milled 36 inch white oak continued...

[woodshop]

Woodshop, it looks great! I do like the clean nature of your boards after you make the 14" cants. I have some large ash logs now. I may try to "clean" them up before milling.

Many reasons for cleaning up cants before milling into lumber.

1)insects... lots of critters and their eggs inhabit the bark or right under it, don't want them in my stickered pile.

2)weight... I can only carry 13-1500 lbs of wet lumber at a time, about 150bd ft. Why transport, sticker and dry all that bark and board edges I will eventually cut off anyway in my shop. (unless of course you want that natural edge for something like a rustic table)

3) stickering and drying... you can pack a LOT more lumber into a stickered stack if its nice strait edged boards that stack neatly next to each other. Also, trimmed boards dry that much faster than if the edging and bark were left on.

You can mill through and through leaving bark on, then clean them up with a jigsaw or circular saw at home before you sticker... but that is time consuming and makes a mess of edgings and trim to clean up. It takes a lot less time if they are edged to begin with when milled. It does take extra time to square up a cant and take off the bark etc, but I found in the whole scheme of things when working with hundreds of bd ft at the time, it actually saves time in the end.