Whatcha Sawin' 2021 ??

[TimW]

Brandi, good job sawing...nice looking boards.

Thanks.  Looks nice until you start stacking them and see the waves at the knots.
 hugs,  Brandi

[Willski55811]

Made a small dent in a customers pile this weekend and still lots to go! So far it was just 16' full dimension 2x6s, about 270 in total over the weekend. I know the piles are too wide, I told the customer that but he said he was probably going to move it anyway.... 


 


All the logs to the left of the ash in the middle are 16 feet and 8 footers on the right, all white pine.

 

[WV Sawmiller]

   Good looking lumber and stacks. I always ask the customer how long his forks are and try to make stacks to match. I don't like to ever stack over 4' wide if I can help it.

[btulloh]

Good lookin' whack o logs. The customer's going to have a nice stack of lumber when you finish sawing all those. Is this lumber for a specific project?

[cutterboy]

That should keep you busy for a while. Do you only saw on the weekends? Those stacks of lumber do look nice but as you mentioned they are a bit wide.

[Willski55811]

  Good looking lumber and stacks. I always ask the customer how long his forks are and try to make stacks to match. I don't like to ever stack over 4' wide if I can help it.

Yeah thats why I cut all the stickers to 4' or so but that didnt stop him.

I do only saw on the weekends right now as I'm just starting out and still have a full time job so this will definitely keep me busy for a while. I know a lot of the wood is for a large pole barn or 3 sided shelter, this customer has a lot of equipment and toys. The 8 footers are going to be 1x something for his cabin.

[WDH]

When I first started, I figured that a 5' stack was more efficient because I could stack more bf given the stack height that I could physically handle.  After I ruined a whole stack of valuable maple to gray stain due to poor air exchange between the too-wide layers, I amended the error of my ways.  

I learned something else:

I know the piles are too wide, I told the customer that

but he said he was probably going to move it anyway....

The road to Hades is paved with good intentions :D.  Many times my good intention were never realized. Better to never screw up something in the first place than to try to fix it later .

[Bruno of NH]

 

 

[Darrel]

oink!

[Darrel]

Was supposed to saw ponderosa today but can't because of the Bootleg fire.  If only winter would come back!  We are safe, but so many of our friends and neighbors are not.

[Don P]

Wish you all the best, I hope they can get it mopped up.

We've been working on more framing for the farmhouse job. We still needed a healthy whack of 2x12x20'ers and a bunch of studs and other framing. It took the dozer to get them down the hill which ended up really dirty bellies by the time I had gone up and over small whoop de doos dragging 20'ers on the way. So we got a pressure washer, i had an old shallow well pump and generator. We load up 2 drums of water in the morning and wash a few then chain up each log and thread 20' of log between the 18' uprights on the Lucas mill. With the Lull I can approach at an angle then play with the boom and tilt and well, I'm getting faster  :D. It feels like swinging a wrecking ball in a china shop.

We did get the mill tucked in under some trees at least, by afternoon its in pretty good shade.



 

[YellowHammer]

Here is some curly cherry of ours.  



 




 
 It was funny. The customer who bought it had other customers offering him money as he was loading it in his vehicle.  He didn't sell it.  

[btulloh]

That is stunning curl. I can see why the guy wouldn't sell it. 

Awesome. 

[Jeff]

Woe boy...   smiley_bouncing_pinky

[Bruno of NH]

Thats sweet 

[KenMac]

Best curl I've ever seen by a long shot. Is that from Tennessee or local?

[YellowHammer]

I'm on only 3 miles south of the Alabama/Tennessee border, and it is a local log, from a local logger, not too far away, but I'm not sure what direction.

I tried to capture it in the photo, but the curl was highly reflective and glowed in the sunlight at different angles.  It was an eye catcher for sure.  

[Dave Shepard]

It's called chaytoyancy.

[Larry]

I sawed a couple of cherry logs like that, date on the picture says 2007.  Couldn't bring myself to sell any of it!!!!  Still have a few boards and it ain't for sale!





I could be a wood hoarder. :D :D :D  You wanta sell your boards?

[YellowHammer]

This was definitely chatoyant, but more so than a general description of reflectivity or glimmer.  This was me playing with a new (at least to me, anyway) modified sawing pattern and achieving a more dramatic reflective look as a byproduct.  



 

This was basically a quartersawn board, but was done using a modified vertical grain sawing technique with which I've been experimenting.  It's primary purpose is to achieve very flat boards when dried, while not reducing sawing yield or speed using conventional quartersawing or rift sawing techniques.  As a side benefit, it also generates a more dramatic linearly contrasting appearance, and even reduces the apparent size of knots in a board by reducing their aspect ratio.  These boards are not true quartersawn, but that's understandable, because I'm not truly quartersawing.  However, it is generating  a more highly reflective surface off the medullary rays.  Basically a modified quartersawn curly cherry board with sparkle.

I did maybe 4MBF using this technique in cherry, and this is the first batch out of the kiln.  I'm still playing with it, but so far the method had achieved spectacular results and very flat boards.  It has a distinctly different look than flatsawn boards, and people's opinions of the final results may vary.  

Remember this batch, below?  Same technique which again results in a very dramatic pattern, much different than if the boards had been conventionally flatsawn.  These boards came out of the kiln several weeks ago, and they were the flattest poplar boards I'd ever produced.  Amazingly flat.  We sold the entire pallet, except a few boards, in one weekend.  

By the way, there are some new types of finishes in the market that preserve the colors of these types of wood, and is seeing more widespread use.  It's not polyurethane.......


 



This guitar body was also made with wood sawn using this technique.  Notice the dramatic vertical grain striping and the reflective medullary rays which don't come out real well in the photo. Oh well.  Anyway, I'm trying to optimize this technique for relatively low value wood species that are notoriously prone to not dry flat, or aren't worth the time and effort of true quarter sawing.  We will see how it turns out, I'm still experimenting.

[doc henderson]

any further explanation with pics?  or is this for the next group meeting at customsawyers.

[caveman]

Phenomenal cherry, Robert.  I've appreciated quartersawn cherry for a long time but that is special.

We were supposed to saw several monkey puzzle logs that a customer dropped off a few days ago and a pile of eucalyptus but...when I texted the customer last night to get an idea of what he wanted cut out of the monkey puzzle he started trying to sell me the logs.  I offered less than what he wanted.  He may get an opportunity to come load them back on his truck.  The eucalyptus was coming from a tree guy to be halved with another customer but they won't be delivered until Monday.

We have a good sized water oak that we will quartersaw today and we will likely work our way through some other logs that have been hanging out here for too long (mostly live oak - I guess we wanted them to harden up so they would be challenging).

[KenMac]

Phenomenal cherry, Robert.  I've appreciated quartersawn cherry for a long time but that is special.

We were supposed to saw several monkey puzzle logs that a customer dropped off a few days ago and a pile of eucalyptus but...when I texted the customer last night to get an idea of what he wanted cut out of the monkey puzzle he started trying to sell me the logs.  I offered less than what he wanted.  He may get an opportunity to come load them back on his truck.  The eucalyptus was coming from a tree guy to be halved with another customer but they won't be delivered until Monday.

We have a good sized water oak that we will quartersaw today and we will likely work our way through some other logs that have been hanging out here for too long (mostly live oak - I guess we wanted them to harden up so they would be challenging).

I have recently sawn a few small live oak logs from a storm at Orange Beach, Alabama and can honestly say that it is the hardest wood I've sawn yet. The sawdust is more like saw powder, but cuts flat and actually is less aggravating than pine.

[caveman]

KenMac, my experience has been that some saws pretty well and other will have you question your mill, your blades and your ability as a sawyer.

We did not get to any of our live oak today.  I guess it will petrify some more.  We did decide to slab all of the water oak that we sawed today instead of quartersawing it.  That was likely a good choice due to the growth rate and the pith in this particular log.

Our blade had a tooth that got knocked out of set but it was sawing flat so we kept using it.  We got 12, 2.5" slabs out of this log and we also sawed a couple of others. 

I put the picture of the beetles making more wood borers for those who appreciate that type of thing.



 

 

 

[doc henderson]