The Solar Kiln
Leveraging the power of the sun
What is it?
Did you know that some wood has natural luminescent properties that are exposed under black light? We didn’t, but this was such a cool learning! We had a branch of Black Locust we weren’t feasibly able to mill into boards, so we cut it into cookies. We didn’t know what species this was initially, so we asked the members of several woodworking groups and one person said, “Hold it under a black light. If it glows, it’s definitely Black Locust.” After a few curious re-reads of the post, we decided to give it a try and BAM!
What did we learn?
Well, aside from the fact that Black Locust, we learned many other species have also have this luminescent property. There are also different colors like greens, oranges, reds, and blues. Some day we will find a project where we can work with more of them.
Instead of creating a dozen small forms for each of the coasters, we placed all of them in a single square form and then cut them out. This dramatically cut down the preparation and working time, with minimal waste of material. It also gave us consistency in the thickness of each coaster.
This project also gave us the opportunity to learn that hole saws are not the best tool to use to try to cut through a mix of epoxy and wood. We even tried templates to help guide the blade without any improvement. So we built a non-destructive circle cutting jig for the bandsaw and it worked famously!
If you read about the Black Walnut tables we made, we mentioned using odd chunks and scraps of wood. This came in handy again using this limb cutoff to make a holder for the coasters. Using the same bandsaw circle jig, we were able to remove a the core of the log to create this holder.
In Closing…
As we’ve often said, God places some amazing little details into all of His creation. The luminescence of Black Locust is one of those things. While we don’t have any black lights installed in our home, we may eventually have to. But I guarantee that we will eventually do a project with more luminescent wood!
