A few weeks ago, I went to the beach and found three pieces of driftwood that I thought could be cut into meel type clubs. I went to the beach yesterday to collect the driftwood, and couldn't find it! The driftwood was completely covered in wind-blown sand! After digging around for a while, I located the driftwood. I had to dig a lot more to lift it out of the sand. I used my trusty bow saw to cut two 750 mm sections from each piece. It was only after the last cut on the red milkwood that I discovered that it had a rotten core. Here is a picture:
This is what the pieces looked like before I removed the bark and the sand. The two logs on the left are plantation grown gum. You can see the marks left by the debarker. It is probably Eucalyptus Saligna, the most common species of plantation gum. I think the pair of logs on the right may be Chinaberry (Melia Azedarach), also known locally as syringa.
Update 28 April 2014: It's a bust! None of the wood that i collected from teh beach is suitable for making clubs. The syringa is waterlogged. It has a very low density when I dried a test cube in the microwave oven. The gum is so full of sand in the cracks, that I spend more time sharpening my tools, than shaping the wood!