Turned green, dried slow, sold when it has stopped moving

The wood decides

Most of what I turn came down anyway. A blackwood cleared off a plot in the Dargle, a plane that split in a Howick storm, a camphor out of a Karkloof garden that was lifting a wall. I fetch it green with the trailer, seal the ends the same afternoon and get it onto the lathe while it is still throwing wet shavings across the shed. Green wood cuts like cheese and then it moves. A bowl goes onto the drying shelf buried in its own shavings for six months, sometimes eight, and it goes oval while it sits — that is the water leaving, not a fault. When it stops moving I put it back on the lathe, true it up and finish it with boiled linseed and beeswax. No two blanks out of the same log dry the same way, which is why the shelf is never twice the same and why the stools are wedged from the top rather than glued: a wedged joint tightens as the seat dries instead of pulling itself apart.