milling some olive with a bandmill

[BlueRider]

A couple of weeks ago I posted a question about using pentacryl on some olive I would be getting. I did end up getting the olive and it turned out to be more and larger than what I expected. How often does that happen? I had expected three pieces over 9" in diameter and the rest at 9" with an expected yeild of just over 100 bf. the actual yeild ended up at almost 250bf with 3 slabs at or near 20" wide and just ofer 60" long and 2 1/4" thick.

I didn't get any pics while milling, nothing new for a single haded CSM. I had though I might get my dad to snap a few pics but I ended up needing him to help hold the logs. The tree was located across the street and down one house from my dad who lives 3 hours from me in southern California.

I normally mill logs in the 24-36" range. the majority of the olive ended up being 10" in diameter and I had three that were only 3 1/2' long and the others at around 5'. I usually don't hassle with little stuff like this so I really wasn't prepared for how to hold/ stableize the logs. I have to say I appriciate some of the jigs and stuff I have seen around this site much more after dealing with these shorties.

I did a bit of searching on the net and finaly found one site near where I live who sells olive for between $4- $15/ lb. I have a few pieces of olive from a previous tree I got and it weighed out at 4lb/bf. At those prices I figured I would mill what ever was given to me, including the short stuff I normally wouldn't bother with.

Luckily when I bought my new 051 it came with a 20" bar so I took that with me and figured I would have one of my 124 drivelink chains shortened to fit the shorter bar. that was nearly a tragic mistake. finding someone to shorten a chain in southern CA was not an easy task, and I had a masterlink with me. the first clown was going to form the rivit by pounding on it with a hammer. told me he does it al the time. I asked if he does it on .404 running on a 6 hp saw. huh? I finaly found a guy to spin a rivit for me and even he had not seen .404 for over two years. I was definately in land-of-the-small-tree-saw.

The short version here is that I ended up running out of time and tossed a few of the shorties on top of the stuff I milled on site and brought them home. I ended up having a guy down the street from me mill these today on his bandsaw mill. I wanted to see how his mill worked on a small job before thinking about using him on some bigger job.

Not sure of the brand of mill but it is a small light weight trailerable mill with a 25 hp engnine. there are some nice features on the mill but there are a few areas where it is lightweight to its own detriment. several times the mill started vibrating for no obvious reason. I got home and checked some of the boards and they are .050" out of parallel on a 12" board. I,m sure there is adjustment for this. but it may have also been agrevated or exagerated by the design of the outboard blade guide. it is a nice user friendly set up that is easy to adjust while running the mill. this may compromise some rigidity. I wasn't overly picky about the exactness of the boards and don't get to bothered by these things in general, but I have to say I really appriciate the more uniform thickness and parralel boards produced with a CSM when stickering a pile of wood.

The attached pic shows a bit of one of the boards as well as a bit of what his mill looks like. I have a few more mics of his mill if anyone is interested.

 

[woodshop]

...I got home and checked some of the boards and they are .050" out of parallel on a 12" board. I,m sure there is adjustment for this. but it may have also been agrevated or exagerated by the design of the outboard blade guide. it is a nice user friendly set up that is easy to adjust while running the mill. this may compromise some rigidity. I wasn't overly picky about the exactness of the boards and don't get to bothered by these things in general, but I have to say I really appriciate the more uniform thickness and parralel boards produced with a CSM when stickering a pile of wood.

I'm curious what they use olive wood for out there... is it furniture grade wood? Does it have any unusual grain patterns to it? Maybe it has a certain calling, like basswood or catalpa does for people who carve?

I guess I'm not as precise with my mills as you are though, because I thought .050" out of parallel across a foot is not bad at all for relatively crude milling, which is what most of this is. If you regularly get better than that with your csm, you're doing something right. I find that just vibration, along with the inexactness of setting up the guide bar, along with its slight twisting and movement as you're milling keeps me from getting boards much better than that on a normal basis. Heck I find if I just lean on the saw a bit too much I get that much or more error by the end of the board.

 

[BobL]

I'm curious what they use olive wood for out there... is it furniture grade wood? Does it have any unusual grain patterns to it? Maybe it has a certain calling, like basswood or catalpa does for people who carve?.

Carving, turning and tools. Even small pieces, especially those that have taken a long time to grow make wonderful handles etc. Olive boles are especially prized, see http://www.majorpanic.com/gauges.htm.

I guess I'm not as precise with my mills as you are though, because I thought .050" out of parallel across a foot is not bad at all for relatively crude milling, which is what most of this is. .. . .

If 0.05"/ft means 0.4" for an eight ft board then that seems a much. I would expect less than 0.1" for an eight ft long board. Given the roughness of CS cutting the ripple in any one ft, the thickness variation might occasionally go to 0.05" but I would have though a band saw would be smoother than that?

 

[BlueRider]

I don't think I explained the inacuracy of the bandmill very well. the 12" wide board was out of parallel from side to side by .050 which is just a tad under 1/16" if you multylpy that out it would be .150 on a 36" wide slab which would be 9/32" and I am absoluitely positive I am not that far out of parallel with my CSM. I may be out a bit but I know I can get the two ends of the mill closer than .150 over the lenght of the bar.

I have my share of bobbles and my CSM mill will ride up on sawdust if I let it. but all things considered the consistancy from one slab to another is much better with a CSM. if this were not an issue there would be no need for the new digital accuset option on the new Woodmizer. Doing the math for the various blade kerfs combined with the often touchy controls on some of the height adjusters on a Bandmil and it is not too difficult to see how a mill that doesn't get adjusted between slabs would be more acurate.

Whithout being able to fiddle with this bandmill I don't know if it was set up incorectly or if there is some backlash in the height adjuster. it could have also been some flex in the moveable blade guide or even a poorly leveled bed.

Olive can be really tricky to dry. it is one of those woods that has a huge difference in moisture content between the heart wood and the sap wood. I am guessing I will likely lose somewhere close to 30% to drying defects. the last thing I am woried about is a 1/16" out of parallel.

The grain in olive can be very vibrant with colors rangeing from pinks and browns with streeks of black to the creamy butery white of the sapwood. it is fine grained and increadably hard. once dry it is is very stable even when used around water. I have not seen olive used much for furniture but that may also be due to the fact that olive trees can live for hundreds of years and in most countries are very highly valued for the fruit crop. I'll try and post a pic of some dried wood I have.

 

[BobL]

I don't think I explained the inacuracy of the bandmill very well. the 12" wide board was out of parallel from side to side by .050 which is just a tad under 1/16" if you multylpy that out it would be .150 on a 36" wide slab which would be 9/32" and I am absoluitely positive I am not that far out of parallel with my CSM. I may be out a bit but I know I can get the two ends of the mill closer than .150 over the lenght of the bar.

Yep that makes more sense. I've measured a couple of 30" wide slabs and it's been less than 1 mm (0.04") , so I

I have my share of bobbles and my CSM mill will ride up on sawdust if I let it. but all things considered the consistancy from one slab to another is much better with a CSM. if this were not an issue there would be no need for the new digital accuset option on the new Woodmizer. Doing the math for the various blade kerfs combined with the often touchy controls on some of the height adjusters on a Bandmil and it is not too difficult to see how a mill that doesn't get adjusted between slabs would be more acurate.

That makes sense. My scientific verbal pendantism would say you mean "reproducible" rather than accurate, accuracy is with respect to an external reference, "reproducibility" is with respect to and internal reference.

Olive can be really tricky to dry. it is one of those woods that has a huge difference in moisture content between the heart wood and the sap wood. I am guessing I will likely lose somewhere close to 30% to drying defects. the last thing I am woried about is a 1/16" out of parallel..

Agreed.

The grain in olive can be very vibrant with colors rangeing from pinks and browns with streeks of black to the creamy butery white of the sapwood. it is fine grained and increadably hard. once dry it is is very stable even when used around water. I have not seen olive used much for furniture but that may also be due to the fact that olive trees can live for hundreds of years and in most countries are very highly valued for the fruit crop. I'll try and post a pic of some dried wood I have.

Yeah I agree its stunning stuff. I've seen some very expensive olive wood furniture in Europe and also some olive veneered products.

 

[Sawyer Rob]

I have my share of bobbles and my CSM mill will ride up on sawdust if I let it. but all things considered the consistancy from one slab to another is much better with a CSM. if this were not an issue there would be no need for the new digital accuset option on the new Woodmizer. Doing the math for the various blade kerfs combined with the often touchy controls on some of the height adjusters on a Bandmil and it is not too difficult to see how a mill that doesn't get adjusted between slabs would be more acurate.

The mfg of my band mill says it has 1/32" accuracy.... and it does, if i do my part... Side to side accuracy is an "adjustment", and if the lumber is comeing out thicker on one side, STOP the mill and adjust it!! On mine it would take 5 mins or less to do so... I've had to adjust mine "once" in the last 3 years or so that i've had this mill. I've also had to adjust all the log post once in that same amount of time...

Mizers "accuset" isn't for side to side accuracy, OR to stop thick and thin lumber, it's to make getting lumber out of the log, "faster". It takes the math out of getting the most lumber out of a log...

I use to use a little olive in the clocks i built, it can be very pretty wood!!

Rob

 

[woodshop]

I don't think I explained the inacuracy of the bandmill very well. the 12" wide board was out of parallel from side to side by .050 which is just a tad under 1/16" if you multylpy that out it would be .150 on a 36" wide slab which would be 9/32" and I am absoluitely positive I am not that far out of parallel with my CSM. I may be out a bit but I know I can get the two ends of the mill closer than .150 over the lenght of the bar.

Ok... now I understand. Yes a 16th inch diff in width from one side of board to another is a bit much. I'm not sure I get better than that with my csm because I don't mill lumber with it, I use it mainly to slice the log into cants small enough for my little Ripsaw bandmill. In the Ripsaw I do get consistently good results if I don't get sloppy guiding the thing down the log correctly. Of course the lumber is going to shrink and move a little as it dries and not always equelly from one part of board to another. Bottom line is though, if you start with flat true boards to begin with, you will have that much less out of true after they have dried.