milling walnut

[woodshop]

AS milling has been a little slow lately... thought I would post some milling pics. Spent a few days with my new milling companion John Bowman of Bowman Farms not far from here in Eastern PA. He needed a few trees taken down, and I needed some black walnut for my shop. Another win-win situation. We dropped this 22 inch walnut first as it was tearing into a stone wall as it grew.

A shame to take down such a beautiful tree, but life goes on.

on the ground, fell exactly where I wanted it to

buck into 8, 7 and 5 ft lengths... wanted to take advantage of that nice crotch piece. Crotch is always a crap shoot though, and this one wasn't as nice as could have been, had a little rot in center of it... thats the way it goes.

here is John slabbing off the sapwood. It was his first ever milling experience, and he handled it like a pro. He did say he had a new found appreciation for us milling guys after wresteling that thing down the log.

He got his trees down, and I burned some calories and took home a ton of walnut. Who could ask for anything more???

 

[tawilson]

Woodshop,
Love your threads. You wouldn't have any pictures of how you went about cutting up the crotch, would you?

 

[Adkpk]

I see you are answering my questions over here. Don't you love when the tree falls right on your spot. You guys are looking real gun-ho. Nice weather this week, huh?

 

[aggiewoodbutchr]

Looks like you had some fun, woodshop. Very nice work!

I have to admit I'm guilty of not contributing much to AS milling lately. I've been out of town more than at home last month and pushing projects out the door of the shop when at home. Things have settled a bit and I plan to tackle some millin' this week so hang on...

p.s. -here's one of the projects I completed at 11:45 last night. Just a simple white oak dresser that the customer will finish himself.

 

[hautions11]

Nice dresser Aggie. Always good to see some of those monster logs that you tend to cut up.

 

[tribalwind]

nice score!

i'm still kicking myself over missing out on my neighbors cherry tree, thing must've been 4'thick and 60'+
it was a monster.actually more than i could probably handle even milling with no experience myself.

i see in the pics that youre using some kinda extruded aluminum beam, after making the 1st cut?
do you normally always follow on a guide bar rather than using the flat wood to follow on ? what are the (dis/advantages?

thanks'

 

[aggiewoodbutchr]

Nice dresser Aggie. Always good to see some of those monster logs that you tend to cut up.

Thanks. I have about 8 of those logs on deck. Pics will come...

 

[woodshop]

p.s. -here's one of the projects I completed at 11:45 last night. Just a simple white oak dresser that the customer will finish himself.

Nice aggie... beautiful top notch lumber there... you are doing what I want to do full time. When I retire... I plan on that. I'm just kinda ramping up slowly for now.

 

[woodshop]

i see in the pics that you're using some kinda extruded aluminum beam, after making the 1st cut?
do you normally always follow on a guide bar rather than using the flat wood to follow on ? what are the (dis/advantages?
thanks'

That guide beam comes with the Ripsaw in 5 ft sections, which easily bolt together with allen wrenches that expand aluminum bellows inside the beams to hold them to each other so the outside is seamless, and can be made as long as you have sections to add. I rarely cut more than 8ft logs, so 2 are plenty.

They attach to the log via a small angle iron looking jig (you can see it in one of the pics) that has couple of pins in the end. You simply clamp that jig onto the guide bar where you want it, and then hammer those pins into the log. When making those first cuts to slab off the log into a cant (with my alaskan csm) I always use those pins to secure the guide. Once you get it into a cant though, if the cant is at least 5ft long, you can just lay that beam on the log without securing it, and run the Ripsaw (or alaskan) down the cant on it. You CAN use the flat of the cant to guide the mill(s) and sometimes I do, but only for one or two passes. Problem is, in all bandsaws no slice is absolutely perfectly flat. As the bandsaw blade starts to dull a little, it leaves ever so slight dips in the cant where it hits a hard section or a big knot. I found that if you just use the flat of the cant every time, the saw tends to accentuate that dip. On the next board the saw will follow that slight dip from the last board and it will be a tad more... and after 5 or 6 runs down the cant sometimes it gets a little wavy. If I throw that aluminum guide on there every time... then I get a nice flat board every time, and I can run a slightly dull blade longer before changing it out. Doesn't take long to throw the guide on the cant, and the better results are worth the little extra hassle. For shorter cants I often have to attach the far end of the guide or it tends to squirrel away as the torque of the Ripsaw riding on it wants to moves it around.

Bottom line is you get better results using the guide on as many cuts as you can, simple as that.

 

[tribalwind]

ahhh ok thanks for the explanation woodshop

do you find the same holds true for the CSM since thats whats being used in the pics?
yea i s'pose it aint much at all to throw the guide back on, just didnt know it helped as i never saw or heard of doing it.

 

[woodshop]

ahhh ok thanks for the explanation woodshop
do you find the same holds true for the CSM since thats whats being used in the pics?

The pics in the second thread, milling walnut continued do show me milling with the Ripsaw, and using the guide also even though there is at that point a nice flat cant to ride on. As for whether it holds true for the csm... I'm not sure, since I never actually milled a log through and through with just my csm, I use my Ripsaw for the boards. I've slabbed it with the csm into three or four 16/4 pieces to save time if I'm running out of daylight, and then mill them with the Ripsaw later at home. In that case, milling slabs that big I don't think it matters much if they are not perfectly flat, as it does when I'm milling 4/4 or 5/4. Some of the guys here that mill exclusively with a csm should be able to answer that.

Another way of getting around the problem is once you do get a relatively flat cant, keep adjusting the depth of the mill to slice boards working from the bottom of the cant up. I have done that with my Ripsaw as in this pic here.

That way you run down the log several times making your boards before you take any off the cant. I find it faster though to keep the Ripsaw (or csm I guess also) at one depth and keep slicing off one at a time.

 

[aggiewoodbutchr]

Nice aggie... beautiful top notch lumber there... you are doing what I want to do full time. When I retire... I plan on that. I'm just kinda ramping up slowly for now.

I'm still "ramping up" myself. Projects like just this help support habbits and fill the shop with toys for now.