How Yellowhammer Sees and Saws Stuff

[jasonb]

It's all about grade, and a taper sawn cant should be transitioned to full rectangular as soon as the grade drops and so the value drops.

It is hard for a customer/friend to understand that there is expected waste for every log.  Sometimes I have to remind myself that I can only get out of the log what God put in it.  

[Magicman]

It's kinda like buying a ham, etc. that has a bone in it.  Waste is tree bones. 

I just tell them that Termites gotta eat too.  Laugh and keep on sawing.  :D

[TSAW]

Larry nice looking cabinet doors.  

It's kinda like buying a ham, etc. that has a bone in it.  Waste is tree bones.  

I just tell them that Termites gotta eat too.  Laugh and keep on sawing.  :D

I love this quote.  I have to remember that I always am trying to squeeze one more board out of the log, hate to see all that wasted potential lumber.

[YellowHammer]

If the recipe calls for egg whites, then throw the yolks out.  Same thing with lumber.  Saw it right and tight, and the rest is just stuff.

[Walnut Beast]

 Happy Birthday Robert!! Enjoy! 

[trimguy]

Happy Birthday Robert.

[YellowHammer]

Thanks, I got my "birthday present" in the other day, but I'm still organizing it.

I call it the "Blue Whale"

The Blue Whale is Here! New Tool Box Finally Arrived #shorts - YouTube

[btulloh]

Awesome. Nice birthday present. 

After you've gotten it organized I'd like to have you come to my house for a couple days and get my tool boxes in YH organized shape!

[OlJarhead]

Here's a toeboard video.

Sawmill Fundamentals - Put You Toes Up! Don't Saw Potato Chips - Parallel Bark Sawing - YouTube

I was watching this today and wondering. 
Didn't finish it but thought: are you saying I'm wrong for centering the pith???
 maybe I missed something  😉

[OlJarhead]

OK I went back and read some of your answers to comments from others.  I get what you are saying in the comments (though I'm thinking production would go down quite a bit to do it this way).

I remember reading somewhere that you quit production sawing for that reason though so maybe that's part of it.

I think because I wasn't able to watch it all maybe I missed something later.

[Magicman]

Our sawing techniques depend upon the species that we are sawing and the cut list.  I mainly saw SYP framing lumber and I know what will generally produce the best product and what will not. 

I production saw but for quality, not quantity.  I virtually never bring a log down to two cants but instead remove side lumber to have one pith centered cant.  Yes, I have to edge more flitches but that is just the way it is.  I always opt for bow rather than crook.

Of course there are always logs that failed to read the rule book and will be bad actors because of stress and growing conditions that we can not see just from viewing the log.  The log is always the boss.

 

[OlJarhead]

Pith centered?  

So I've spent some time pondering this very thing and the idea that odds over evens is better (meaning don't saw to two cants, but 3 is ok since the pith would be in the middle cant...unless sawing 6" and say 4" then maybe ok since pith will be in one 6" piece which can be edged down to 1 4" to remove the pth...

I've much to learn but figured sawing parallel to the bark may not always apply but I got the impression from Robert's video that I'm doing every wrong 😉

I'm always learning. 

[Magicman]

 

 

 
I may even have a 6 and two 4's, etc. if that is the cut list.  There could also be an instance where there is a serious defect and one side of the log is junk so it might produce two cants.  I can not recall the last time that I had two cants.

Note, This ain't "Sawing 101".  I am not telling anyone what they should or should not do, but simply stating what I do.  I also stated above that I saw for bow and not crook. 

This 100% goes against what YellowHammer and others who are sawing hardwood for woodworkers, etc. saw.

[YellowHammer]

I like MM comment "this ain't sawing 101."  

Basically, sawing dimensional lumber has some significant differences than sawing furniture grade hardwood as MM very clearly states, however, production or speed of production should always be as high as possible.  Trust me, when parallel bark sawing, I am not slowing down or playing with the logs, however, it's all about setting up the correct strategy when first loading the log so that it can be executed many moves in advance.  Some times things crop up, but a log is a log.  After awhile, it's not too hard to size up a log pretty quick, even Bill Dance got tired of catching the same bass after awhile,  

For furniture grade face sawn hardwood, the axis or pith should always be centered horizontally in a board, if possible, to make a "racing stripe" down the face.  However, a board should never be cut across the Z axis, transversely through the growth rings, but should be filleted off the log, like a fillet of fish.  This is hard to do or easy to skip on high grade hardwood butt logs with butt swell.  Or most people don't even bother.  

So imagine a hardwood log with lots of butt swell.  On the open faces, do you saw parallel to the bark filleting the swell, or parallel to the pith and cut the butt swell off as a huge wedge?  

High grade hardwood is a "fillet of fish" because you want to cut through as minimum of growth rings as possible, because that imparts stress and causes the boards to bow, which arguably is the number one unacceptable defect in high grade hardwood.  

As MM says, bow is acceptable in dimensional lumber and is preferable to crook, so it is sawn in a different technique with a different result.

For our boards, we require less than 1/8" bow per 8' per board rough sawn, which is incredibly tight.  Also, don't forget after kiln drying the 1 1/8" boards are down to 1 1/16" and we hit or miss plane them by taking 1/16" off each face to hopefully get a fully planed face, which happens most of the time.  So we sell 4/4 at 15/16", mostly S3S.  So the sawing must be precise because we only have 1/16" cleanup on each face.  Precise doesn't mean slow, but it does take a while to get the speed back up and to know where to "fold em or hold em."  

To see how tight that is, cut some hoards and turn them on their edge and sight down them and see if they are more than 1/8" out in bow when kiln dried and hit or miss planed.  

Anyway, at some point, in order to not slow production, it's important to transition to non taper sawing, or conventional parallel cant sawing.  That still doesn't mean I will always go to centered pith on the low grade faces, what it means is that I will identify the best faces, and keep taking the best boards off them, until the grade runs out.

At that point I will devise a strategy to make a correction cut or a correction rotation, and parallel up the cant, but most times, by then, it's pretty small anyway, and as I said in the video, I've pretty much committed at that point.  

You heard me say it many times.  It's all about grade in furniture grade hardwood.  

I did mention I used to do a little production sawing and such in my earlier years.  It wasn't for me.  I remember distinctly when I quit.  One fine summer day, two semi loads of nasty looking logs showed up, and I called up the guy I had the pallet lumber contract with and basically said the logs they were sending were garbage and so the pallet lumber I produced from them would be equally bad and wasn't up to what I considered minimal standard.  Please send better logs.  He said "It's pallet wood, I don't care how bad it is, just shut up and saw it, I need it NOW!"  Yup, that went over like a lead brick, so I finished that contract, and a couple others I had agreed to, changed the name of our business from Milton Sawmill to Hobby Hardwood and changed the direction of our company as well.  I don't "do" pallet wood anymore, I try to do "Wow" wood.  That is when a customer sees it, they say "Wow".    

[Peter Drouin]

I think it's what market you're in, where in the USA are you,, kind of trees. What kind of customers you have.
In the way one cuts.





YH, I like your tool box, you will love having all or most of your tools in one place.


I did it a while ago.

 

I did have to put some lumber in,  :D ;)

[OlJarhead]

Thanks for the great replies!

Funny, I spoke with my son on my way home from my day job and he said "every species and every purpose".  Sometimes I get wrapped up in my own little world and think "man, I had it all wrong!"...he is a foreman in a big mill  and is studying for his degree in sawmill technologies or something like that (can't remember exactly)...

Anyway, I sometimes forget that when someone says "this is the way" that they may be talking about something entirely different than what I do.

One of the things my son was mentioning is the quality of lumber produced and he's said many times "you guys make better lumber than we do, even the guys who are just learning" and they have computer xray machines that look inside the log and determine how to mill it and flitch cut a LOT.  IN fact, they mill a lot like Lynn by flitching off around what they can straight saw out of the middle.  He also said something curious to me which is "the pith isn't that much different, you guys worry about it a lot more than we do.  It's density is less yes, but not enough that we, frankly care.  However, what matters far more is how it's dried.  Mill it anyway you want but much of the issues you have are in drying and we've perfected that.  Controlled kiln drying can prevent most of the problems you have and frankly you're going to take a loss anyway, so are we, so factor that in because mother nature is going to do what she does.

Now, of course, what Robert does, now that I've woken up and gotten away from work long enough lol, is quite different that what I do.  Not that I can't learn from you though, I can learn from all of you and I've learned a bunch just from this conversation!  I just concentrated on trying to build the right cant and mill it down but as I told Lynn, I also mill a LOT of Ponderosa Pine which is probably the most forgiving wood to mill ;)

Cheers

[Magicman]

Those big sawmills also bind a pallet of lumber down and send it through the kiln.  From there it goes to the lumber yard where the straps are cut loose.    Whatever comes flying out is the lumber yard's loss.  :

[YellowHammer]

 This is a such an important statement that it bears repeating:    

Those big sawmills also bind a pallet of lumber down and send it through the kiln.  From there it goes to the lumber yard where the straps are cut loose.    Whatever comes flying out is the lumber yard's loss.  :

The loss is not incurred by the the sawmill - they got paid.  The loss is incurred downstream to the next business in the process.

Certainly, the quality of wood from a commercial mega mill is not the gold standard and is one of the reasons I can set my prices to 2X theirs and sell everthing I can make, and more.  Mega mill produce McDonald's hamburgers, and cannot make a Fillet Minion if they tried.  Their equipment isn't set up to do it.  So any Sawyer must make a business decision - make Chicken Fingers "parts is parts" or make gourmet food.  Neither is wrong, but...I'm not a "parts is parts" guy.    

Each species of hardwood lumber saws differently, and behaves differently off the mill.  Milling up a cherry log is much different than milling up a white pine vs a red oak.  Huge difference.  Similar to the difference to frying catfish and smoking a salmon. They are both fish, but the difference ends there.  Of course, both could be made into fish sticks, but...

Sawing thorough pith on some hardwoods is the absolute kiss of death to a board, it will almost always crack.  However, when mega mills do it, it is sold as "frame stock" which is a grade lower than No2 common (garbage wood) and is only good for making 2 inch frame strips for doors and windows.

I have a saying that the exact same log will yield 80% high quality boards from one Sawyer and 80% low quality from another sawer.  Same log.  Most mega mills are in the 50% range. That's also why most hardwood mega mills will broker and not saw their high grade logs, their equipment won't do high grade logs justice and they know it, so they would rather sell the high grade logs rather than devalue them by cutting them.

The whole process of mega mills is different.  They cut up log into all kinds of bowed, crooked, nasty garbage and are interested in bdft yield vs quality.  Then a professional grader sorts each board into "piles" or grades, so they mix in the good with the bad.  The graders get paid to grade an 84% board vs an 83% board because one is sold as FAS and one is sold as No1 common.  It is still the same board, but a big difference in sell price.  It's called "pushing the grade" and that's how mega mills make money.  Saw the logs, sort the boards, and push the grade.  Need more money?  Saw more logs.  Hamburger mills.  More cows in, more ground beef out.  One mill I bought from said "More money was ever made with a good grader than with the mill, the Grader makes the profit margin, not the mill"  Push the grade, make the money, sell the wood and never see it as kiln dried potato chips.      

My business stratgy is to maximize the quality of lumber from each log, not emulate the mega mills strategy.  That's how I was able to custom saw for nearly double the going rate of other local mills.  They made "fish sticks" and I cut up a customer's logs as if it was my own.  There is a big difference, and most customers are able to see the difference and glady pay the difference.

Using a mega mill strategy for sawing a log is something I hope all my local competitors adopt.  Their customers become my customers.  Remember, I am in direct competition with 3 mega mills, all within 20 miles of here, one with 2,000,000 bdft of hardwood lumber on the lot at any one time, and quite a few more mega mills if the radius is increased.  Not to mention literally dozens of Woodmizers and Timberkings.  Some of the mega mills employees shop with us, because as they say "their mill doesn't make the wood they want to use for their furniture."

[OlJarhead]

I won't disagree with that but should add that my sons mill saws, kiln dries and planes everything before it goes out the door.  It's almost fully automated with computer xray machines that scan every lig, position it for the highest grade/yield and break it down for the resaw which takes it further.  

Yes they are high yield and he woukd not disagree that you make better lumber.  In fact he's always telling me that I do.  But he's quick to remind d me that we are in a different game and milling different species as well.

Sadly, his mill is shutting down.  Like many, it is getting hard to make a profit today and hard to get logs to mill at a profitable margin.

[Magicman]

Thank You Robert for the above analysis. 

We must all find our place in the "food chain" and concentrate our efforts there.  My niche is portable sawing framing lumber so those poor quality piles of crooked lumber at the lumber yard are good for my business.  My customers very often are land owners trying to salvage a trac of storm or beetle killed SYP.  They may not have an immediate use for the lumber but they do not want it to go to waste.

I do have two "whole house" framing lumber jobs waiting for this rainy weather to clear.  It's shaping up to be a good sawing year with me still being able to pick and choose the jobs.

Yes, there are absolutely pallet/bunks of quality lumber and home builders generally buy an entire bunk.  The poor quality stuff goes for shorts and purlins so they do not loose that much. 

  

[YellowHammer]

I've posted a 2 part video on the Tube concerning how I strategize and saw a high grade but defective walnut log to yield the highest grade and flat boards possible.  It's may be of interest to some.

https://youtu.be/Ee8JdeFz4rw

https://youtu.be/_TIjbTNmIuU

[Larry]

Good video and good job sawing that walnut.

When I lived in north Missouri about all I sawed was walnut and most went to the wholesale market.  This was 15 -20 years ago.  At that time walnut had its own unique NHLA grading rules.  FAS only needed to be 5" wide, has that changed?

I did cringe a little bit when I saw that first edging cut, looked a little deep but I'm sure there was maybe wane on the other side of the board.

[Walnut Beast]

Great job Robert! Very much appreciated! 

[OlJarhead]

Thanks for this!  I need to check it out.

After some of our previous discussions I've been pointing those interested in high grade hardwoods sawing to your channel (and of course this site) because it's not something I do (heck, I rarely get to mill hardwoods though I did quite a bit late last year (for me).

Funny thing, I had a question about something you were doing on my last live and pointed out that you're the best to ask it of ;) since I'm really 90% softwoods (or better) and for construction purposes which is not the same as trying to get the most high grade yield out of an old walnut log :D

Cheers

[YellowHammer]

Good video and good job sawing that walnut.

When I lived in north Missouri about all I sawed was walnut and most went to the wholesale market.  This was 15 -20 years ago.  At that time walnut had its own unique NHLA grading rules.  FAS only needed to be 5" wide, has that changed?

Larry, it took me a few days to answer that question because I was waiting to see if it sparked a discussion.  Even in the video, you can see me hesitate when I mentioned that, and in all the YouTube comments I got on the video, no one else commented on that subject.  So kudos.  However, when discussing walnut grade, it's a mega can of worms.
 
You are correct, there are 3 full pages in the NHLA rule book discussing how walnut is to be graded, both by width and length, and is complicated enough that some of the places I don't buy from don't even follow the rules, and just let things slide.  Just throw their hands in the air as say "It's walnut." :D

There is even a differential between steamed and unstreamed in NHLA rules and because of that loophole, most green mills here will saw on steamed rules, even though they sell it green and have no idea how the end user will use it.  I can't buy any of that, it's high sapwood garbage, and one reason I can't purchase walnut locally.  I either have to mill it myself or try to get it from across the country.  As a matter of fact, many, if not most, places that sell walnut here have dropped their FAS walnut grade to also encompass No. 1 Common while holding the same price.  Others have aggregated FAS with Select grades interchangeably, in order to skate by.  It's a race to push grade down and hold the same price, and I buy walnut from as far away as Missouri and and Pennsylvania, so it's not just a local thing.  A place in Missouri calls their walnut grade that we sell "Super Premium" and the last 2 packs we bought from them, we rejected as being "unfixable" to bring it to our in-house grade.  Wow, that PO'd some folks.
 
One friend of mine was faced with this earlier in the year with a Nashville supplier, and was really upset, as he told his supplier "You mean I have two spend 2 million bucks on walnut to get the same yield as a couple years ago, and have one of my guys spent all his time sorting and clear cutting?!"

It's one of those things that we try to do different, instead of barely scraping by on the technicality of grade rules, I try to far exceed them, if possible.  So whenever I talk to a new walnut supplier, on any new candidate lumber supplier, we have a simple grade, easy to interpret, and its Universal Face (FAS), 6" wide, and the top 5% of the scale, or not 83% usable, but 95% for better.  It keeps things easy.  Then when the lumber supplier balks, which they almost always do, I just poke them a little and say "I'm just asking you match the grade of little ol "Hobby Hardwood" and you cant do that?"  

Funny story, but telling.  I buy some of my exotics for the same company that sells lumber to Rockler and Woodcraft, who all advertise their wood as "top" grade, etc.  "Best of the Best", and a big company, to say the least.  Right.  So I had the sales manager on the phone as well as the company owner a couple years ago, who both know me pretty well, and I was running low on walnut, and so asked that since they were shipping me a load of exotics, why not throw some of their best grade walnut on there?  Well, dead silence on the other end.  Then they broke out laughing and said "No way."  Of course I had to push a little and they finally said "We've seen your walnut, and if we sent you our walnut you would just laugh, and we are too big and you to small to be laughing at our wood!"  It was hilarious because they were both laughing and serious at the same time, but bottom line, they would not and still won't sell me their walnut.  So now every time I call for more exotics I ask if they will send me a walnut board or two and they say "No way." :D :D  Fast forward to last summer, and I get a call from the owner of Woodcraft in Birmingham and he wants me to be his lumber supplier because my wood is quote for him: "half the price and twice the grade."  So I said, yes it its and no, I won't do it.  Then he got mad, and he said "what kind of a business are your running?!" and I said "One where you called me."  Enough said.
 
Anyway, so in the video, you can see me hesitate when I said FAS and 6 inch wide, and glossed over all of this, I just should have said, "Our walnut is different, we cut ours on standard FAS Rules for other hardwood and don't short customers."  

Thanks all of for watching the videos and listening to me ramble on.