Favorite Wood

[slabmaster]

What is your favorite species of tree to mill and why?

 

[oldsaw]

Dont' really have one. Walnut mills easily, but oak and sycamore have the best surprises inside, cherry is another good one. Pretty much any hardwood I guess.

Mark

 

[Marklambert61]

Walnut

I love to mill Walnut it my choice because I enjoy making Black Walnut furniture.

Mark

 

[tomtrees58]

red oak the smell tom trees

 

[treeclimber101]

red oak the smell tom trees

I like me some Ginko really cool looking when large and mature and very few around except on curb strips . There is one at the Philly zoo thats a monster..

 

[Brmorgan]

Favorite to mill would be green Birch. It's extremely clean to work with as opposed to the dead & dry Douglas Fir I more often work on, whose red bark creates the worst fine dust you can imagine. And Birch is fairly soft when green so it cuts faster than a lot of softwoods. On the downside, it's heavy as lead when green and it's hard to find Birches big enough to be worth milling around here.

 

[LAndrews]

This isn't exactly a direct answer to the question...but hopefully it still applies.

Seems like there's a lot of neat surprises inside wood that grows on relatively steep hillsides - especially that which starts to fall over then catches itself and keeps going. Lots of neat grain, figure and such that way. At least, I keep finding it in all the wood on the hill and not in the stuff on the flat areas. OTOH, there's a lot of inherent stress also. Never had a skilsaw kick back until last weekend.

 

[Brmorgan]

That's known as "compression wood" or "reaction wood", or also "timber bind". It occurs as trees strengthen the underside of a leaning trunk to try to correct to vertical. The wood can have really interesting grain, but as you noticed is very unstable.

 

[BobL]

Jarrah, relatively soft, purdy coloured sawdust and every slab is like Christmas!

 

[Sawyer Rob]

If someone says, "i'll bring some logs for you to mill, what do you like to mill", i'd say "poplar!" (easy to saw, easy on the mill, goes fast and always makes you look good!)

But, if it's for me, and i'm taking my time enjoying what i'm doing, one specie ALWAYS puts a smile on my face... And, it's CHERRY!

I love milling it, and i love building with it!

Rob

 

[English Oak]

Mines spalted beech. even log is different. its that risk it could be firewood or pure gold. I'll post some more pictures when i find them.

 

[Backwoods]

My favorite wood is any of the cedars, and we have a good assortment of them out here Western red cedar, Port Orford cedar, Incense cedar, Redwood and a few others. Of those, I like the Redwood the best. The wood is soft and cuts like butter, and the wood goes thru many color changes as it dries, the trees are generally rather large so you get good board footage out of a log. I like to pull 1”x 24” boards off the mill knowing that they will dry nice and flat. Very seldom will you find metal in a cedar tree because the bark is thick and soft, and it is much easier to drive a nail in a hardwood tree that is standing next to it.

My least favorite wood is black Oak, it just wants to pull its self apart during the drying process, resulting in low recovery rate.

I like black walnut as well, but it seems that every one likes to drive nails and other metal into them.

 

[BlueRider]

My favorite wood to mill is any tree over 30" in diameter. there are some woods that I don't really like milling like chinese elm or macrocarpa but they are among my favorite woods to work with. Camphor can be nice to mill for about one or two cuts and then the smell can become over powering. But I can't think of any species I prefer over all others.

 

[deeker]

Poplar, Apricot, Cherry, Walnut, Junipers/Cedars, Spruce stinks. The worst ones for odors...maple and russian olive. Ash is not bad....box elder, catalpa.

Several others that keep life interesting.

Kevin

 

[woodshop]

osage orange... not the easiest to mill, but my fav wood to work in the shop.

 

[Ironbark]

I'd have to say Cedar. I love the smell and the colours.

 

[dallasm1]

:agree2:

Cedar is it.

View attachment 97189

 

[Brmorgan]

osage orange... not the easiest to mill, but my fav wood to work in the shop.

I guess not... That must be like trying to mill a porcupine. I've only seen them in pictures and they look fairly vicious.