier or buy the cheap stuff off the shelf in Asda, it's all pretty poor in comparison to fresh pressed stuff, so much so, that I don't see it as worthwhile spending the money on the "good" stuff anymore.

5 quid, well there goes your pension pot. better deny all knowledge of it. :lol:
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Re: now what do I do?

Postby sunnybob » 13 Sep 2021, 09:29

A fiver in 1959 would have been a cypriot workers monthly income :o
Dont know what the current fee is, but my wood is "found" so I'm in the clear :eusa-dance:

There are several types of olive, the one I have is not suitable for pickling so has to be pressed, but to be honest, we dont bother as we dont use enough of it to make it worth the effort.
A friend down the road takes the fruit of three trees to the mill and gets a litre of olive oil for his trouble.
Not worth it on a small scale.
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Re: now what do I do?

Postby AJB Temple » 13 Sep 2021, 10:14

It is possible to buy start of season cold pressed first press Olive oil in this country (UK) but it runs to about £15-£20 a litre depending on source. I find it as good as similar first press I have bought and used in Italy. Some comes in beautiful bottles.

I like the cloudy unfiltered virgin oil available in Waitrose and elsewhere in the large bottles with ceramic stoppers. It has slowly crept up from about £5 three years ago to near £9 now. We use a lot of olive oil and rape oil and I am happy with the cheapest stuff from Lidl for cooking and keep the good stuff for dressings and pasta.

Maybe 20 years ago I bought 15 pot grown olives trees in the UK. Young trees but not garden centre twigs. At the time I was doing an Italian style garden and most of them were planted around a well. Property long since sold but I kept two of the trees and they are now on our terrace in metre diameter pots. They are VERY slow growing so I can understand why those thick trunks are expensive. We do get fruit but summer is rarely long and hot enough for the to ripen, and it is scant anyway. In the UK in Kent and Surrey anyway, olives will withstand frost, and come back even if they drop their leaves, but we put tree bags over ours in winter. I might put them in the ground next year as even if we move they are getting too big to shift easily.

Unfortunately olives will get rarer in this country as there are now strict import controls due to Xylella fastidiosa. No doubt oil prices will rise as this disease makes its way across Europe.

Good luck with your stash Bob. I like olive wood but have never worked with it.
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Re: now what do I do?

Postby sunnybob » 13 Sep 2021, 11:14

Even here, the main trunks dont grow very fast. We've lived here for over 13 years now, and the trunk has barely increased girth by more than a few inches. But the branches and twigs grow at an enormous rate, we're forever trimming the thing so that we can walk underneath it.
The grove behind us comprises about 30 or 40 trees, The man has an irrigation system from a well with an electric well pump. Those trees get 12 hours watering a day for the entire summer which is 3 months here 8-)
Thats what makes the olives grow.
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Re: now what do I do?

Postby Jonathan » 13 Sep 2021, 15:32

Good luck with your seasoning Bob, I've tried it and found the weather too hot in Southern Spain, so I'm interested in your results.
We have an olive and almond finca so lots of prunings.
The last pieces I seasoned were very split, but did manage to get a set of draft pieces.
Every other year we do manage to get 50 to 60 litres of our very own ecological oil which is magnificent.



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Re: now what do I do?

Postby sunnybob » 13 Sep 2021, 15:41

We're on the same latitude as near as dammit, what did you do with the olive wood?
Temps are still in the mid 30's during the day, cooling off to 29 or so overnight. The main humidity has gone now.
The piece of trunk I have is so small that its not worth buying in or or making anything expensive just to be able to play with it.
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Re: now what do I do?

Postby Jonathan » 13 Sep 2021, 18:32

Bob, we down to 26, 27° just had our first rain (about 3 spots) were hoping for more to get these fire's out.
Thankfully we don't get humidity we are up in the bush so super dry, maybe the humidity you have can slow the seasoning time down.

Generally we use Olive wood for heating in the winter, it chucks out some heat but not on par with Almond.
A couple of friends have used Olive for epoxy stuff, they want splits and defects. Spoke to a UK dealer and he's loving the epoxy craze, stuff he used to cut up for firewood he can now sell at a premium for epoxy work.




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Re: now what do I do?

Postby sunnybob » 13 Sep 2021, 18:41

We had that same rain cloud last week :lol: .

I'm also looking at epoxy for these olive wood pieces. But it aint cheap here. 20 quid for a litre and a bit.

It might all end up in the log burner of a friend. :o

Still just a touch too hot to stay in the workshop all day, the humidity makes you drip sweat all over the wood and thats a bugger to get out. I have a few things to make but it might not be till october now.

I love the smell of the olive wood, does the almond smell of the nuts? never seen almond wood.
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Re: now what do I do?

Postby Jonathan » 13 Sep 2021, 21:56

Bob, no idea what Almond wood smell's like, I have vertualy no smell.

A friend took some Almond to play with, it's probably set in epoxy, I'll see if he's got an images I can post.

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Re: now what do I do?

Postby Mike G » 14 Sep 2021, 16:32

AJB Temple wrote:It is possible to buy start of season cold pressed first press Olive oil in this country (UK) but it runs to about £15-£20 a litre depending on source. I find it as good as similar first press I have bought and used in Italy.........


Some uni bod somewhere did a study into olive oil production maybe 15 or 20 years ago and discovered that three times the amount of olive oil was/is sold worldwide annually than is harvested/ pressed annually. In other worlds, most olive oil has been doctored with other oils.
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Re: now what do I do?

Postby novocaine » 14 Sep 2021, 16:53

Or some countires are lieing about their yeald and importing it from other countires resulting in double counting. Not mentioning any names though ahem Italy ahem.
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Re: now what do I do?

Postby Jonathan » 14 Sep 2021, 20:09

Here in Spain there are numerous small mills that are run by people that keep no records, it's a cash/ barter industry......also arfter the first press the pulp is sold to Italy where it is sold as Italian oil.




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Re: now what do I do?

Postby novocaine » 14 Sep 2021, 20:46

Jonathan wrote:Here in Spain there are numerous small mills that are run by people that keep no records, it's a cash/ barter industry......also arfter the first press the pulp is sold to Italy where it is sold as Italian oil.




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Tunisia does the same. Its easier to ship pulp than fresh olives.
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