beautiful wood

[Bruce_A]

 Some beautiful wood being shown on the forum this week, but I cant help but wonder if band sawn lumber only has two sides touched by a saw.  I still call them slabs if they haven't been edged to lumber yet.  Am I wrong or is this stuff so pretty the pictures are being sent before the sawing is done?  Somebody is getting some fine logs out there. Several somebodies.

[Tom]

Technically, an unedged board is a Flitch.   A slab is a Flitch but a Flitch isn't necessarilly a slab.   Folks have started calling a thick slice of wood a Slab.  I guess it could be called anything as long as you are communicating. :D

To me a Slab is the first slice from  the outside of the log and is usually thrown away as waste.  Lots of rustic builders want them though.

To Flitch saw a log, you cut straight through without turning and sticker it back together again with the boards in the same position as they were before being cut.  Then you tie the log together and set it out to dry.   It's a great procedure for cabinet makers who want to book match.  I've heard it called a Netherlands cut.  When a log is sawed this way, you buy the whole log, not a board or two out of it.

There is a pretty good market in some areas for unedged boards.  

[ARKANSAWYER]

  OK!  How are these for edged pretty boards?
ARKANSAWYER

[Tom]

Did they come like that Arkansawyer? :D

[MemphisLogger]

I just couldn't bring myself to cut the edges off these ones . . .





I suppose I'll just have to work with it when the time comes  ;)

[sawmillsi]

Just to add some confusion to the conversation (that I may have started), we (in Northern NSW, Australia) call a carton of beer (24 cans/bottles) a slab :D - true!

Slabs are also wide boards with bark, or natural edges with sapwood still remaining.

We also call these flitches and we call the process of cutting them 'live sawing'.

I'll find a couple of pics to show you our yard (pretty full atm).

Urban Logger, I like the way you have sticked out your timber. Not often people go to that kind of effort, but the results pay for themselfs.

i hope you cover your timber and weight it as well.

Just a quick question, we have found in our kiln if we stack the timber heart up it minimises cupping. Any ideas?

Simon

[ARKANSAWYER]

  Tom they just come off the mill that way.  At this point Wanda just knows what to do and spits out boards.
   Live or Natural edged thick boards are selling well here.  I have even gotten more orders for siding with one edge natural and they want knots sticking down and such.
   The bigger and knottier the log the more likly I will live saw it and I put the slab back on top and just sticker them out back together.
ARKANSAWYER

[Bruce_A]

I sure like the looks of that red stuff.  Reminds me of a closet when I was a kid, I can almost smell it.  Now how do you measure the live sawn flitches to scale for sale?

[MemphisLogger]

Simon,

We sticked that Eatern Redceadr so nice cuz it was 150 growing and I didn't want to spoil it with a couple of months of bad drying  ;)

When I sell live sawn flitches, I usually sell it as a log run. I just use the log volume calculator at left and sell it for that.

If they want just one or two flitches, I measure it by the average width of the heartwood.

Wood artists/fine woodworkers seem to have a natural affinity for natural edged flitches even though they usually waste them anyhow. Personally, as an aspiring craftsman, I feel that I get more inspiration out of staring at bookmatched, livesawn lumber  ;D