Never milled wood before-is making this staircase possible?

[Brmorgan]

I cut up a doug fir log that was a leaner. It was fun watching how far the boards would spring up off of the cant as the band finished the cut. Even dingged up my blade guard a couple of times.

The boards will be used as "shorts" only.

I am going to cut up a couple of leaner trees in the next week or so. The owner wants to see if we can use them as beams......I have my doubts.

Kevin

The sawmill that my dad (and I as a student) used to work at has a curve saw on the small log line that can follow the bend in crooked trees, and cut boards consistently parallel with the pith. Then, once the boards are through the kiln at high-temperature and the lignin sets, they stay pretty straight. It's actually an amazing thing to watch, you'd never think you could get anything but firewood out of some of the logs.

 

[Backwoods]

The sawmill that my dad (and I as a student) used to work at has a curve saw on the small log line that can follow the bend in crooked trees, and cut boards consistently parallel with the pith. Then, once the boards are through the kiln at high-temperature and the lignin sets, they stay pretty straight. It's actually an amazing thing to watch, you'd never think you could get anything but firewood out of some of the logs.

I have run one of those as well, and for a small log operation, they are the cats meow. It was made by USNR.

 

[Backwood]

Improper drying can also put stress in the wood. It sucks when you put a perfectly straight 1x8 on the table saw and rip it in half only to end up with two 1x4's that are so crooked they are usless.
Oak is one of the hardest woods to dry. If you put some in a box with a fan and dehumidifier it would be easy to dry it to fast and end up with a bad honeycomb problem ( the wood fibers would seperate and you would be left with wood full of small holes ) You probably wont even notice it until you plane the surface off of it. If you do this you want to make sure that you remove no more than 10 gallons of water per 1000 board feet of wood per day. no more than 5 gallons per day if you are drying 500 board feet .... etc...

Finding a local portable sawmill to come to your place and mill the wood on site might be the best way out. Saw it , sticker it , and air dry it until you are ready for it, then use it. It dosent " have to be kiln dried "

 

[Renee]

OK, a few more questions: How are logs used in making log cabins prepared?

I Like the solid wood idea over the faking it idea because when you cut the end off the beam to use for end caps you have relived the tension in the wood and the end caps will split wildly if they have the hart still in them , making it difficult to maintain the fake look for long.
If the wood is milled shortly after clearing a path thru the woods and stored in a metal building until the house is close to being finished then remill the beams square before installing them they may not be completely dry but most of the movement should be out of them and they will dry in place.
If you end seal the logs you will still want to allow 3”- 4” of trim on the ends If you do not end seal then allow 6”- 12” of trim on each end of the beam. Leaving the beams in log form will save on end checking but will add to the drying time.
Cut five of six extra so that you can pick the ones that dried the best. You will always find a use for the other blocks.

Does anyone disagree with Backwoods here? Using the solid logs is going to be the most visually appealing, and if the wood cracks it really isn't a problem in this application. It IS a problem if it warps significantly after they're in place, making the stairs uneven.

Would 2-3 years of air drying (assuming 10x10 logs) be enough to stabilize the wood for this application?



I also asked this on another message board, and one of the posters said this:

Isn't this one of those construction projects made with green oak? - that is, unseasoned timber, used in over-engineered size, in the full knowledge that cracking and splitting will occur - and seasoned/dried in situ.

What do the experts here say about this?

Thanks again, you guys have been incredibly helpful.

 

[Brmorgan]

If you build green, the amount of shifting and warping will likely depend on how well the pieces are fastened together and to the house structure. If they're really well secured with lag bolts, pegged mortise & tenon joints, etc., there probably won't be a whole lot of movement other than the inevitable shrinkage. Just don't use nails for any of it, they'll gradually pull out. The biggest problem I see with building green in this case is if you want to have really nice, smooth, finished surfaces on the beams. In the first place, it is much harder if not impossible to get such a surface on green wood, and even if you do, the surface will change as it dries. Some areas will shrink more than others, resulting in an uneven surface, and you might even end up with a crack forming on the top where it would be least desirable. So at the very least be prepared to re-finish the pieces some time after installation. If you have the time/patience to wait though, I would personally do as Backwoods suggested and cut them and let them dry out for a while, even 6 months or so, if for no other reason than to see where any cracks are going to form which will let you better decide how the pieces should be used. Cutting more than you need (both in length and number of pieces) is good advice too, you never know if some will want to twist and/or crack beyond usability, and substituting an odd piece later will present different problems.

 

[woodshop]

...Does anyone disagree with Backwoods here?

Nope... pretty much right on target in my opinion. Especially the part about making sure you have several extra so you can cull the ones that crack or split excessively.

Would 2-3 years of air drying (assuming 10x10 logs) be enough to stabilize the wood for this application?

Hard to say... lots of variables, mostly exactly how and where will they be milled, stickered and then dried. My educated guess is for a 10x10 three years would be enough if there is enough air getting to the stack and they were relatively short, say 5-6ft long at the most. Then again, I've cut down trees that have been standing dead for more than 5 years that had wet lumber when I milled them. Not quite as saturated as a live tree, but certainly not dry. Water just doesn't leave large thick cants quickly.

 

[slabmaster]

OK, a few more questions: How are logs used in making log cabins prepared?

Does anyone disagree with Backwoods here? Using the solid logs is going to be the most visually appealing, and if the wood cracks it really isn't a problem in this application. It IS a problem if it warps significantly after they're in place, making the stairs uneven.

Would 2-3 years of air drying (assuming 10x10 logs) be enough to stabilize the wood for this application?



I also asked this on another message board, and one of the posters said this:

What do the experts here say about this?

Thanks again, you guys have been incredibly helpful.

The best log cabin logs are already dry dead standing trees that have already seasoned before thay were cut down.You get less movement from those.Log homes settle even after they are assembled which is usually taken in to account at time of build.Some but not all use dead standing timber for logs for this very reason,less settling after built.Hpoe this helps. Mark

 

[Renee]

The best log cabin logs are already dry dead standing trees that have already seasoned before thay were cut down.You get less movement from those.Log homes settle even after they are assembled which is usually taken in to account at time of build.Some but not all use dead standing timber for logs for this very reason,less settling after built.Hpoe this helps. Mark

It does. So would this project be best if we can find enough already-dead trees to use? We've got 60 acres of this stuff, I'm sure we can come up with a dozen dead oak trees.

 

[slabmaster]

That would speed things up alot! As long as they aren't rotton.They will be harder to mill,but you will also have a jump on seasoning them.

 

[Renee]

Ah HA! I think we have found the key. Dead trees it is.

 

[Brmorgan]

60 acres with oak? Lucky :censored:!!!

 

[BlueRider]

One of the things that was brought up was shrinkage and how much. Using the shrinkage calculator On WoodWeb you will find that a red oak 12" x 12" will shrink almost 1" Not sure how acurate the calcuator is for figuring out 80% - 10%change. it is acurate for a 15%-8% change

When your trees are first cut about 80% of their weight will be water. the bigest amount of shrinkage and cracking will happen in the first stage of drying as the moisture content comes down to around 30%. in a 2" thick board this process usually takes less than 3 months depending on the weather(temp & humidity). the thicker the board the less warpage. I can mill a log at 1" aand it will warp like a roller coaster but if I mill it at 3" there will be very little warping. I have milled a few 10"x10" pine beams and had very little if any warping. The biggest problem wth beams that size is not with any drying defect but rather pure and simple shrinkage.if yo look at the end of a 12"12" beam and draw a line from corner to corner this line will measure a bit over 16". as the beam shrinks it will compress towards a point in the midle (assuming you box the heart like in the photos- and I think this would be a good idea) what I am trying to get at is that the shrinkage per inch along the diagonal will be the same ans the shrinkage per inch on the simple width which will mean the overall amount of shrinkage along the diagonals will be more and ultimately result in a curved tread. as I said at the begining the bulk of all this will happen in the first stage of drying.

I think the design is awsome and would encourage you to persue it. Another option would be to search out some salvaged building beams to use for that detail and use your oak else where in the project. You may even be able to work out a trade.

 

[trimmmed]

As a functional stair, I think the design sucks. It does have a "look" however that is no reason to install an unsafe stair.

Without a nosing I don't believe it can pass any building code. Happy heel catchin!

You might be able to mill an angle on the riser to give it draft, to overcome the lack of nosing. Look for a cross section for a poured masonry stair as an example.

 

[woodshop]

My experience as a logger years ago, as well as dropping them since then, is that dead standing trees are not as "wet" as living trees, but they still have a LOT of moisture in them, and unless they've been dead so long they are grey skeletons, they only really dry out completely when cut up/milled. However, in a tree that has been dead or even one just slowly deteriorating and dying over a period of years I would be careful of bugs. I was given a huge white oak one time that had just been dropped after it had been dying for a good 5+ years. It was still solid though and I was anticipating some nice white oak lumber. When I sliced it open I was greeted with a heartwood riddled with beetle larva similar to the kinds that inhabit the inside of bark on dying trees... looked a lot like these critters I found milling a pecan tree this past summer here in this pic..

.
Air drying would not kill these guys, they would continue to munch away long after you milled them in to stair treads. Kiln drying if hot enough would do them in though. Point is be careful of dead or dying trees, as they eventually get full of bugs at some point.

 

[Backwoods]

Lunck Time.

 

[Brmorgan]

Those look about the same as the wood borer grubs we have up here - they grow up into thin black beetles about an inch long, with really long antennae up to twice the length of the beetle itself. PS, the grub shrapnel is a nice touch.