What are you making with your milled wood?
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Chainsaw Collectors
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I’m converting a heavy duty speed boat trailer to a utility trailer. My grandpa, uncle, and I milled some beautiful Oak for the sides and floor using their brand-new Wood Mizer LT15. I got the trailer for free then bought/installed all new bearings/axle seals and removed boat specific stuff. Wood is drying over winter. I’ll finish this project this spring. Needs sanding, painting, sides/floor installed, wood preserved, etc…
Barn doors are finished. I think he plans on painting them.
I helped a friend mount a barn-full of those a few years ago; my most enduring memory was that they were darned heavy to lift into place. But it did make me realize just how useful a tool a Milwaukee cordless impact driver was ,driving the 6" lags into the overhead beams when mounting the track hangers. This is just advice for finding something else you have to do the day he wants to mount them, maybe you can be smarter than I was.
GeneralKayoss
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GeneralKayoss
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I'm very interested to see as well. They came from 2-3 year old logs. Just under 30% moisture content so they still need some months of air drying before I kiln them. I think I milled a total of about 15 slabs of that material, from 5-8' long 16-20" wide and 2.5" thick.
Just for comparison this is what the beech I used looked like coming off the mill in May 2021. Age of the logs after felling was just about the same as yours--I bet we're going to agree that that must be a good time for spalting to develop. I let them air dry in the shade for about 6 months through a summer, then had the table done with two slabs in time for the following Christmas dinner. I just added the third plank a week ago. I milled them 3.5" thick, providing enough to plane down to 2.5" to get rid of twisting and warping.
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GeneralKayoss
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I wonder if some of what I have isn't spalted beech now. Looks similar. I've milled most of that stuff 2.5" simply due to the fact I had to carry them about 100ft through rough terrain to load them lol
It's probably maple if you think it is. I have spalted hackberry that looks similar and have had spalted cedar elm that looked similar. Most light colored hardwoods with spalting end up looking pretty similar because the spalting patterns define them. I've tried to leave no more than a 1/2" room for waste lately and preferably no more than a 1/4". So I mill 2.5" hoping to get 2 1/4" but 2" at the bare minimum. I mill 3 to 3.5" when I have the idea I might want to resaw it to 5/4 boards later on. Tightened up my stacking, strapping, and storing operations considerably. Sycamore and poplar, both notorious twisters, have dried great and straight so far as a result. I've wasted ridiculous quantities of wood in the past letting slabs dry badly. My big past mistake was putting ratchet straps on and forgetting about them for a long time and only occasionally tightening them. Now in first month of drying I'm retightening every few days and at least once a week for a few months after that. Not skimping on stickers either. (One thing about any wood too warped to save any decent thickness from is you can make a lot of stacking stickers from it.) I milled a ton of thick 27" square-ish ash blocks last year from a bunch of tree service rounds and didn't bother to stack and strap them cause I didn't have a place for them. They were so bent around the pith within a month I basically had to do the work of milling them all over again recently. Might as well have crudely freehand milled them in the first place if I was going to let them warp that much.
Now I’ve got my bandsaw dialed in better I can cut bottoms accurately for my octagon bowls. Made about four of them for holding fruit, nuts, or candy, and some more open bottomed planter cases. One bowl I did sixteen sided. Finished a small live edge mesquite table w flat bar legs I fabricated. Put my cedar bench out in the front yard finally I made last year. Did my first name sign for clients in New Mexico, mesquite w engraved turquoise inlays.
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Leveled out these two huge ash cookies I was air drying outside uncovered, so needed a decent bit of planing work. Dug all the rot out all the way through so I can do some clear resin fills with maybe a light turquoise tint, only a half inch thick or so on the top side like a thick piece of glass, so they look more like Klassen's glass inlay tables (the better looking original river tables before people tried replicating the idea badly most of the time with epoxy).
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I need a cart that is hooked to my tiny quad for moving big slabs about.
Put water bins on the top under big timbers. Sand works too but it's harder to move.
GeneralKayoss
ArboristSite Operative
I got some more mystery spalt wood today!
GeneralKayoss - I'm pretty sure that's Silver Maple you have. The earlier stuff you milled looks a bit too far gone - lots of punky stuff there, but the later stuff looks great!
and they only go under it
GeneralKayoss
ArboristSite Operative
It was all basically in the same condition, I just wet these with a little borax solution before taking pics lol. It's some sort of soft maple I'm pretty sure. There's more of this sort of stuff buried in that pile If I can get to it.
"GeneralKayoss - I'm pretty sure that's Silver Maple you have. The earlier stuff you milled looks a bit too far gone - lots of punky stuff there, but the later stuff looks great!"
That brings up an interesting question--with the advent of two part resin like I used on the beech, is that as critical for finishing as it used to be? If the figure comes up looking good after sanding, do punky sections matter as much anymore? Also, I've seen some talented people carve out punky sections and fill them with resin in a way that even enhanced the appearance of the final product.
Now if that wasn't enough to stimulate carrying on and sanding those planks down (we're waiting to see what they look like)--here's a close-up of a 12" X 20" section of the beech I lucked out on; it's the close end of the center plank in the table images I posted earlier in this thread. There are no reflections except of one overhead light in the lower right of the image, that's all figure in the wood under the resin. I sanded down to 400, then just a bit of 1000.
That brings up an interesting question--with the advent of two part resin like I used on the beech, is that as critical for finishing as it used to be? If the figure comes up looking good after sanding, do punky sections matter as much anymore? Also, I've seen some talented people carve out punky sections and fill them with resin in a way that even enhanced the appearance of the final product.
Now if that wasn't enough to stimulate carrying on and sanding those planks down (we're waiting to see what they look like)--here's a close-up of a 12" X 20" section of the beech I lucked out on; it's the close end of the center plank in the table images I posted earlier in this thread. There are no reflections except of one overhead light in the lower right of the image, that's all figure in the wood under the resin. I sanded down to 400, then just a bit of 1000.
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