I hate spruce

[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.