Birch

     Ten years ago I made a rustic mantel for my daughter and son-in-law.  They wanted one for their fireplace and I had the trees.  I don't like felling needlessly but there was a pair of birches alongside the cabin's driveway that were on their last legs, dying from the top down as birches commonly do.  The easiest thing would've been to let nature run its course.  Couple of years and the one on the left would be turning to soil.  The one I chose wasn't a big tree but was big enough to chainsaw out a six foot log that told me my knees weren't what they used to be when I flopped it out of the woods.  What remained was sliced and split for the wood stove. The joy of birch is it's berry-like fragrance when it pops open. I removed the excess from the log and over the months it turned into a mantel. Finally, the log's outer slabs were carved into two by two and bigger sticks and slid up into the garage rafters at home.  That's where they sat till this morning.
     Over the years most of them had taken a set but each had at least one straight edge so I was in business.  At least till the second pass on the table saw.  That required a bit of eyeballing and planing of the set edge to bring it to near straight.  Most every stick in the paddles was re-sawed a little on the heavy side with the idea bigger can be made smaller to take out some of the imperfections.  Once the sticks were squared up I trimmed them to length and glued them on the handle end of the paddle loom.  Lotta glue.  Glue is good especially if it's good glue.  Start to finish seven paddles sucked up a pint of Titebond III.  Hope they don't fall apart.
     So, what's the big deal about birch handles?  It's most likely an ego thing; I knew the tree while it was still alive and kicking, and mine are the only hands that've touched the wood.  It could be, like most things I've done, the idea of using left-over birch popped out of nowhere, wherever that nowhere might be.  Or possibly the sticks simply wanted to be put to use and called me over. I can understand that. Lee Hayes, the man who wrote "If I had a Hammer," had himself cremated and dug into his compost heap when he died.