followup on the cottonwood I milled last year

[Coralillo Lo Pro]

As it's the least dense wood I've ever milled by far, the cottonwood/poplar from last year seems to have dried way faster than my super dense hardwoods. Started re-leveling some slabs and planing them, trying to find some good pieces to cut 2x6's and 2x4's from for a bed frame for my son. Unbelievably light wood for technically being a hardwood. I did a good job on the stacking and strapping and kept after retightening the ratchet straps continually as it shrank a lot. Painted all the ends. Didn't crack much and a small bit of cupping, a small bit of warp, but next to no twist.. The big surprise is how nice the grain looks. Expected from the look while milling it to look like a third rate hardwood like hackberry, but actually much nicer. And it planes far smoother than I expected, so it should sand out to a pretty nice finish. Interested to see how the 30"+ wide table slabs come out. For what many regard as junk wood, it's some decent stuff if you handle it right. Each slab i get to is better looking than the last. These are just off large limbs I think. Funny thing is a fellow woodworker told me when he saw the most recent slabs "looks like poplar" - had half forgotten cottonwood and poplar are the same thing and often people only know them as one or the other.

 

[djg james]

As it's the least dense wood I've ever milled by far, the cottonwood from last year seems to have dried way faster than my super dense hardwoods. Started releveling some slabs and planing them, trying to find some good pieces to cut 2x6's and 2x4's from for a bed frame for my son. Unbelievably light wood for technically being a hardwood. I did a good job on the stacking and strapping and kept after retightening the ratchet straps continually as it shrank a lot. Painted all the ends. Didn't crack much and warped very little, the biggest problems with cottonwood. The big surprise is how nice the grain looks. Expected from the look while milling it to look like a third rate hardwood like hackberry, but actually much nicer. And it planes far smoother than I expected, so it should sand out to a pretty nice finish. Interested to see how the 30"+ wide table slabs come out. For what many regard as junk wood, it's some decent stuff if you handle it right.

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I'm one of those who consider it junk wood. Gets twisty when drying. Anxious to see your final product.

 

[Coralillo Lo Pro]

I'm one of those who consider it junk wood. Gets twisty when drying. Anxious to see your final product.

Last two trees I’ve done, cottonwood and sycamore, both w bad twisting reps, I tried to retighten the straps every two days initially. Then after the rapid initial drying, at least once a week. Most unstable woods I've lost control of because of not getting them stacked and strapped quickly enough, and/or not continually retightening the straps. Oak has been as bad as anything for me. So these last two trees I made a point of really keeping after them and doing it right start to finish. Seems to have paid off. There were a couple of times I forgot to check for a bit and the straps had loosened a lot (and I'm sure it was twisting) so you've got to be really vigilant. I kept the straps cranked as tight as possible for most of the time. These stopped shrinking awhile ago. Some scrap edge pieces I milled that I left free drying just twisted insanely.

I think the lightweight woods are probably easier to control, or at least manageable with light ratchet straps. Some twisty dense hardwoods like eucalypts or some oaks you might need truck ratchet straps to keep them from twisting. I've seen some beautiful huge slab cottonwood tables for sale, so I guessed it was possible to get good results, but like I said, the big surprise is it's a much better looking wood than I ever realized. I mean, I'll take it all day long over the red oak we have in these parts, which is impossibly heavy, not that good looking, and never seems to stop moving.

 

[Coralillo Lo Pro]

Biggest breakthrough working on these slabs was finally getting a good blade for my 16 5/16" Makita beam saw. Had the OEM blade sharpened once but it's old school non-carbide tip and dulls quickly. Bought a heavy old 16" Simonds blade not made for this kind of saw out of a clearance bin at a shop and it never worked any good. Had sort of accepted it probably was limited to beam cutting being so underpowered for such a huge blade, and hadn't wanted to spring for an expensive thin kerf Freud blade I suspected would have too much flex. Then I found a very reasonably priced Tenryu - my last 12" blade I bought of theirs for my table saw was outstanding. Finally that big saw works like I always wanted it to. Slow to be sure, but so nice and smooth and doesn't bind and bog anymore. Interested to see if I'll be able to rip lumber with it out of light woods like pine and poplar.