Maple

This is probably considered carpentry more than woodworking, but it shows what rough lumber can look like after cleaning up. I do not have a jointer or planer, so this did take some time, but I am fairly pleased with the results. These rough-sawn maple boards were stacked in the barn when we moved into our house - they still had bark on the edges and fairly severe saw marks. I had to scrub off a bit of a nasty layer of rodent leavings, etc, but they did clean up nicely. Sadly my photography cannot do justice to the "3d" effect of the figuring in the wood - it looks like waves of translucent light dipping above and below the surface of the boards.

The little landing near the stairs had no railing, and with a child in the house we needed to take care of that. The double-duty of the shelves there has already proven quite useful. The posts are anchored with Lee Valley's nifty brackets. They were not cheap but they allowed a fairly simple installation process.

I still have a handful of these boards left. I would love to resaw some of them since they are an inch thick - a bit much for small boxes and the like. I've been pondering what else to do with it... but having sat for 20 years already, I don't think they are in a rush to go anywhere.