If you will pardon the cliché, wood is like a box of chocolates; you never know what you are going to get.   I buy most of my wood rough, as it comes from the saw mill, and plane it myself because it’s less expensive this way.  The downside is you can’t really see the grain patterns in rough wood.  It has heavy saw marks, fuzzy texture, and is usually very dirty.  It’s not until I run each board through my planer that I can see what I bought.  I push the board into one side of the planer and anxiously watch as it comes out the other side.  Sometimes it’s ugly, but most of the time I get a nice piece of wood.  Occasionally, I get a surprising exceptional piece.

I was running some 6/4 walnut through my planer today was pleasantly surprised to see beautifully figured patterns come out the other end.  It’s always great to get figured wood for the price of non-figured.  Now I can’t decide what project I want to use it for.

These are both from the same board.  The one on the right is what it looked like as it came from the lumber yard.  The one on the left is after I ran one of the boards through the planer.  The one on the right looked very much the same way as the other one once it was planed.