Milling lumber woodshop style

[Tree Machine]

One place to sell your lumber

Here's a <a href=http://www.woodweb.com/cgi-bin/forums/lumber.pl> price listing</a> for all sorts of species. I found this interesting. You may be able to find buyers for your lumber through this place.

 

[woodshop]

thanks tree... interesting to see what different kinds of wood sell for (or at least what they are asking...) in different parts of the country. IF I was to sell some of my nicer stuff to make a few bucks... this might be the place to try. This confirmed cherry is still through the roof in many places.

 

[Oregon_Native]

alright i got sucked in to milling now.

probably seen pics of my mini chainsaw mill in chainsaw forum.

i am primarily milling softwood, but i know of a few hard wood stumps that need to be turned in to gun stocks.

was wondering if any one has good suggestion on how to do this.

 

[woodshop]

Oregon, I too had some valuable but small chunks of wood that needed milling. Not saying you want to go to this much trouble, but I built a rig that has a movable guide bar that my mill rides on, that can be used to milll small pieces. I use a Ripsaw, but an alaskan would also work with this thing. Slice off those walnut stumps, and sit them in a rig like mine and go to town. If you are interested in duplicating it, I can post some more detailed pics of that rig. You can see a pic of it earlier in this thread, file is ripsaw14.

Other than that, milling small pieces is tough, you have to find a way to secure the chunk of wood, and then find a way to attach a long enough guide on that small piece to get a strait cut, not easy. For small stuff I also use a resaw bandsaw, but if you are not into woodworking, you won't have one of them sitting around either.

 

[Tree Machine]

Are the stumps still in the ground? Are you going after subterrannean wood, or the wood above ground in the buttress? Both will provide prize wood with exotic figuring.

Below-ground wood, of course, has it's challenges. We're not talking about the roots themselves, but rather the root ball area. Dirt is the biggest challenge here, as well as weight, awkward size and shape. It's also like a box of chocolates... "Ya never know what you're gonna get."

I'm going to assume you mean buttress wood, going downward a bit. This would mean (again I assume) a blown over tree, the log having been removed. The only reason I can speak with experience on this is I have to remove blow-overs in people's yards, where they want the stump out.

I'd first go after it with a sharp axe or hatchet, removing the roots and as much dirt as possible. If you can get the sucker in the back of a pickup, take it to a car wash, or bring a power sprayer to it. Or if you live near the ocean, put a cable around it and let it bang around in the surf for a couple days (yea, right). I have personally never done these things, but clearly it would get the dirt off and prepare it for milling. I can offer no more advice on this except to say removal of dirt is paramount.

Or you could use that same axe or hatches and strip it clean. Whittling a stump. Sounds like a lot of work. I do this on the exposed roots, giving a clean ring so I can detach the stump from the root using the chainsaw. Root cambium and phloem peels off, like a sheath, but this stops in the ball area.

I also, very often, hatchet off a ring around the stump at the dirt line (pics attached). This keeps chain and dirt away from each other, and allows you to get a really low cut. You don't get below-the-ground wood, but you do get buttress wood, and the method is easy and practical and saves your chain.

 

[woodshop]

great pics Tree... good explanation. I too have axed away dirt/bark to get clean shot at bucking log or lopping off a root ball. I need to grind an axe like yours though, I just use a standard hand hatchet I keep in my milling box.

I wanna see ya drag a root ball around in the surf... HA! Actually, the chunks of wood/root etc I do see on the Jersey shore from time to time DO look nice an clean other than some sand on them, as they've been beaten clean of everything else.

 

[Tree Machine]

Milling with the grain

Well, that would be the route I'd go. Take a trip to the beach and get something already clean.

Don't expect me to post pics of me dragging a rootball into the ocean.... at least not here in central Indiana.

That hatchet was manufactured that way. It's called a kindling hatchet and the unique shape

makes sense when thought of that way. The curve works really well when shaving off the dirt zone around the buttress, you just have to go around clockwise.

Anyway, I didn't finish answering the question about the actual milling as I got into the preparation, then got lost in my image library as I had to go back a few years to retrieve these photos.

OK, back to milling short stock and buttress wood. (this is the easy part)

Freehand with the longest bar you got. Mill lengthwise, <i>with the direction of the grain</i>, 90 degrees to the normal direction of milling. You can do this because the stock is short. You can get pretty flat with no Alaskan attachments whatsoever, nor even a milling chain. You're gonna get 'woodchips' or 'sawdust' (whatever you wanna call it) that looks like shredded mozzerella cheese, but the cut is fairly smooth, even using regular full-chisel chain.

I've done this many dozens of times because my firewood guys sometimes can't handle a firewood-length of lower trunk, so I'll turn it on it's side and cut it into two halves, and cutting each of those halves in half again creating fourths. Although it generates a large amount of 'bulky' shavings, the newly exposed wet wood pretty much shows off its full character right there on the spot. The procedure is swift because you're working with just the saw, no change to a chain, no attaching a mill setup. Also, cutting <u>with</u> the grain seems to go almost as fast as cutting across the grain. Cutting tangential to the grain (conventional mill ripping) is by far the slowest way to cut through wood.

The pics attached are from a tree where the client wanted the lowest cut possible on the trunk at a 4 inch thickness. Then the next cut, up the trunk at firewood length, cut into fourths to be used as the legs for the table. I have pics here for you of the general procedure, but not a single one of the finished product (that was an oversight, eh?)

 

[Oregon_Native]

i was thinking of power washing the root balls clean then cutting them to a managable size.

 

[Tree Machine]

Should be a fun mud-fest. there's lots of nooks, crannies and odd-shaped invaginations ya gotta blast out, otherwise you risk cutting through pockets of dirt.

Wear full face protection and swim trunks, but please, spare us the pictures of that!

 

[Oregon_Native]

i think that would be wise.

but i first have to find the stumps and get them out of the ground.

i will stick to the dough fir for now.

it there any rule to how thick one should cut a slab to be able to get 2" finished stock after planer pass.

 

[woodshop]

is there any rule to how thick one should cut a slab to be able to get 2" finished stock after planer pass.

no set rule I know of, depends on species, whether is it quartersawn or flatsawn, and how carefully it is dried. I found milling 1 or 1 1/8 is plenty for finished 3/4 s2s as long as you don't twist it all up drying. The wood will shrink a bit, some species more than others. I found thicker slabs, say 2" or more, not only take longer to dry, but they also don't twist as much drying, so you might get away with as little as 3/8 over what you eventually want as finished slab.

 

[Oregon_Native]

well i went milling today not much to show but 2 slabs and some firewood.

found out my mill does flex a bit but if i support the powerhed right and hold the far end of the guide down it can cut square'er.

i am going to build a bigger mill with support at both ends when i get my Big McC.

hears the pics.

 

[Tree Machine]

Most excellent !

 

[woodshop]

Congratulations Oregon... you have been bitten by the millling bug, you will want MORE MORE MORE... bigger saws, bigger mills... soon you will be building platforms to store and dry your lumber. Fortunately, it never ends

 

[Tree Machine]

Just ask my wife.

 

[Oregon_Native]

i am looking at an SP 125 next week.

 

[Oregon_Native]

correction i bought my SP 125 now i just need a little longer bar and some ripping chain.

 

[Tree Machine]

Like dis, ya?

 

[Oregon_Native]

yep even looks like it has a helper handle.

 

[Tree Machine]

Dual is cool.

Sad. Hasn't been used in ages. For some reason to day I decide to take a picture of it.

That milled lumber to the right are a couple of 8x8's of oak (dark) sycamore (lace), and some 8/2 planks above, of persimmon.