sawing black birch

[cutterboy]

Hi all. I've been sawing black birch yesterday and today and I've forgotten how beautiful the lumber is. Take a look.

The sap wood is white with redish brown highlights.

 

The heart wood is a nice redish brown.

  

 

The last log I sawed today was an ugly log. It was the 4th log up the tree and had big knots and bumps and wasn't shaped well, but I sawed it anyway. I'm glad I did. The lumber had some interesting grain patterns.

 

Happy sawing, Cutter

[5quarter]

That;s some really clean looking lumber and some nice contrast. I like that last pic...Sometimes ugly is only skin deep.

[bandmiller2]

Cutts,thats some pretty grain,easy to tell you love cutting wood. Frank C.

[mikeb1079]

beautiful indeed.  very similar to the white birch i milled last fall.  it was my first experience with birch and i too was really impressed by the quality.  i hope i can get my hands on some more.....
anyways, nice job!

[Magicman]

I like it.   

[Okrafarmer]

Very nice. The only birch growing wild around here is river birch, which seems to be "a lesser son of greater sires" to quote LOTR.

[Quebecnewf]

I saw only white birch . It looks the same as the black birch you are sawing. Do you have a pic of the log. Why is it called black birch. Is the bark black. The white birch I saw looks very much like the yellow birch which is the one most used for woodworking lumber. The lumber once it is sawed is the same to look at and use. You cannot tell the difference.
Quebecnewf

[Dave Shepard]

Yes, the bark is dark gray. Smells minty when you cut into it. I've made black birch bark tea, does not taste minty. :D I've been noticing some interesting grain on some of my firewood pieces lately and I remembered I had cut a couple of black birches last fall. Black birch has very high mechanical properties, if I remember correctly.

[customdave]

Yes I have been sawing white birch also with the same coloring as yours, but I really like your ugly log pics!!



                      Dave

[cutterboy]

Cutts,thats some pretty grain,easy to tell you love cutting wood. Frank C.

I do Frank, I really do. Making the first cut is like opening a Christmas present.

[cutterboy]

White birch looks much like black birch when you open it up, but much different on the outside. Black birch is dark gray. Also the black birch is a harder wood and is the best smelling wood of all the wood I have sawed. It has a nice minty smell as Dave said.
I like sawing white birch too but I don,t have many big trees on my land. This is white birch I sawed last year.

  

 

[cutterboy]

Quebecnewf, this is a black birch.

 
They tend to grow tall and straight.

 

[Ron Wenrich]

We have quite a bit of it.  We saw it for a company that makes butcher block counter tops out of it. 

[thecfarm]

Interesting,I had to look it up in my book. I don't have any on my land,that I know of. It kinda only grows in the southern part of Maine.

[Okrafarmer]

Not to be confused with Gray Birch, which we used to call "instant rotteness." Seems like the gray birch would rot within a year. But the gray birch is actually white in color with a lot of black streaks, wheras the black birch seems to actually be solid gray (maybe with some black streaks). We never had black birch at our house in Maine, only the white, yellow, and gray.