Milling Old Barn Beams

ejb17 · January 27, 2019, 02:37:08 PM

I had a customer bring me a bunch of old barn beams to mill. He is going to use it for flooring and such at his lake cabin. They are big,old, and heavy. Trying to decide what blade to use, Regular 7°, Turbo 7°, or 4°?
Being fairly new I have a small assortment of blades and hope to narrow my inventory down to just a couple. I am going to mill at 1 inch so he can have 7/8 flooring when done.
Already have picked out come nails so I am expecting a few of those but he has agreed to compensate for damaged blades and I should be able to complete the job in 3-3 1/2 hours.

terrifictimbersllc · January 27, 2019, 02:58:41 PM

All will probably work, and I am usually carrying all of them. But I always put on a 4 when milling old beams regardless of wood type be they white oak or SYP.

Ruining blades is one thing but ruining the wood is another. De-nailing is the ticket, use a wand detector on each face of the beam, or get the customer to, and if it sounds clean you will not hit metal.

p.s. all this talk about blade lube, if it's old SYP, what I call fatwood, sometimes a hundred glugs of Cascade won't do it. Have a squirt bottle of diesel handy. Or open up your Fuel Manager drain and soak a brush and hold it against the blade to get back to sawing straight.

Southside · January 27, 2019, 03:21:11 PM

If it's really dry white oak and you have problems with it you may want to consider bi-metals, they will stay sharp longer in those conditions. I would be really leery about promising he will get 7/8" finished flooring out of 1" rough sawn. The lumber should still go through a heat treatment cycle before being milled into the final flooring and it will move and shrink some believe it or not. You also have to allow for thick and thin due to band dive, beams which are not square to begin with, surface defects, etc. at 7/8" you are only allowing for 1/16" per face in the moulder, unless he wants a rustic finish he may not be happy with the final result.

richhiway · January 27, 2019, 04:29:04 PM

Let us know how you make it and post a few pictures of that pretty lumber.

WDH · January 27, 2019, 07:13:01 PM

I am with Southside. With a 7/8" finished target, 1" rough is not thick enough.

YellowHammer · January 27, 2019, 10:15:50 PM

For finished 7/8" I would saw a mimimum of 1 1/8 and that's only allowing 1/8" off each side to clean up with a molder. That's not much slack unless your mill is really dialed in.

I would ask the guys running the flooring machine what they want.

redbeard · January 27, 2019, 10:51:51 PM

Southside had a good idea about skip planning. If by chance that's what they want you can use old blades and bend some teeth and skim the boards to get some deep saw marks, After you mill them too thickness you decide. More work but lt looks pretty rustic skip planned.
Back too normal milling smooth planning 1-1/8" would be a safe thickness like others have mentioned

Google Image Result for https://enterprisewood.com/2017/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/reclaimed_oak_flooring_skip_planed_natural.jpg

Crossroads · January 27, 2019, 11:56:32 PM

Last year I sawed a bunch of reclaimed bridge beam (Doug fir) and the regular 7° blades worked well.

quadracutter222 · January 28, 2019, 09:56:04 AM

What sort of wood? Pretty cool to turn old history into value-added like that.

ejb17 · January 28, 2019, 10:17:36 AM

Thanks for all the input. Based on your thoughts I will probably mill at 1 1/8" so he has enough to get what he wants with the look he wants. I am not sure what wood it is but I do not think it is pine. I will probably start with a regular 7° and see what happens. I have some turbos and bimetals. He also brought a short piece to start on that will mostly be end pieces the way the beam looks so I can get a feel for what to expect.

Brad_bb · January 28, 2019, 12:23:40 PM

If it's hardwood, use 4 degree. And metal detect all of them. You're likely to have some broken off nails in them. The first thing I ever did with my mill was de-nail 100 old beech beams from a 114 year old building and re-mill the outside to end up with 8x8 beams. Despite metal detecting, some still got by us but with found them with the mill. Hence we went though a number of bands, but it was worth it.

Warren · January 28, 2019, 08:41:18 PM

As others have stated, make sure to use a metal detector. Wouldn't hurt to have a discussion on the front end with customer regarding how to handle pieces with too may nails, any wrecked blades, etc...

One of my first "for hire" milling jobs was a couple barn beams to be used for trim. Before I had a metal detector. Guy "guaranteed" no nails, no metal. Let's just say that I learned a lesson...

Ron Wenrich · January 29, 2019, 05:14:07 AM

When I first started sawing, I used to charge 10¢/bf & $10/nail. You would have to adjust for inflation.

DWyatt · January 29, 2019, 07:02:15 AM

If I remember correctly Peter Drouin milled barn beams the end of last year by the semi trailer load....... and trashed bands by the semi trailer load as well :D

Brad_bb · January 29, 2019, 10:57:41 AM

I suggest getting a Garrett Super Scanner V if you don't have one. About $130.

DWyatt · January 29, 2019, 04:20:46 PM

Funny this subject came up, about 15 minutes after my last reply my dad called and he has a guy who might be needing some old beams milled into 4/4 material. Apparently all the beams are 30'ish long. I'll wait to find out if he actually gets them bought.

Brad_bb · January 29, 2019, 06:01:15 PM

Well and does he actually need 30 footers? Probably not. Handling a 4/4 30 footer is, well, not really practical. It'll likely break somewhere, at least some will. He probably wants 8 or 10 footers. I'm stockpiling boards to make flooring and I separate by length - 2, 4, 6, and 8 footers. You often get boards shorter than 8 foot from outer boards of the log. Sometimes you get a short 2 or 4 footer with nice crotch grain. It will all look good as flooring. It's much easier handling if you separate it by length onto respective length pallets. When you go to start processing it too, it will work better running all similar length boards at one time.

slider · January 29, 2019, 06:24:23 PM

If it is pine and old pine i would use diesel for lube. I have used every thing i could think of for lube and diesel works the best. I was concerned at first about using with my lt70 because of the pump and having problems but after 10 years it still works.

As for the thickness , talk to the person that is doing the molding first.

ejb17 · January 29, 2019, 07:33:44 PM

You guys have made me nervous. I am looking into a detector as we speak. This job will pay for it and then I will have it for the future.

DWyatt · January 30, 2019, 07:27:41 AM

Quote from: Brad_bb on January 29, 2019, 06:01:15 PM
Well and does he actually need 30 footers? Probably not. Handling a 4/4 30 footer is, well, not really practical. It'll likely break somewhere, at least some will. He probably wants 8 or 10 footers. I'm stockpiling boards to make flooring and I separate by length - 2, 4, 6, and 8 footers. You often get boards shorter than 8 foot from outer boards of the log. Sometimes you get a short 2 or 4 footer with nice crotch grain. It will all look good as flooring. It's much easier handling if you separate it by length onto respective length pallets. When you go to start processing it too, it will work better running all similar length boards at one time.

Dad told him I could do up to 20' and he was planning to cut them to length before milling. I wouldn't want to be the one carrying even 20' 4/4 boards!

Sixacresand · January 30, 2019, 08:12:39 AM

Old beam jobs should be by the hour and plus cost of blades. Expensive and time consuming.

ejb17 · January 30, 2019, 11:31:02 AM

That is exactly how I quoted. Hourly and bands. But I am trying to get my hands on a metal detector.

YellowHammer · January 30, 2019, 10:56:03 PM

Once you hit a few nails and trash a few bands, and charge the customer for it, he will be the one looking for a metal detector. :D

Personally, I charged for the band replacement fee plus $. It was more of a punishment charge, and after a few hits, the customers was much more careful about finding nails and such.