Pear Tree Without Partridge

On the first day of Christmas my true love gave to me a pear tree. This was an old tree that was past its prime, no longer useful for bearing fruit. The Pacific Northwest of the USA, the states of Washington and Oregon, is well know for commercial apple, pear and cherry orchards.

Pear wood is highly prized for use in making miniatures. I have not tried working with it before but have heard its praises sung for years by various artisans. It is said it carves like butter and is easy to work in any direction of grain. The growth rings are fine enough for miniatures.

Last fall I found an advertisement from a person selling fruit wood for firewood. Among the items listed was pear wood. Several months later I now finally have some pear wood logs. They were fairly expensive to purchase. I have a long ways to go before this pear wood will exit my workshop as hand crafted, hand carved, miniature furniture.

I have a lot of sawing to do to get it cut into planks that will then need to dry for 6 months. I will have to rely on the help of friends as the green logs are too heavy for me to handle alone. After that it will need more sawing, squaring up and planing to become dimensional lumber.

The fact that there are branched trunks will make cutting it up difficult. However there might be some beautiful figured grain at the base of the crotch where the branches originate so it is a bonus to have that on some of the logs. It does mean I can't easily split those logs,they will have to be sawn.

Let us call this an adventure in making miniatures rather than a common sense approach to creating miniature furniture where you order the lumber ready to work with.