Conifer limbs

[Darrel]

Does anybody have any experience with milling conifer limbs?  Years ago I turned some spindles for a baby cradle using redwood limbs.  They were beautiful and tooling was easy using my wood lathe.  However I just put a piece of dry limb picked up of the forest floor in the lathe, bark still on it.  I'm thinking of making t&g flooring and the pieces don't need to be very long.

[Magicman]

Since you said that you would be using short pieces, you may be OK.  I have rarely been successful sawing limb wood.  They grow with downward stress from holding up the foliage and when you start sawing this stress is released.  They usually do bad things.   :-\  You would need to orient the log so that you were sawing through from either the bottom or top.  Not from the side.