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Sawing a log for altar to peace
 Philadelphia InquirerThursday, January 19, 1984 By Joe Logan Inquirer Staff Writer This article contaians 726 words. Ordinarily, you wouldn't get 15 people together to cut a log.  But when the log is thought to be one of the largest pieces of walnut in the world, the sawyer and his saw have been brought in from Northern California, and the man who is paying for all this is Bucks County's internationally acclaimed woodworker George Nakashima, a crowd tends to gather.
And that is precisely what happened yesterday at Thompson Mahogany Co. in Northeast Philadelphia, where two days worth of cutting got under way, despite the snow.
There was the logger who had been negotiating for the 300-year old, 115-foot-tall, 10-ton tree ever since he spotted it on a Long Island. N.Y., estate 13 years ago. There was a variety of onlookers and helpers, there was a film crew from "National Geographic." and there was Nakashima himself, who has made furniture for the Rockefellers and who paid more than 10,000 for this particular hunk of black walnut.
"This is the best log I've come across, both in size and coloring," Nakashima was telling the film crew. But what he most wanted to see was the grain, which is there real personality and character of a tree.
"The grain," he said almost lovingly "is determined by moisture. Did the tree grow up by a river bank? And was the ground full of minerals? If trees have led a joyous life, they express it in their grain."
 Once this log is cut, it figures prominently in what Nakashima calls his "dream project" - an altar for peace.
When he first got word of the tree, and bought it sight unseen, he sat down to conceive the project. "There has appeared an extraordinary natural phenomena, something that occurs only once in a lifetime or perhaps only once in the history of a nation or in all time," he wrote at the time. "It is a great walnut tree. It is a tree that should be a symbiosis of nature and man in the deepest spiritual sense. It is now on hand."
When the altar is finished, it will be 10 feet wide and 3 feet high, polished and crafted finer than anything he has ever done; conference tables maybe made of the leftover wood. Already Nakashima has approached the United Nations about possibly housing the work. If the United Nations doesn't take it, perhaps it will go to Tokyo.
But that is years away. First, the wood must dry for two to three years. For now. Nakashima's attention is directed at getting the 12-foot-long log—78 inches at its thickest part—cut into perhaps 16 three inch layers. Each layer has to be cut perfectly to take advantage of the grain. One wrong cut can ruin the natural masterpiece.
At 78, Nakashima was bundled up yesterday, with snow collecting around his ankles; he studied every move the sawyer made, every inch of the cut.
 Logs like this are not cut with your average saw, nor by your average sawyer. "It is a question of utilizing the tree." said Nakashima. "It doesn't have to be cut the way I want it. But I have a thing about trees. I think they should be used to their potential, like diamond cutting."
It turned out there was no saw on the East Coast that could handle the job, a fact Nakashima learned only after he had the log trucked to a North Carolina sawmill.
But on a trip to California, Nakashima found Scot Wineland, from Chico, California, who specializes in walnut. Wineland brought with him his custom-made, $3,000 Swedish Partner chainsaw, with dual engines and its 8-foot wide cut.
"It is the Rolls Royce of chain saws." said Wineland.
But the first cut was barely under way before things got tense: somewhere in the tree's inards, the saw was bogging down on something metal: The saw would handle a nail with no problem, this was something more.
Nakashima was unsettled. "If we hit more hardware, maybe it won't be much good," he said. "But those are the chances you take."
After two hours of delays, the first cut was complete and the 3-inch layer was lifted off. The "hardware" turned out to be a piece of pipe that was easily removed.
A relieved Nakashima ran his fingers across the dark, marbled grain and whispered: "It is more beautiful than I ever imagined."
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