Lost my paper birch, now what.

[mechaniacal]

Cut it up for firewood or save a length for the mill I would like to get eventually and use it for a woodworking project. If I save a length, should I protect the ends or leave them to encourage spalting? I'm not sure if it is paper birch, black or yellow used for woodworking so...

Birch wood seems to rot really quick under that bark which seems become structural in dropped or standing logs pretty quick. How soon before I mill it? I imagine I should keep it well off the ground, do I keep the rain off and or seal the ends?

I attached a pic of the 12"-16" diameter paper birch that was damaged in an ice storm the end of last winter. The tree had leaves only on the bottom 2/3rds last year and has no leaves/ buds this year. I am surprised that the damage to the top killed the tree and welcome comments about that, like could I have saved it.

thx

 

[Cowboy Billy]

Birch is a hard wood and is used in furniture making. It also has a nice grain. I just tried sawing some last year. I did not have much weight on it and it wanted to warp some. Also I tried to plane it to soon and it wanted to chip out. I haven't built anything with it yet. But you might need to pre drill any holes so it doesn't split but I don't know for sure.

Billy

 

[Cowboy Billy]

I just took a picture of what I cut. I have it stacked in my utility room. The top two boards are White Birch you can see how much the grain can differ but its all from the same tree. The board on the bottom is Red Pine. I cut the red pine off of my property in Michigan's UP to build a bar table in the utility room. And I sawed the white birch just to see what it looked like.

You might get more responses posting this in the sawmill and milling form.

Billy

 

[AKRover]

Birch and spruce are the dominate trees in my area so my choices are limited. I have milled a few birch now I really like the look of the wood. I am milling them into 6x6 timbers for timber framing but I think it would make nice slabs too. It seems to dry quick though and splits easily.

I also think you would get more feed back with this in the milling section of the forum.

 

[mechaniacal]

Thanks for the pic of the wood, looks nice. I will have to come up with a project for it. I will hit the Milling section, you guys have convinced me to save a section.

 

[Texas Traveler]

These are destroyed birch M14 butt stocks & a birch board to make a display. I treated them with pure Swedish pine tar.

 

[Texas Traveler]

A better example