Hickory

[Knute]

I have a couple of hickory logs I am thinking about milling. Never milled this before. Is there anything I should know before doing this. They are about 16" diameter and were cut late last winter. Wondering how much I can mill with a doublehard blade before it will need sharpening again.

[Patrick NC]

I've found that the best way to cut hickory is into 16" blocks for the wood stove or small chunks for BBQ!

[Magicman]

I will saw fresh felled Hickory.  Otherwise, no.  I refused to saw some Hickory today.

[WV Sawmiller]

   I agree with Patrick but if you want to verify at least use a 4 degree hook angle. My experience is they are bad to split and they also gum up the blades so be ready to use plenty of lube.

   I like the idea of sawing everything I can even when warned against it. Just because some of the rest of us had bad experiences does not mean you will. The last I sawed, I sawed into 5' long tomato stakes and many of them are boomerang shapes. 

[hilltopper46]

I don't have any skin in this game but I'm curious... does hickory do better with circle mills then? I worked with some a year or two ago to make cabinet doors to match some purchased cabinets in the rest of the house. I bought 4/4 KD rough sawn and planed it to 3/4 and it's doing fine?

I tried to make some bowl blanks from hickory several years ago and I think every one of them cracked, even though they were rough turned and sealed.

[KEC]

WV, those boomerang tomatoe stakes might be great for clubbing those catfish. (?)

[Ron Wenrich]

There's not a whole lot of hickory in my area.  Grade hickory is worthwhile to cut, so we would accumulate hickory until there was enough for a couple of Mbf of grade.  That meant that the logs would lay awhile before I would cut them.  I only cut them a couple of times a year.  I was running a circle mill with a vertical edger.

Yes, they're more difficult to cut when dried out.  Several logs would split, which makes things more challenging.   The key is to maintain a sharp blade.  The dust is finer since you can't feed as fast, so the shanks should be in pretty good shape.  I would end up having to sharpen more often than on a less dense wood.  There wasn't any species that I wouldn't cut. 

[GAB]

I sawed one hickory log that dulled my blade so that the third pass was too much.
I second the suggestion of using a 4° blade.
The worst I have come across was aColorado Blue Spruce yard tree.
It was worst than hickory.
Let us know how you make out.
As an FYI: I was told by a circular mill employee of old that ususlly the blade would be sharpened every morning, however when sawing hickory they would reshharpen at noon also.
GAB

[Knute]

Thank You all for the information. Now I will have to make a decision.

[kelLOGg]

There are a lot of variables that affect the way hickory cuts. Bark is one of them. (I don't think anyone mentioned that). My last experience in cutting hickory is in: Crowned hickory lumber in Sawmills and Milling (forestryforum.com). In reply #10 I talk about the effect of removing bark.

[sealark37]

An older gentleman in my neighborhood  called to ask if I wanted three hickory logs.  He was having difficulty getting the band to track on the butt log.  When I loaded the logs, the log on the mill was pretty wavy, (+/- 1").  With sharpened teeth, and slow, but steady feed, we sawed it all into 4/4 boards.  Not very productive, but the result was good.  The old UD-14 had to step into the governor.

[moodnacreek]

Hickory is related to walnut. Use the walnut.

[cutterboy]

Hickory makes beautiful lumber. I would give it a try if I were you. I sawed hickory (shagbark) twice with good results on a 10 degree blade. Both times the logs came from trees that I cut down just a couple days before. It was slow going but it cut straight, dried well and sold quickly.

Whenever you have a chance to saw something different, go ahead and do it. It might turn out just fine. If it turns into a disaster at least you will a have a good story to tell your grand kids. :D



 

 

 

 
GOOD LUCK!

[Walnut Beast]

Hickory is being offered and featured in the sales flyer for kitchen cabinets  this month of Menards store

[YellowHammer]

I cut a pretty good amount of hickory, and a little bit of pecan to which it is related, as a staple product, and its not too bad, with a little help.  I use .055 x 1.5 bands, and definitely use diesel as lube.  Also the bark is probably the hardest and most abrasive section of the log, and it also generally has lots of trapped grit, so after making the opening cut, rotate the log backward so that all other faces are against clean wood, not the bark.  Use the reverse roll or your debarked.  So slab deep, and limit the cuts into the bark.  Make sure the band is very clean, and get to cutting.

You have to be very careful looking at the sawdust on on the board.  Hickory has a tendency to create flour sawdust, which will over fill the gullet, will fall out of the recirculation zone, will pack and and so cause the band to wander.  If you saw it too slow, the sawdust will pack, and band will wander.  If you saw too fast, the band will wander.  If you use the wrong angle on the band (I've used 7° and 4° but now only use 7°), the the band will wander.  If you use too much water based lube, the sawdust will swell, and the band will wander.  If you use too little water based lube, the band will over heat, and the band will wander.  If the band has any pitch on it, it will turn hard as a rock, and the band will wander.

So use diesel as band lube, use thicker and stiffer bands, tay at lower hook angles, keep them mirror clean, cut at a pretty good clip, stay out of the bark as much as possible, and get er done.  

Hickory is one of our "niche" woods because nobody else around here mills them, so nobody around here has any to sell.   ;D  So I mill it, sell it and make money off it.  It is sold as "clean white" which is used for hammer ladles and drumsticks, or as "calico" or "bi-color" as a cabinet and flooring wood, and is used as a substitute for pecan in high end furniture.  

[Don P]

I was admiring the amount of nice heartwood on that shagbark. Our predominate hickory is mockernut, aka White hickory, it has the widest and whitest band of sapwood of the hickories and to my eye "muddier" color in the heartwood compared to shag. Drying hickory slow or sitting on the logs too long can cause an ugly gray.

[GAB]

Thank You all for the information. Now I will have to make a decision.

AAH go for it - No Guts No Glory!
Also education is never cheap!
GAB

[WDH]

This is all that I have to say about that......

[WV Sawmiller]

  My customer today had a small one that sneaked into the pile. I think I got 7 total 4/4 X 12' boards out of it and it cut like butter and they loved it and set it aside for a project as well as saving the slabwood for smoker use. 

   I well remember cutting an 8-10 ft log and cut a 4"X 16" fireplace mantel out of it. It split over an inch wide on both ends. I bought a long ships auger and was going to try putting threaded rod in and pulling it back together but the auger snapped off after about 5-6 inches in. I was ready to cut it for firewood till a customer came along and fell in love with it for a river table. I have not seen the finished project. Sometimes you just have to find the right customer.

[Larry]

I saw it frequently.  Do the same as Yellowhammer with one exception.  If the logs look old I'll saw off 3 or 4" on each end.  I think the dried out ends will dull the band worse than the bark.  Sometimes it saws very good and I think makes attractive lumber.

I sold some hickory trees off my farm one time.  The logger told me the pecan market was hot.  Asked him what that has to do with hickory.  He told me it was common to sell hickory as pecan.  No idea about the truth in that statement.

[Don P]

It came into the cabinet shop rough end as hickory/pecan. Audio cabinets during that period were being advertised as pecan so probably in some markets it was all pecan.

[terrifictimbersllc]

Food.  Anybody ever make a hickory pie? ???

[WV Sawmiller]

  I think I cracked enough hickory nuts to put in some brownies or such one time when I was kid. I think they were mockernuts and were super hard with tiny kernel stuck back in the shell pieces. I decided then that a squirrel had to be using more energy eating one than he got from eating it.

[WDH]

Pecan is a hickory.  There are two groups of hickories.  The true hickories with leaflets of seven or less with rounded nuts and the pecan hickories with usually more than seven leaflets and the nuts more elongated or flattened.  The wood between the two groups is the same with one small exception.  All hickories have apotracheal parenchyma that runs in bands in the latewood.  It takes magnification like a 10x hand lens to see these bands.  In the true hickories, this apotracheal paremchyma is only found in the latewood, while in the pecan hickories, they are some bands of parenchyma in the earlywood, too.  It is very difficult to see this parenchyma, not visible to the naked eye, does not make a hill of beans difference in how the wood looks or behaves, and is essentially non-consequential.  

So, this difference between the wood in the two groups is the only way to distinguish the wood of the true hickories like pignut, mockernut, and shagbark from the pecan hickories like pecan, bitternut, and water hickory.  Therefore, wood from the the pecan hickories is sold as "hickory" and the wood from the true hickories could be sold as "pecan" and 99.9999999% of the people cannot not tell them apart.  There does seem to me to be a slight color difference in the heartwood between true pecan and the other hickories, it seems to have a more reddish tint to it,but that is most likely from the fact that most all the pecan that I see comes from orchard tree stock and not the original wild stock native to the lower Mississippi valley and East Texas.

For the record, praenchyma cells in wood (xylem) are living cells in the otherwise functionally dead wood cells that conduct the water.  The water conducting cells, called vessel elements, are essentially open little straws in hardwoods that stack one cell onto the other to form the long water conducting tubes from the roots to the shoots.  

[cutterboy]

I never heard of hickory pie.
As a kid we collected hickory nuts in summer and fall and let them dry till Christmas. We then cracked them open and ate the meat. A lot of shell and little meat as I remember but it was fun with the whole family participating.