I hate spruce

[pnyberg]

I cut mostly hardwood, which is just fine with me.  My standard blade is the WM 9°.  Initially I'd try to mill the occasional pine log with the 9° blades.  Sometimes it would work, but sometimes the results were pretty disappointing, so eventually I added 10° blades to my inventory.  I recently milled pine for a solid week, and was quite pleased with the cut quality using 10° blades.

About I week ago I had a customer with a couple of dozen "pine" logs.  I need to bone up on my log identification skills.  I loaded up the mill with a 10° blade and started attempting to make boards and beams.  The logs had been sitting a year or two (or maybe more).  The bark was falling off, and the lumber was light as a feather.  It was also wavy to an extent that was way beyond what I would consider acceptable.  I was using lube (water with 1 cup of Pine-Sol per 5 gallons), and the blade stayed pretty clean, but it just wouldn't track. 

When something's not working, it's time to try something else.  I was pretty sure that switching to a 9° blade wouldn't improve things, so I tried the only other blade configuration in my inventory, a WM 4° blade.  Cut quality did improve significantly.  Lumber still had more wave than what I would consider acceptable for oak, but I judged the lumber to be usable and I was out of options, so I finished the job this way.  I was working along a state highway, and a number of people stopped while I was milling.  Many wanted business cards, but one was the owner of a manual mill who just wanted to watch an LT40 do its stuff.  At some point during our short conversation he pointed to the logs and said "That's spruce, isn't it?".  I admitted that I wasn't sure. (BTW, the customer was not on site, I was working with a laborer.)

For the past two days I've been working with a customer just a few miles from my home.  He had two pretty big piles of softwood logs from trees taken down in the last few months.  The tree service had helpfully mostly segregated the logs by species.  The first pile the customer said he was pretty sure was white pine.  We managed to find a log with a small attached branch with long wispy needles attached, so that sounded right.  The second pile was clearly a different species.  The customer said the needles had been short like a Christmas tree, so I'm guessing my old friend spruce.

We tackled the white pine pile first.  I put on a 10° blade and things were going fine.  About 3 logs in we find one of the spruce logs.  It was right there in the way, so we loaded it up.  The difference in the cut quality was like night and day.  I hope never to make a 2x4 that ugly again.  The customer said he wasn't bothered, but I was.  Anyway, the rest of the logs in that pile were pine, and they milled up just fine.

When we moved on the spruce pile, I didn't even try the 10° blade, but switched to a 4° right away.  Again, the cut quality was much better than with the log milled with the 10° blade, but still there was more wave to the cut than I would like to see.  At the end of the day, the customer was effusive with his praise, so at least one of us is happy.  We didn't finish the second pile, and it was a rain day today (much needed rain), so there will be another day to take a whack at the spruce in a week or two.

Oh, and to add insult to injury, the spruce logs had gobs of ooze leaking out of them and all over my mill.  I spent half an hour this morning before the rain started cleaning off the bunks and backstops with solvents and a wire brush.

I'm not sure if there's anything I can do to get better quality cuts in spruce.  Since I'm portable, I can't control which end of the log I saw into (not that I noticed that making any difference).  I also don't sharpen or set my blades, so I'm limited to the 'off the shelf' configurations from WM.  Pitch buildup does not appear to be an issue.  Blade tension was almost always north of the 'orange zone'. 

What's a poor sawyer to do?

Thanks for listening...

--Peter

[customsawyer]

I would give the 9° blades a try I think they have a different gullet shape and that might help. I have never cut spruce so can't add much other than to give it a try.

[Magicman]

Since I have never sawn Spruce, I can only be a sympathetic listener.   :-\   It will be interesting to hear what other sawyers do when encountering Spruce.

[ladylake]

If it's dry with the bark falling off and light you need lots of set.    Steve

[Dewey]

Spuce is a tuff one....  The longer it sits,  the harder to saw... I've sawed allot of it. My thoughts are  sharp saw blades and slower  feed rate through the log  and pray for the best !!!

[Dave Shepard]

Whatever happened to the two brothers from up north? I think one of them went by LT40HDD51. I think they ran 13º bands and they cut mostly spruce.

[POSTON WIDEHEAD]

I use the Woodmizer 10 degree. 99% of the logs I saw are LONG LEAF, LOBLOLLY, SHORT LEAF, VIRGINIA, WHITE, SPRUCE...all Pine.

The 10 degree works best for me on any Pine. When the blade is sharp, I'm sawing pretty fast. If the log is knotty as a Virginia Pine, is bad to be, I slow down a little to let the blade saw the knot rather than ride it.

Peter I could not help but smile reading about the "globs oozing" out of the logs.  That's something that gets all over my tracks everyday. As the temperature gets into the 80s and 90s, the OOZ gets worse. Looks like honey running out. I have to mix DIESEL and SOAP in my water (Thanks Danny) and flip the lube switch to let the lube run full time.

However, if you get a Pine log whatever variety it is and it is bone dry.....I do slow down a bit.

I guess there is different strokes for different folks but again, the 10 degree works best for me sawing Pine,

[SAWMILL BUDDY]

Yep, spruce sucks! I have 4 large spruce logs given to me and after sawing one I just pushed the the other three over the hill.

[redbeard]

Some spruce logs cut nice and easy then you get some you just cant get through.

 

[snowshoveler]

Wow...spruce is what everyone around here loves to saw.
Pine is avoided by most.
Myself I will saw pretty much anything I can get, right now its pine for me.
Regards Chris

[POSTON WIDEHEAD]

Yep, spruce sucks! I have 4 large spruce logs given to me and after sawing one I just pushed the the other three over the hill.

If I could do this with customers logs.....I would!   :D :D :D :D
Too funny SAWMILL BUDDY.

[Chuck White]

Spruce is a difficult log to saw primarily because there is such a veriation in hardness between the clear wood and the knots!

The blade will want to follow the knot.

I only use the 10° WM blade and set them at .025 +/_ .001 and when aproaching the whorl of knots, I just hold back on the sawhead a little until the blade is into the knots, then just let go until it reaches the next whorl.

AND, I really don't like to saw spruce unless it is around 12 or so inches on the small end!

I primarily saw Pine, both White & Red and Hemlock

[red oaks lumber]

spruce is the carp of the wood world :D i think down south they use it to grow grits with ;D

[True North]

I saw quite a bit of spruce, and have found that WM 7 degree blades work best for us. In fact, the 7's seem to work as well or better in most species. Do many of you like them?

[WDH]

Red Oaks,

That hurts  ;D.

[Magicman]

Well DanG.  And all of this time, I thought Sweetgum was the carp of the wood world.   :

[tyb525]

You might try the 7 deg blades, I like them.

[west penn]

 I used to hate spruce also, especially the ones that have been sitting around and dried some.  I use a 10 degree blade but set at .030 before sharpening. I slow it down a little and don't use lube unless it I get a build up on the blade. It actually makes pretty nice lumber but watch for weak spots around the bigger knots.

 

[r.man]

A friend of mine cut mostly spruce on his bandsaw and I remember him saying it cut better frozen than thawed because it lessened the difference between the knots and the rest of the log.

[5quarter]

Pnyberg...I can sympathize. A funny story about spruce. couple years ago, I got in a couple dozen spruce logs that was going for live edge siding for a clients cabin. Three boards into the first log and I shut the saw down. Clearly I had no idea what the heck I was doing. I saw mostly hardwood, so this wholesale destruction of someone elses logs was fairly new to me. About this time, my neighbor comes walking over the bridge over to my place, as he heard the saw running and likes to come help. He sees me sitting on the deck glaring at the mill and the log and sees the boards sitting off to the side. "Those are some amazing boards", he says. "they look like they have waves running the entire length...almost like 3D".
   "not an optical illusion" I said. "those are actual waves".

   I was able to get good lumber from them, but it involved more set, higher tension, lots of diesel and sloooooow feed rates. recently, I got a really nice spruce log... big, straight and lots of red heartwood. I tried one of Cooks Duratooth blades, .045" and it made dead flat lumber without much fuss. I kept the feed slow to maintain blade speed.I think you can get them in .050" and .055" gauge steel. order a couple and see how they run on your saw. I'm thinking more beam strength, more set (around .030") and really sharp teeth should put that dog to bed.

[Brucer]

I rarely saw spruce. The first time I did my 10 deg blade was all over the place. WM had just come out with the 7 deg blade so I tried one out and it made all the difference. There's more than just the hook angle involved. The size and shape of the gullet is different.

[ladylake]

It's the hook angle, when I sharpen my 10* blade to 4* the gullet is the same yet the 4* cut straigher in tough wood.   Steve

[T Welsh]

Spruce in our neck of the woods always has big knots in the butt logs,I use 9 degree blades and have never had a log that cut straight. the difference between the hard knots and soft wood makes the blades run wild,weather I slow down for the knots or run the hard the cut comes out like waves on the ocean. So I tell people that I will cut there logs but I can not hold tolerance with this type of softwood. I have no problems with pine or hemlock. just spruce. Tim 

[SwampDonkey]

A lot of the spruce sawing locally on portable mills is done on pasture spruce, full of knot wood. This is wood that commercial mills refuse to buy. ;D I think some of the sawmillers and customers find out the hard way how miserable it can be to work with. I've seen some log piles of the stuff abandoned by the sawmiller after the first day. As a lot of you fellas know some folks learn best the hard way. ;)

[bandmiller2]

I love all Gods shrubery, just some more than outhers.Vicious sharp band, good set, slow speed the rest is the phase of the moon and dumb luck. Frank C.

[KBforester]

If the logs came from Connecticut, there's a good chance its White spruce or Norway spruce. Neither make very good lumber, the later tends to be pretty terrible when planted in the states.

[SwampDonkey]

Depends on the quality of logs your sawing. It makes excellent lumber from good logs. ;D

[hamish]

Strange how so many out there dislike milling spruce when the bulk of all commercially available framing material is SPF (spruce,pine,fir).........
I only have a small 13hp manual mill and cut spruce regularily just fine with 10 degree bands  with a set of 25-28.   With the mill being manual you can feel and hear the band in the wood and allows you to slow or speed up easily at all stages of the cut.

[vt k-9]

 I'm glad that it's not only me that has trouble sawing spruce.
After using several different makes of blades I tried Cooks and for me
that made a huge improvment when sawing spruce. My thought is that the
blade can never be too sharp.A little more set seems to help also.
             Will

[Peter Drouin]

For me the 7s 55 with 30 set and tighten the blade so the needle on the gage is at 6 or allmost back to 0. at the WM fair last week .I was told the gage is just to tell you that there is tension on the blade.with the gage all the way like that only 1 10th of the pressure to brake the blade. I cut like that all the time. and all is fine. and the 7s will cut all the kinds of wood

[petefrom bearswamp]

OK Now for my two cents.
Here in the east there are 4 spruces that i can recall from my year at the NYS Ranger School at Wanakena NY (The best Technical Forestry school in the world)
Red Spruce, Native to the northern climes , White Spruce found everywhere in NYS, Black spruce a swamp species and Norway spruce planted in the mid 30's to the early 40's all over the eastern US.
The western Spruces that i can remember are Colorado blue spruce, Sitka and Engleman spruce.
I have no experience with these western  species.
In 2007 I took my old mill, a WMLT24hd (which my friend Chuck White now has) 200 miles  to my Adirondack camp and sawed about 3000 ft of Red spruce which sawed very well. This was a labor of love not profit as I trucked
the lumber back home and sold it for a loss. I just wanted to see how it sawed.
3 years ago I bought a forwarder load of 20" plus Norway spruce about 2000 bd ft from the state forest adjoining my property to saw from a logger acquaintance.
It was a disaster. Sawed terrible.
I went to WM in Hannibal NY for advice and Dave Scott sent me home with some .055 blades in 12 and 7 degree configurations, with advice to increase the tension a lot.
I did this and the logs sawed better, but all of a sudden when sawing I heard a loud bang and the tension dropped almost to zero. The v belt had flattened to the steel wheel.
After replacing the belts, I sawed the rest.
I still have some of the 12" boards which I sell to folks telling them that they are wavy.
I much prefer to saw Hemlock which behaves much better but can be shaky.
As an aside to this post, My son is a State Forester and he sells a lot of NYS NS from the state lands a ;lot of which goes to to Canada.
I assume they use circle mills there to make studs and construction lumber.

Pete

[terrifictimbersllc]

Can't weigh in about 7 degree blades on spruce.  But the best i've done is "scary sharp" 10 degree blades which are over-set to maybe about 33-35 thousandths.  About 2 weeks ago, 3 16-22" logs, cut into 2x4's.  There was just a bit of wave here and there, which I could see where two sawn edges met and both the customer and I felt it was acceptable.

By scary sharp I am being a bit facetious refering to a sharpening method in woodworking with sandpaper.  But seriously I mean a freshly sharpened blade.   I was making pretty wide cuts which were part of the finished boards.  A more conservative strategy would be to break down the logs into slightly oversize cants with one blade then resaw these faces and the rest of the work with a fresh overset 10 degree blade.   If you don't set your own I am sure you could ask Resharp to send back some 10's with 35 thousandths set.  Or even 7's if you use those, and save them for nasty I mean knotty pine and spruce.

Personally I favor grits.

[WDH]

If you are from CT, and if you favor grits over sawing spruce, that spruce must be some bad stuff  :D.

[terrifictimbersllc]

If you are from CT, and if you favor grits over sawing spruce, that spruce must be some bad stuff  :D.

There's really no excuse for it.

[tcsmpsi]

Grits is good.  That's all I know of the matter. 

Which, is much more than I can say of the behavioral characteristics of....what's that ya'll call that stuff?...spruce?.   :D

[barbender]

Knotty spruce kind of behaves like a southerner who has been deprived of grits ;D

[POSTON WIDEHEAD]

Knotty spruce kind of behaves like a southerner who has been deprived of grits ;D

smiley_whacko smiley_whacko smiley_whacko smiley_whacko smiley_whacko smiley_whacko smiley_whacko

[ladylake]

I just got done cutting up 12 bigger spuce logs this morning, I put on a brand new 10* blade that cut terrible up-down at least 1/4" on the second cut.  I switched to a 4* with a lot of set which went through the same spot nice and straight cutting 20" wide but after a couple of logs it started to wander a bit also but nothing that wouldn't be gone on the first planer pass.  To keep it real staight we split the wide ones down the middle and sawed each half separeate.    Steve

[learydeere]

I had several thousand feet of spruce to saw and ran timberwolf blades at.025 and was getting waves and found the slower i went the worse the cuts were so i tried doubling my speed and everything was as straight as an arrow after that

[Log-ic]

Strange all those horror stories about spruce...  Spruce is one of my prefered species after oak.  Normally I can saw spruce the whole day with one band, or max. 2.  Yesterday I sawed about 11 cubic metres of round spruce logs in 7 hours. Even less because I must deduct the set up and break-up time.   The softwood that causes most trouble for me is Douglas (Oregon Pine).  That is a real pain in the back, especially the bigger ones, over 25-30inch diametre.

[bandmiller2]

Thinking back I don't remember ever cutting spruce on the circular mill, does it give the big wheel the same trouble as the band.?? Frank C.

[DGK]

I saw both Sitka Spruce and Engelmann Spruce but primarily Sitka. I had the same issues when learning how to saw this wood. The solution for me has been the 1 1/4 .045 7 degree saws with a minimum of .028" of set. I use lots of lube if required to stop the blade from heating up on the wider cuts. This set-up works well on cuts 12" wide and less. For larger logs, I find the 1 1/2 0.55 7 degrees work well for a flat cut but the bands break easily on the LT40. The right speed is critical for a consistent cut. The more set, the faster I can go.I change my saws usually every 250 bf. A sharp saw with set at 0.28 to 0.30 enables me to produce excellent quality boards and timbers consistent in thickness and finish. Good luck.

[petefrom bearswamp]

Log-ic
Is it Norway spruce you are sawing?
Pete

[thecfarm]

Pnyberg,you're probably sawing the same kind of spruce as me. I only sawed it once,so really can't judge it. But most went to the burn pile. It was only one log from a ROW up the road.  I was not impressed by it. Takes  certain set as noted. Sure can't just cut it like white pine. I have very little on my land,so I won't be cutting it again.

[5quarter]

Log-ic...I bet you don't have trouble with spruce running that mill. Pezzolatos are serious machines. Do you have any good pics of your mill you can post? can you give us some specs?
thanks.

[barbender]

I have seen pasture white spruce give a swingmill fits before, I'm talking varying 1/2" from the cutline either side. The poor guy sawing had invited a bunch of folks for a demo, it was a bit embarrasing for him. The only consolation, the one circle miller in the crowd says he sends logs like that right to the burn pile.

[T Welsh]

I just cut 3 Norway spruce from along side a customers house that he had us take down. I told him about the big knots and he said run everything in 2 x what ever you can get out of them. They behaved rather well. no wandering of the cut and little build up of sap on the blades. I was rather pleased with the out come! Factors that I think helped are they where fresh off the stump, I did not saw any logs with knots bigger than 3" dia.  and I got lucky! Tim

[logboy]

I've sawed a bit on my Lucas. Its not too bad aside from the need to sharpen constantly.  But generally any wood that is ugly and knotty requires constant resharpening.  Or as you folks do, "reblading."

[WDH]

Tim,

Luck is good stuff!

[SwampDonkey]

Yeah, the big mills won't take spruce logs if the knots are over 2" inches. If open grown forget it, they will send the load back out the gates.

[sparky]

Bandmiller2 asked about sawing spruce on a circular mill. I had my first experience last fall. I had a terrible time and thought I forgot everything I learned about sawing. Boards would be okay on the ends, but thin in the middle, etc. A veteran sawyer was on hand and he told me that spruce was one of the worst species to saw.

Sparky