cottonwood anyone?

[sandsawmill14]

 rained out wed afternoon and my offbearer had a doc appmt yesterday so took the day off. when we got to the mill this morning look what i found



 



 

2 big runs of cottonwood about 20 mbdft (assuming 7.5 ton per 1000 is close) that will teach me to take a day off mid week wont it :-\ : :D :D :D sorry about the pics the sun just wouldnt cooperate  :D

[POSTON WIDEHEAD]

I have to say I have never sawn any Cottonwood.  :-\

[LeeB]

Looks like you might run into a lot of shake. Cottonwood can be tricky to dry. It does best quartersawn. It can also smell foul due to bacterial infection, hence the shake.

[sandsawmill14]

I have to say I have never sawn any Cottonwood.  :-\

lucky you  and itry to keep it that way ;D :D :D

LeeB  cottonwood behaves worse than anything i have ever sawn it will be warped, twisted, crooked right off the saw more than flat sawn sycamore dried in the sun :( but it does saw easy. your right about the smell but after 2-3 days of it you dont notice it so much (but everyone you go around will  :D ) this is the most i have ever had at 1 time usually only get a couple mbft a month sometimes not that much  i will try to remember to get some pics when i start sawing it so the ones not familiar with cottonwood can see how bad pressure/growth stress can be :-\  but it will probably be after new years as i was told this afternoon to saw one more tt load of r/o lumber before i change back to poplar

[Darrel]

I've sawn cottonwood. One whole tree worth, got about 450 be. Sawed real nice and was quite pretty with nice figure.  Is in the shed on sticks now, we'll see what happens.

[ironman123]

Sandsawmill14, this may sound strange but what do you do with the bark from the cottonwood trees?  I have a friend that carves little things from cottonwood bark.  Do you ever sell like a medium or large flat rate box of bark pieces as long as the box and 2 to 4 inches wide?
thanks.

[POSTON WIDEHEAD]

Would Quarter Sawing help?

[thechknhwk]

Stinky, unruly, wanna be, poplar :D

[sandsawmill14]

Sandsawmill14, this may sound strange but what do you do with the bark from the cottonwood trees?  I have a friend that carves little things from cottonwood bark.  Do you ever sell like a medium or large flat rate box of bark pieces as long as the box and 2 to 4 inches wide?
thanks.

i never have but if he wants some im sure we can work it out. this was cut after sap went down but i dont think it would to tight to get off in that small of pieces.

poston it might but it just pallet stock anyway so its not worth the trouble. i might try 1 just to see though. there is no market other than pallet far as i know but i was told they used to build coffins out of it ???    probably so they build it with green lumber and bury it before it dried ;D :D :D :D

[justallan1]

I've never sawn cottonwood, but have used bunches of it building corrals and found that it was a rare piece that behaved anything like what you wanted. Possibly it was sawn wrong, but you would swear that it continued to grow after you had it nailed up.
As a kid in the late '70s and early '80s we'd split it into firewood and take it to Frisco to sell as "Riverbottom Oak" ;D We'd sell ¼ cords for $60 and could haul 3 cords per trip. Funny thing was even with all that money, we couldn't get out of that place fast enough and get back up into the mountains where we belonged.

[sandhills]

My inlaws have been wintering in Az the last few years and where they stay has a woodshop any of us would drool over, the carvers down there buy all kinds of cottonwood bark for their projects.  My fil started doing it and is quite good at it, he just hauls it with him from here  ;D.  Not to get too far off track but my neighbor has an old stump (cut down 4-5 years ago) that has several large burls on it, are they worth cutting off? fil wanted to take them and try turning them.

[beenthere]

Didn't realize cottonwood bark was sought after for carving.. several bits of info found when googling it, and one marketing outfit sums it up
http://www.chippingaway.com/woodcarving/BarkCarving/CottonwoodBark.htm

Interesting..

[Kbeitz]

The burls bring big bucks on E-bay...

Two Maple burls on ebay now for $160.00

[ladylake]

 On Ebay look at the completed auctions, lots of the listed wood doesn't sell. I've sawn quite a bit of cottonwood, some will stay straight but it really likes to bend around the knots, good pallet lumber, ok for board and baton siding , makes nice wall or ceiling paneling.  Steve

[cbla]

Riverbottom Oak :D :D :D :D :D

[Bandmill Bandit]

i have cut quite a bit of poplars, mostly Aspen and some of it was of the cottonwood variety. around 20MBF total or a bit more. Lots of it went to flooring and paneling.

In this picture the mantle is cottonwood the rest is aspen.



 

top and bottom of an Aspen fireplace mantle.


 



 

   

[sawguy21]

Nice grain, I like that. I learned to hate cottonwood in the early seventies, we were cutting and bucking to make room for a campground. That stuff was punky and heavy, my back hurts thinking about it.

[mesquite buckeye]

Makes great pretzels that stink. ;D

[Bandmill Bandit]

Makes great pretzels that stink. ;D

It does stink when its wet and the cotton wood does move quite a bit while drying but the aspen around here is pretty stable I find. I dry stack with 1/2 inch dry pine/spruce survey stickers and throw a few dozen bags on top of the stack.
   

[Darrel]

So I went out to check on my cottonwood lumber that's stacked on sticks out in the barn. Put it there second week in September. Top layer with no weight, still straight and laying flat.

Didn't notice any bad odor when I cut it but I had it all sliced up in just a few days after it was felled.

[square1]

I've never sawn cottonwoood
Like my mother did and my brother did
And my sister did and my Daddy died young
Workin' in a coal mine

[Bandmill Bandit]

Around here it smells like a dairy barn pit that is being emptied.

Other wise I quite like the wood that i get from the Aspen trees of the poplar family.

[Darrel]

Out here on the left coast, we have white fir that has earned the name "pith fir". Oh it smells bad.

[kyler1945]

Don't toss the crotches if there's any in there.   These would make great inlays in some darker woods (walnut), and can be cut super thin.  Milling the Big logs in the next week or two, looking forward to seeing what the fuss is all about.

[Percy]

I have cut lots of cottonwood for dunnage. Cuts fast with tall tooth 13 degree or even 7 degree turbo blades. I posted this vid here before....heavy to pile, thank heaven for dragback and rollcase
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wGVWx5fD4Us

[Grandedog]

    Howdy,
   Anyone who's been around a dairy can appreciate that description. The first and I hope the only time I messed with cottonwood was at the Great Lakes Event in Oshkosh. As we were driving in to set up we drove past the all the band mills. We could see the stacks of red oak pipes they had. We were just starting to think that we were going to get the business ends of those red oaks. We told the folks in Algoma we wanted the biggest logs they could muster. Turned out, ours were cottonwoods. They were some wet monsters. We needed one repositioned. A guy shows up with a huge forwarder, and can't budge it. I thought he was going to dump the thing on flat ground. So he said he would be right back. He came back with a bunk of wood and moved it. Anyways, ourselves and all the band mills were in long row. We were all the way on the east end of the row of mills and the wind was coming of the lake. That day the band mills got to smell our dust too.
Regards
Gregg

[sandsawmill14]

the stacker and edger man are getting behind  :D :D :D
 

   ;D

[mart]

I must be doing something wrong with my cottonwood or maybe ours in Alaska is a different variety but it dries flat and straight for me. I just moved about 1200 bf into the shop yesterday before I left for the slope so it would finish drying while I'm gone. It's been air drying for over 2 years and I was surprised to find it as flat and straight as the day I stickered it. I'm using it for cabinets in my garage.

Our birch on the other hand tends to move all over the place. It can be really difficult to get good straight, flat birch.