Favorite wood to saw ?

[SCSawyer]

That is about all we have in our area if you like something else let us know. but thats about all we saw here.[Mines poplar]

[Don_Papenburg]

I like walnut for the smell  and working it in the shop also .  Another fave is catalpa .

[Tom Sawyer]

It is too hard to pick just one!  I like cutting different wood for different reasons.  One of my favourites (not on the list) is white ash.

Tom

[Corley5]

White Pine 

[Jerry]

I realy like to saw cypress but I also like to saw cedar it is such a pretty wood.

[sawman]

  Cedar gets my vote, I like the aroma, and what little of it that I get to saw, it seems to saw easily.

[Tom]

Hello guys just wondering what was your favorite wood to saw? please if its not on the list tell us any way

Who is us?

SYP and cypress

[Cedarman]

I am in the pink when I saw cedar 8) 8) 8)

[pigman]

When sawing for others I like to saw tulip poplar. The logs saw easy and usually are large with very little tapor. When sawing for my own use I like cherry.

I noticed that of  the first 15 votes no one picked hickory. I wonder why. :D

[pasbuild]

My fav is figured wood, don't matter what flavor.

[WDH]

Walnut is my favorite because it is so beautiful and I like smell.

[beerguy]

Big leaf Maple.

[Chuck White]

I voted pine.  White Pine is my favorite pine unless someone comes up with some 20-24 inch Red Pine.

I'd much rather saw Balsam.  A couple years ago my FIL and I sawed some 30-36 inch balsam for a customer.  It was really nice looking stuff.  Around here we don't see much Balsam that size.

Chuck

[Ron Wenrich]

I get my best production in tulip poplar.  The logs are bigger, usually of pretty good grade, and I can get wider boards.  The logs do move more than many people think. 

If all the stars line up pretty well, I can cut hickory just as quick as I can any dense hardwood.  Red oak saws a little quicker than white oak, but with current markets, oak is going mainly into ties.  We saw a good deal of 22' long switch ties, so that can be more challenging than the other logs.

Worst sawing wood is black locust, due to the density and log size.  I cut them mainly into a 4x4 post.

Best smelling is black birch.  Best figured can be the big uglies in soft maple.

[bandmiller2]

I'am an old metal worker I like oak its half way between wood and steel,just seems special to me.Frank C.

[thecfarm]

Why the voting time so short?
I choose hemlock because that's the most I have sawed.Have done some pine,but have not done much building with it.

[Meadows Miller]

Gday

For Production Radiata Pine sleepers/ties  ;D ;D

For production and return Cypress Pine posts beams building timber and boards /
house lots  ;D ;D ;D

For the love of it sawing local Red Ironbark but i dont cut as much as i would like to these days   : :( :'(

And I just love the smell of all three when its fresh sawn  ;D ;D ;D

Chris

[ErikC]

  I voted pine, around here it is sugar pine I like best, It smells good and cuts easy.Ponderosa  pine is next. Doug fir is another one I like to cut, but doesn't smell as good as pine or cut quite as easily.

[backwoods sawyer]

The Cedar family, it don't much matter the variety, Red cedar, Port Orford cedar, Yellow cedar, Incense cedar, Redwood, Sequoya. They all cut good.

[Dave Shepard]

I like white pine. Cherry also is nice to saw. I don't care for black locust, hate the dust, and it moves a bit much for happy sawing. Well, for a perfectionist anyway. :

[Jeff]

Why the voting time so short?

He probably didn't realize he did that. I changed it to indefinite.

I always loved to saw Cherry. I loved the way Cherry looks when you first open up the log. Its color then changes within moments from the first glimpse and you know that you were the only one that got to see it that way.

[Banjo picker]

I believe sweetgum would get a few more votes if they were split open instead of just made ties out of.  Tim

[Ianab]

My favourite is Monterey Cypress. It's a Nth American species, but not used as a timber species there. Here the trees grow HUGE, 3 - 6 FT dia. Wood quality is variable, but when you get a good log you can just slice board after board of fantastic timber off it with the swingmill.

It's easy to dry, durable, smells great and is generally just a nice wood.

Ian

BTW, my LEAST favourite tree to fell is a big old Wolf Cypress. Big, leaning, widowmakers - all the fun stuff.  ;D

[DWM II]

I voted for pine because thats what i get my best production out of, but I agree with banjo picker-Ive sawed some trim and posts out of sweet gum and it always gets alot of attention from visitors.

[pigman]

I wish the person that voted hickory their favorite to saw would confess ;). I think it is a beautiful wood and can be sawn as Ron said, but I never thought anyone would say it was their favorite wood to saw. :

[devonoak]

Oak for the work I do with it

WRC for the ease of sawing , along with sweet chestnut

straight softwood for recovery rate!!

[ARKANSAWYER]

  I picked hickory.  It smells so good and the boards are so pretty.  It is not all that hard to saw and it sells good here.  I sawed one this week into 4x16's and it was full of bird peck and had lots of figure.  It is in the kiln now and when it comes out and gets plained I will try to get a photo.
  What I saw the most of is SYP.  We cut around 900 tons a year.  What I dislike to saw is  DanG #*#*&^%*#@#(*&#$@@( elm.  Got one log to custom saw now and have been putting it off.
  But the one I want to saw the most is the next log on the deck.

[alpmeadow]

Hi All
-25 deg C, deep snow and sunshine, out here.
In BC interior(Golden), we are limited to mostly softwoods, so douglas fir, spruce, larch, in addition to cedar and pine already on the list would be good to add.
Cheers
alpmeadow

[Dave Shepard]

I've sawn up a bunch of big dead elms into truck side boards and trailer decking. No problems other than marginal HP in the wide cuts.

[SCSawyer]

I believe sweetgum would get a few more votes if they were split open instead of just made ties out of.  Tim

I like to saw it but it seems too twist to much if you saw say 3/4 or 4/4

[Dodgy Loner]

I voted for walnut but cherry is a very close second.  Walnut gets the nod because of the smell

[Part_Timer]

My favorite to saw is ash.  I like the nice straight grain when q sawn, and normally there is very little tension.  My second favorite is Osage Orange.  I love the smell of it.

[Woodey]

red oak

[york]

"Eastern white pine"

love it so much,i will saw it for free...

[Lud]

Cherry....so much variety in one species. 8)

[Lud]

Cherry.    So much variety in one species.  What will it be when you flip the first board?

[OneWithWood]

My favorite would be the one on the mill  :D

I picked walnut for the reasons stated by others, but cherry was a very, very, close second.  Jeff hit it roght on with his comments about the visual of cherry.  It makes me think of an ice cream we used to make at the food plant I worked in.  It was a vanilla ice cream with red cherry candy in it.  Especially great if the candy had melted some. . .

[Norm]

I'd have to go with cherry first with walnut a close second. Cherry has such a nice smell to it and it cuts so easy. Walnut will have some colors when you open them up that last for just a few minutes.

[Dave Shepard]

I'm sticking with pine, for now. ;) I've been q-sawing some sycamore. Unbelievable! Some of the boards have so much flecking and character, I don't think you could squeeze any more in. The stuff is just awesome. I do like cherry, very nice, and I have my fist walnut coming up. Unfortunately, there are four more big sycamores in front of it to saw. We did another after work tonight, it took 3 guys over an hour just to whittle it down and get it quartered, but worth every minute.

[backwoods sawyer]

Redwood (Sequoya) is one of those woods that change color on you as well. It starts off almost white and with in an hour will have pinks, yellows and oranges in the same board. Then it all turns dark, all the way to black in some cases, and those bright colors are never seen again.

[Meadows Miller]

Gday

Backwoods i like it too Redwood cuts like a hot knife through butter   ;)  ;D ;D
But we only got 50000 bft of it last time and that was the last block we thinned of redwood  for the water board plantations  :'( :'( that was back in 99 and theve kept it for a park  ;D 8) 30' min dbh and 100' + tall  its a dang nice looking block of trees only 1.5 ha in size ittl be nice if i have kids to be able take them and show them the redwoods  ;D the older bigins are 60" + dia  8)

Chris

[campy]

Bowdock / Osage / Hedge Apple is my favorite.
I love all the yellow dust too.
Sorry, as I know it is the bain of most.

[STUMPKICKER]

Debahked.

[ellmoe]

  It's not live oak, for sure! I went with cherry. Relatively easy to saw, I've never noticed much tension, smells good and brings a good price.

Mark

[Dan_Shade]

I like hickory :-)

I was sawing up a large pile for a fella once, mostly poplar, and we rolled a log on the mill, about 18" or so, and I nailed it, running the feed about 75%. Well, the engine was lugging hard, but I didn't think much of it, until we pulled the slab off, and the guy goes "That's a hickory!"  We both took a break and chuckled a bit about that one....

[WDH]

I sawed some pecan this summer, then milled some of it for a fellow last week.  Dried pecan is like an anvil wood incarnate ;D. 

Dodgy Loner and I milled some pecan for a relative of his, and it about wrecked my planer and jointer.  I have about had it with steelwood pecan.  It is pretty, but it exacts a toll on the user.  It would OK to saw it and then have someone else plane it and try to sand it .  Just as long as it is not me :.

[urbanlumberinc]

Honeylocust has to be my favorite.  Love the color, smell, and above all, the way it works.

[aksawyer]

My favorite wood here in Alaska is white birch.I love to open it up to that maroon center,with the sapwood being perfact white and that barkred center.The furnature guys eat it up.We ship it all over the states.

[backwoods sawyer]

My favorite log is round and straight.
It seem the bowl turners that I have been milling for lately disagree, and they keep putting these ugly, crooked, anything but round logs on my mill. 

[D Martin]

White pine smells so good, has sooo many uses and sometimes ( for us hobby sawyers) is saleable to friends. Red oak is my favorite hardwood cause it seems to cut true and dry straight although maple is the only other hardwood i've tried to saw, so my expierience is limited there.

[tcsmpsi]

Cedar is my most favoritist to saw, stack, dry, store, work.

[TheWoodsman]

Sassafras without a doubt.