5' red oak

[mikeb1079]

a week or so ago i responded to a craigslist ad about a giant red oak tree nearby that had to be taken down for safety reasons. the homeowner had posted that anybody could have the wood if they would come get it. so i cruised over there and yikes! it's a red oak just about 5' in diameter and very very tall. the tree service was in the process of taking it down and i figured they'd just chunk it up into firewood rounds so i kinda gave up on it. fast forward til yesterday when the homeowner reposted about this tree with a pic of 20' of trunk on the ground! turns out they just felled the bottom 20' into her yard.

i went over last night to check it out and i could see cracks on both the bottom and top but no huge rotten section so i figured on quartering it in line with the cracks and sawing up the quarters. so now i'm psyched about 20-30" quartersawn red oak slabs and i get all my gear out and ready to go. get over there today and start digging into the middle of it figuring on about 2 8' sections and one 5' piece.

that's a 32" bar on an 066 for scale. looks kinda tiny...



pop off the first quartered piece and.....

blast! it's rotten almost completely thru! there was about 8" of solid wood on the outer perimeter of the tree and that's it. the pic makes it look more solid than it was, but that darker colored wood that looks solid is all rot. i've heard this is common with large oaks but i thought i'd be in the clear (get it? :msp_rolleyes b/c the ends looked solid albeit cracked. ah well, such is life, i cleaned up my mess and made a little firewood pile for the next guy. on the plus side i now have my weekend back!

 

[BobL]

Bummer!

 

[Chud]

It appears to have metal stains

 

[mikeb1079]

yeah i was kinda excited to mill this up but that's how it goes. as for the metal i'm sure there was plenty of it in there, it was close to the lot lines of probably 4 houses so i'm sure someone nailed something to it over the years. the homeowner is just gonna post an ad for free firewood and i'm sure someone will show up to take it away. :msp_smile:

 

[BlueRider]

That 8" section that you cut up for fire wood would have given you the best quaity clear boards for making furniture. Of course that is asuming that red oak is decent wood for furniture and as a furniture maker I think all red oak is best used as fire wood.

 

[mikeb1079]

That 8" section that you cut up for fire wood would have given you the best quaity clear boards for making furniture

yeah there was some i could've salvaged but it didn't seem worth the effort to transport it back to my place and mill it justfor that little bit. i agree about red oak being a bit bland, but with a clear finish i think it looks nice.

 

[Talltom]

Red oaks are prone to heart rot, but that comes up from the ground and tapers out going up the trunk, so you would have seen it in the butt end of the log and would have less of it the higher you went. It looks like this tree had a double trunk that grew together and then rotted around the conjoined wood, started at the crotch where water would have pooled. It still looks like conjoined trunks at the top of the log. This would show clearly at the top end of the log. It may have a useful area of solid wood near the top, but you'd have to open it up to tell how far this extends. If the conjoined wood did not rot, it may have an interesting grain pattern similar to crotch wood, which would make good slabs, but would reduce the yield for quartersawn wood since you'd have 3 piths instead of one across the widest dimension.

Quartersawn red oak is anything but bland. Ray fleck varies among trees, but it's sometimes so pronounced that some people think it's too loud. I like it and quarter saw all the oak that I get. You can also get a quilted look that is difficult to see on freshly cut wood, but pops after planing and with finishing.

Bottom line is that you still may have some valuable wood nearer the top of the log and an 8 inch wide board is a pretty good yield for quartersawn. I would recommend you free-hand cut a wedge going up the log to see how far the rot goes. You haven't lost much time if it turns out to be firewood.

 

[smokinj]

I had a clean one well over 50 inchs. pass on the milling part just to much work for milling and the red oak is a hard flip!