Creative & Sustainable Uses for Wood Waste: Heirlooms, Crafts & More

Looking for ways to be sustainable with wood waste, or want to get creative with your trees? Jay Judd from Davey's East Denver office joins us to share creative ways to transform trees and wood waste into one-of-a-kind keepsakes, furniture, decorative pieces, crafts and more. 

To find your local Davey office, check out our find a local office page to search by zip code.

To hear more from Jay Judd, please read/watch: 

• Feeling the Heat: How to Protect Trees from Heat Stress
• Blue Spruce: Why it's Struggling & How to Help
• A Denver Arborist’s Journey to Protecting Urban Forests
• Expert advice on caring for trees during long summer days

Connect with Davey Tree on social media:
Twitter: @DaveyTree
Facebook: @DaveyTree
Instagram: @daveytree
YouTube: The Davey Tree Expert Company
LinkedIn: The Davey Tree Expert Company 

Connect with Doug Oster at www.dougoster.com. 

Connect with us: podcasts@davey.com. 

Transcript

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Welcome

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to the Deby Tree Expert Company's podcast, Talking Trees. I'm your host, Doug Oester. Each week, our expert arborists share advice on seasonal tree care, how to make your trees thrive, arborists' favorite trees, and much, much more. Tune in every Thursday to learn more because here at the Talking Trees Podcast, we know trees are the answer. I'm joined again by Jay Judd. He is a district manager at the East Denver office of the Navy Tree Expert Company. We are talking about a very interesting topic today: creative uses for trees. Jay, welcome back to the show. It seems like we just talked recently, doesn't it?

SPEAKER_01 0:40

It does, Doug. Thanks for having me, and thanks for having me on to talk about something uh besides miserable trees in Denver and diseases and insects and drought and all that fun stuff.

SPEAKER_00 0:51

That seems to be all we talk about. So creative uses

Tree crafts with Jay's kids

SPEAKER_00 0:56

for trees. What's the first thing that comes to mind for you?

SPEAKER_01 0:59

Uh having kids, I'd say crafts. Um, you know, we live I live on a property where we do have trees and a bunch of different types of trees. Um, having uh a little five-year-old and eight-year-old, they're out there exploring a lot and picking things off trees, which inevitably turn into a pretty interesting crafts that I probably wouldn't have thought of. Um, you know, everything from uh just mixing them together in a pot of water to make a soup uh to bringing them in the house and painting things and doing prints with them. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:36

Oh, that's so cool. Do they know their trees because of who their dad is? Do you show them what's what?

SPEAKER_01 1:44

They they do know their trees, or at least the trees on our property, yeah, yeah. And their diseases and their insects as well for those trees.

SPEAKER_00 1:54

And there's plenty of that to talk about. How about planting wise? When I was when I saw the topic, I was thinking, like, wow, is there like some kind of cool way

Living tree patterns

SPEAKER_00 2:06

to plant that's creative, like in uh uh some type of uh pattern or something? That's that's what I was thinking of. I I can't imagine that ever happening, except at some kind of art installation or uh uh public space somewhere.

SPEAKER_01 2:22

Yeah, there's ways to especially with ornamental trees, kind of work them on walls uh and and utilize them to kind of make a pattern uh on a patio wall. It takes a lot of trimming and a lot of attaching to make sure and redirecting to make sure the tree's going the way they want it to. And obviously a tree grows slow, so it takes many years, but I have seen that uh before, at least for a use of a living tree, uh art wise. Yeah, yeah.

Stumps as pedestals and fairy gardens

SPEAKER_00 2:54

Well, a couple things that I do because I do have uh arborists here every six months cutting down my oak trees that have oak wilt, and I lose one or two a year, is I like to use the stumps as actually an area to put a garden container on top of. Uh I asked the guys, try and get it as flat as you can, and they abide, and then I put that container on top, and it's a good place for a sort of pedestal. Uh, so that's one thing I'm doing.

SPEAKER_01 3:26

Yeah, and I've I've had clients request uh flat but a little bit higher up so they could put a bird bath on. Um, one fun thing that I want to do at our house with a recent tree I cut down is um sort of uh leave the stump at a few feet, put a roof on it, and uh for the girls make a little fairy garden around it as if that was the house for the fairy garden. I thought that would be a fun one.

SPEAKER_00 3:54

That is really cool because I've got a fairy garden in my gar in my garden too for my grandkids. Uh and so it's fun. And and I've got a big stag there from a tree that was uh cut down and I left that there, and it has a big sign on it, it says fairy garden, and the fairy garden's underneath it, and actually in the top of the stag, it's high enough where I can put plants in flats so that the critters can't get them. And so there's a there's another creative use for for a tree that I didn't think of even before we started this. Explain what a stag is to people.

SPEAKER_01 4:33

I have no idea what a stag is.

SPEAKER_00 4:35

Okay, well my arborist calls a stag when I leave when I leave something bigger than a stump.

SPEAKER_01 4:43

Oh, interesting.

SPEAKER_00 4:44

And so I'm saving money when they have to cut down these trees, yeah, they can leave like seriously, 10, 15 feet, and have to worry, it's not gonna fall over or anything. So that's that must be just his term for it. Because I had never heard it before either. And so like I said, they cut down most of the tree, but that big part at the end they leave. And so I've got them all over the garden. Right. I actually want to put on that one big one where I got the plants, I actually want to put a big giant, like fairy statue on top of it. But I haven't I haven't found one yet. Uh now, right behind you on your bookshelf, it looks like you have some creative uses for trees right behind you. What is what is that stuff?

Cookies, cutting boards and walnut slabs

SPEAKER_01 5:28

I do, yeah. So cookies, uh, where you cut the um stem or a trunk into slivers. Um, I've got a pretty unique design on um the shelf behind me that I'm displaying. But I've used cookies, these slivers of trunk in different ways. Uh, we use them for centerpieces at my wedding. Um, I've made uh cut or coaster holders for my family with it uh for Christmas, just something to hand out. Um, with black walnut that I had cut down when I was in the field, I used to use a chainsaw uh mill to get planks, sand them down, cut them up, and would hand out for Christmas, of course, uh cutting boards that I use beeswax, rub beeswax into it after you've sanded them down. Um, and the same with using that same wood for um coffee tables, yeah. So you don't need to have you know a true milling machine or or something fancy, you know, a chainsaw can do it, and then a little bit of sanding.

SPEAKER_00 6:38

Is black walnut a a good wood to work with for that sort of thing? Is it a hard wood or a softer wood? How would you explain it?

SPEAKER_01 6:45

Yeah, no, black walnut is definitely uh uh extremely hard wood and a good wood for making furniture with. Yeah, yep. Is it beautiful? Beautiful, and once you get the beeswax or whatever you're using to sort of polish the wood, you get these really dark, dark red, almost streaked wood. Um, and then if you leave in that vascular, that live wood edge, you get a stark contrast of the white too. And then if you can even get the bark to stay on, that's even uh that's even cooler for a coffee table.

SPEAKER_00 7:22

That is important, and a cutting board. Everybody needs a cutting board, and to have one, you know, a custom-made cutting board, go through that like how many hours are we talking about when you cut when you get the slab together? Like, are you sanding it by hand, or do you have like a sanding machine or something that can help you get that sanded down to where you want it?

SPEAKER_01 7:42

Yeah, so um, what I use first is a chainsaw that leaves a lot of chatter marks. So you're looking at maybe quarter inch um, you know, deep divots in it that I run it through a planer first to kind of bring that down, and then just an electric sander. Yep. And then beeswax, huh? Yeah, yeah. I also made uh building blocks for my daughters when they were first born. Um, I just had so many scraps after these other projects that I cut them into triangles and squares, and then I figured, you know, to preserve the wood, something that if they put it in their mouth wouldn't make them sick, beeswax would be good. So I soaked them in beeswax. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 8:23

Now that is such a special thing to make, but as the kids outgrow it, what do you do with it? Do you save it for uh down the road or do you pass them along? What do you do with something special like that, or do you put them up somewhere?

SPEAKER_01 8:36

Yeah, so um I've passed some of some along, some my wife definitely wanted to hold on to. Um, because it is like you said, it's unique and and yeah, I took some little canker areas and made some arches and stuff to add in the mix. So yeah, that's something you keep.

SPEAKER_00 8:54

So for people like me who don't have any skills with tools, uh give me some ideas. What can I what can I do creatively with uh with the trees that we haven't already talked about? I'm I don't like I don't use a chainsaw anymore, uh, because I after I've learned all the safety things that the Davy guys use, and I'm like, well, you know, for as often as I use a chainsaw, I'm not gonna get chaps, and I shouldn't use a chainsaw without the chaps, and so I'm not using a chainsaw anymore. Um, I am, you know, whatever's left when they're done, I try and make something out of it. Uh, but it sounds like you really know your way around uh some tools with the planer and the electric sander and then the beeswax.

Bike racks, pine cones and wood types

SPEAKER_01 9:40

Yeah, yeah, and a couple more that need tools that are pretty fun that I've done in the past. Um my most favorite was um, I saw at this camp area we were at, they took a log, a tree that died and and fell over, and they cut slats in it and they used it for a bike rack. So people parked their bikes just on the log with just slats cut in. Again, you probably have to use a chainsaw to do that, but I thought that was pretty clever. I like that a lot. Sorry, it's why I throw that one in.

SPEAKER_00 10:08

I do have another one that you just reminded me of. I had a log up in my pawpaw orchard. Uh, pawpaws are a native tree on the east uh that makes like a tropical fruit. And I back in the day when I did use a chainsaw, I cut that one, cut some space in it, put some soil in it, some planting mix, and then I planted annual flowers, and I didn't tell my wife. And then I waited for her when she walked the dogs to go up the trail until she finally said, Did you see what happened up there in that tree? I'm like, What happened? And she's like, There's all these flowers. I said, The birds must have uh left seeds in there or something. So there is another one that I've done. So uh I can add that to my list of creative uses for trees.

SPEAKER_01 10:56

Yeah, absolutely. Um, you know, for when it comes to crafts, there's a couple pretty brilliant things. Some of these things I've done, these are things, some of this other stuff is what I've seen clients use. I think my favorite, very simple use for a part of a tree to help out a backyard was I had a client that got little mirrors and she glued them on pine cones, and she hung the pine cones from the trees and from other areas in her backyard to keep the birds away that were causing a problem for her garden underneath. I thought that was like really tasteful, kind of blended in, it was natural, but you still got that reflection.

SPEAKER_00 11:34

Well, now, Jay, you reminded me of another one where you take the pine cones and you put like a bird seed peanut butter mix on them and you hang them. And uh, especially for the big pine cones, that works good. And uh, there's another creative use for trees. I you're you're bringing back all these memories. Uh, you know, these are things I gotta do with my grandkids that I did with my kids. Anything else on your list that you were thinking about for uh creative uses of trees?

SPEAKER_01 12:04

Um, yeah, so I have a couple other uh ideas that I uh talked to my my daughters last night to see what they had to add, and I thought I'd maybe let you uh share the share these with you. Uh, my oldest said that um you could make a pine cone person uh using needles as the hair, using googly eyes for the eyes, and using bark for the feet, which I think we'll probably end up doing that this weekend, since it was a pretty clever idea.

SPEAKER_00 12:34

And that's a very clever idea. So when you when you propose this to them, how tell me how you pitched it to them?

SPEAKER_01 12:42

Yeah, so um at the dinner table, of course, um, I said, I'm talking to Doug. Doug's a nice guy that wants to have great ideas for me to share with everybody on what to do with parts of trees. Do you guys have any fun crafts? And uh they just started talking right away and uh spit out a bunch. That was that was my my most favorite of the uh the older one. The younger one, uh, who's only five, uh, she had a really clever one, which was something I never even thought about, but she was talking, it took me a minute to figure out what she was talking about. But essentially what she was describing was taking uh leaves in the fall, crushing them up so they're really small, drawing a landscape of a tree and maybe a sun, and then under the tree sprinkling that on glue. So it looked like the leaves coming off the tree that she had painted were you know the little crumbled pieces of true leaves underneath. I thought that was pretty creative for a five-year-old to think of mixed media like that.

SPEAKER_00 13:43

I think that's just amazing. And that's you know, as having someone as a five-year-old grandchild, I'm amazed at at how smart they are and uh what they can come up with conceptually. You know, and we I've I've seen also where people have taken the stump that's left over and as it's rotted away, turn that into a planter. That's another thing you could do. Uh I guess uh you're you're only uh it's your imagination that is the only thing that will hold you back. You've got to think about how you want to use that. And it's funny that uh, especially as for arborists, they're always making stuff out of the the trees, whatever it might be. You know what are what are the woods that are that are really good to use? You said black walnut. I guess maple would be one, right? Oak would be one, or or not?

SPEAKER_01 14:38

Yeah, oak. Yeah, oak is a harder wood. Um, that one I did a lot of work with. Um, you know, I've made uh quite a few things, uh, a countertop for a register at a small shop. Um, I use live veg oak wood for um using that same milling um with chainsaw that I told you about. Maple is okay, although that's a softer wood, it's gonna decay quicker. Um, also when you're sanding that down and cutting it, you're losing a lot more just because it is so soft or be. I mean, I don't know if this is official, but in my opinion, working with the different woods, I would almost compare it to working with almost a pine, how soft it is at least. Right, right.

Chainsaw milling time and safety

SPEAKER_00 15:19

How is this something that you got into? Was it just uh an extension of being an arborist, or was this something you were into before that?

SPEAKER_01 15:26

Um exactly that it was it was an extension of being an arborist. I climbed for the first decade of my career, and I'm I was removing these large, beautiful trees that were dying, but still had a really good intact main stem, which um you we you called stag. We call that, or at least I call that a spar. So leaving the spar. Yeah, that's what we did. That's what we call that.

SPEAKER_00 15:52

So uh I think I think when you get uh east of the Mississippi, it's a stag. West Mississippi, it's a spar.

SPEAKER_01 16:01

Um, so yeah, you know, getting rid of these spars, just disposing of them um at sites where they're grinding them up to use the chip for other stuff. Um, you know, I realized I should see what I can do to maybe do some woodworking with this stuff, and um found a little chainsaw mill, which is a hundred dollars attached to a chainsaw and kind of went from there, sort of figuring it all out. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 16:28

Well, plus you have the advantage of knowing all the safety stuff, having all the safety gear. You know, we should talk a little bit about that when we are when when we're talking about the stuff that you're doing, how important safety is in working with these, uh, just like the chainsaw and and and everything. When you're doing something like that, what are all the things that you're wearing for protection?

SPEAKER_01 16:52

Yeah, um, so with the chainsaw, you've mentioned chaps, obviously, hearing pro, some sort of hearing protection, um, uh safety glasses for anything that's coming back. And a helmet's important when you're using a chainsaw as well. Um, you know, I think when you're looking to get more crafty with a chainsaw, outside of just your general cut, uh, the chance for kickbacks there, especially if you're running with the grain as opposed to against the grain, um, and you're cutting through in different ways. You definitely want to have some skill set and some understanding of the chainsaw before you start just cutting into a piece of wood to make a bike rack or uh to start cutting for a tabletop or cutting board for your mom for Christmas. So um, yeah, there are dangers, especially with the chainsaw. Um, you have to be definitely um well versed in operating one before using it for crafts.

SPEAKER_00 17:46

And we do have to say that guys in general are pretty dumb, especially when they're young. Uh, because I I fit it right into that category. I should not have been using a chainsaw, I shouldn't have been. I didn't know what I was doing, but everybody else had a chainsaw, and I'm like, well, I guess if they got a chainsaw, thank goodness nothing happened. What's the favorite thing, most favorite thing you ever made?

SPEAKER_01 18:09

Um, so when I was talking about the scraps from the other um the other projects, and I was making those blocks, um, even making the blocks, I had even tinier scraps, and because this wood I had, because you have to dry this wood out too. So I would stack it and dry. I mean, this is a year process from when I cut the tree down to literal tabletop, right? So any scrap I had I salvaged, and what I did was started building a few of these little boxes by taking the small pieces, cutting them straight into perfect 90-degree angles, gluing them together, and then planing that to make it smooth, and making four walls and then a little top on top, and it made some really cool, unique. You know, you've got the the white live wood, and then you've got that brown um heartwood on those uh black walnut in in particular, and it made some really cool looking, unique uh boxes that uh were just made out of scraps, which was even more exciting than stuff you'd normally throw away, right?

Why carving bark hurts trees

SPEAKER_00 19:14

Oh, that's so cool. Now I want to talk about something creative that we shouldn't be doing that drives me crazy is when people carve in trees. Oh, yeah. You know, that really drives me nuts. I was actually on the West Coast and they had these really beautiful giant agavis, and people were carving in them. Here in the east, we have beech trees which have very soft bark. People are always carving in them. It's creative, but it's bad for the tree, and uh it's it's basically outdoor uh pre-graffiti, in my opinion.

SPEAKER_01 19:45

Yeah, yeah, I agree. Um, in the Rockies here, we have the infamous aspen stands, and again, aspens a very thin bark. Um, when you're walking those trails through those, there's a lot of cuts in the tree, and you know, these cuts can introduce uh insects and disease.

SPEAKER_00 20:04

You know how much we like to talk about insects and disease. All right, Jay, I'm gonna leave it right there. That's good stuff. Uh, I think that's just so uh wonderful that your kids came up with those suggestions. That's cool. Keep up the good work. I you know, I would love to see some pictures of some of your stuff uh uh that you've made. That's so cool. Uh and such a just a wonderful personalized gift. I've been given a cutting board before, and I've got that, I've had that cutting board for 20 years, and I ever every time I use it, I think of the guy who's like an expert wood worker who made it. Uh because I appreciate it because as I said, I don't have those skills. So good for you, buddy. I think that's awesome.

SPEAKER_01 20:47

And and it gives you a good follow-up gift for future Christmases. You just send over a little bottle of beeswax so they can condition the wood.

SPEAKER_00 20:56

Perfect. I think they should be able to send the cutting board back to you, and you should have to put the beeswax back. Okay, we'll catch you next time. Always great to talk to you.

SPEAKER_01 21:07

Absolutely. Thank you, Doug.

Share your ideas and subscribe!

SPEAKER_00 21:10

What ways have you used a tree creatively? I would love to hear from you. There's a couple of different ways you can reach us. Just send us an email to podcast at Davy.com. That's P-O-D-C-A-S T-S at D-A-V-E-Y.com. You can also click the link at the end of our show notes to text us a fan mail message. It'd be interesting to hear some other projects. Now, tune in every Thursday to the Talking Trees Podcast from the Davy Tree Expert Company. I am your host, Doug Oester. As always, I'd love for you to subscribe to the podcast. And as always, we like to remind you on the Talking Trees Podcast. Trees are the answer.