i received a call from a builder today. He has 7-8, 60 foot telephone poles. he will cut into 16' lengths and would like 4x8's, 4x6's, and 2x6 for fencing.
I know I should be concerned about Nails and Creosote DUST.....
Is there anything else I should ask him, or be concerned about before I pursue further?
Thanks, Lance
I would just say no thanks.
Cedar or fir okay,but take a pass on the treated.
if I can get 60-65 cents a bf....would you?
I'm not afraid to throw him a higher number !
I will never cut any treated anything. Not just for the health and toxic waste concerns, but also the corrosion issues on the mill.
I don't think they make creosote poles anymore but best avoid them. That dust will do your skin bad not to mention your lungs. The new stuff i would not want to breathe .
I might do poles for myself but not for anyone else . If you do , cover up and use a respirator .
yes, the dust is my main concern. I do not want to breath this stuff at all.
my plan was to cover up all body parts and wear a respirator.
ya'll are pretty much scaring me now (or at least my thoughts on bf pricing are rising).
thanks for the comments......keep more coming.
Lance
I spoke with a creosoting company here and they advised "STAY AWAY" from it (the dust, too hard on blades, etc....)
they brought up that the Dust is an Environmental Hazard and has to be properly disposed of.
I'll be passing on this.
Thank you for the responses.
Thank You for passing this up. I told a guy No last night wanting me to saw RR ties. NO is he correct answer when folks call wanting anything treated sawed. Just say no.
I told the builder NO on the poles.....he understood.
Also, he has Pecan he wants sawn up for cabinet lumber. Turned out well after all.
I've done them. Gotta have a metal detector and a circle mill. Would not want to do it in warm weather or with a slow dusty feed.
My next door neighbor asked me to saw utility poles. I said no. He found a mobile sawyer ~40 miles away who said yes. Then my neighbor proceeded to arrange for delivery (sight unseen) of the free poles which he was told were metal-free. About 30 to 40 were dropped off in a pile by his property; they were the worst looking crap I had ever seen - broken ends, splits, 7' to about 18' long, 6" to 13" diameter AND loaded with metal. Some people just ask for trouble and we neighbors will have to smell creosote in the coming hot weather as the poles slowly stew in the sun. If he was your neighbor what would you do? Sorry for the rant but if I can discourage anyone to saw creosote poles I will.
Bob
Every year I get several calls from folks who scored free poles or free RR ties and they want them sawn - the answer is always NO. One guy admitted to me that he had already tired to saw them with a chain saw and about killed his saw and for sure killed the bar and chain without even cutting one of them. There is a reason they are free - it saves on the disposal fee.
Never again!
Here is a referrence for customers : it is a sawmill close to Sherbrooke , Canada, that is specialized in sawing treated wood, tel post , etc.
TRED?SI (http://www.tredsi.com/EN/)
Their disposal of the slabs and sawdust is done enviromentaly OK and legal.
I had planed some treated wood for a good customer and never again. My employee had a big rash and we spent more time in cleaning than in planing ! Since usually my shavings go to beeding for animals, we had to seperate it, dispose of it, could not burn it....quite a mess. NEVER NEVER AGAIN
My wife is retired from the electric company and always corrects me when I say "telephone poles". She says they are "utility poles"! They've been "telephone poles" to me since I was a little kid and everyone seems to know what I'm talking about when I say "telephone pole". Telephones came before electricity, right? Gary
But if the pole is holding a fibre optic cable.... It's neither electric or phone. But its a "utility".
Yeah I know its semantics.😉
And I would avoid sawing them no matter what they held up.
I just smile when I see "telephone pole" used as a generic term. I worked in the telephone industry for 32+ years and climbed and worked on many "utility poles". For what it is worth, the actual pole owner is paid rent by the non-owners for each attachment that they place on the owner's pole.
Quote from: E-Tex on May 01, 2018, 03:33:29 PMhe will cut into 16' lengths and would like 4x8's, 4x6's, and 2x6 for fencing.
Back to the original intent; doing this will produce a product with little or very reduced life as a post. A load of poles is placed on a trolley and rolled into a sealed container where a vacuum is pulled before being pressurized. The poles then are a virtual shell with the outside and ends being heavily treated and with a minimal amount of treatment reaching the core. Removing this shell exposes the internal sparsely treated portion which will quickly rot if placed into the ground. Using cut off poles as fence post again removes this treated end and leaves the bottom of the post untreated.
In some places they are telegraph poles. :) They are rented by the vertical inch, as my town found out when we ran or new fiber lines.
Quote from: ToddsPoint on May 02, 2018, 05:34:28 AM
......... They've been "telephone poles" to me since I was a little kid and everyone seems to know what I'm talking about when I say "telephone pole"........ Gary
yes sir......"telephone" poles! ;D
And every refrigerator is a Frigidaire. :D
Just don't ask for an excavator in the south or a dozer out west, they are trackhoe's and Cat's, no matter who made it. Thinking about it in Maine the snowmobile trails are all called "Ski-doo" trails and as far as I know other brands are still allowed on them.
In Liberia every suv is called a Jeep.
Sawed bunch about 10- 15 yrs ago.
I agree with sixacresand never again.
Too much hardware and very noxious dust.
I have sawn a lot of house piling, that has a concentrate of 2.5 pcf ,I have not seen any rot and some are in use in salt water ,but it is very bad for you if you don't protect you self use tyvex suits and full face respirator . (https://forestryforum.com/gallery/albums/userpics/48448/IMG_2434.jpg?easyrotate_cache=1525351104) (https://forestryforum.com/gallery/albums/userpics/48448/IMG_2629.jpg?easyrotate_cache=1525351101)
In my area, they are electric poles owned by the electric company. The telephone and cable companies also put lines on the electric company's poles. When a wind storm snaps a pole the electric company replaces it, but will not remove the old pole until the cable company moves their line to the new pole. If the cable company moves their line and does not notify the electric company and in the mean time another wind storm comes along causing the old pole to fall onto a said car, completely smashing it right down the middle, neither the electric company nor the cable company will lay claim to being responsible for the pole. With repeated calls to each the only way to get them to pay a claim is to take them both to court. They will fight the claim and the amount the car is worth and the judge will make each of them pay a percentage of a reduced amount of what the car is worth. In my case since the electric company owned the pole, they paid 2/3rds and the cable company paid 1/3. It was a long process.
The only commercial sawmill in this part of Texas specializes in sawing utility poles due to a lack of good timber. Well, this spring the sawmill owner's facebook page was updated by one of his friends to notify his followers of his passing. The obituary mentioned that he died of cancer but he also had liver failure, heart disease, and MANY OTHER HEALTH PROBLEMS. There are many stories in these parts about adverse health problems of customers who bought his creosote lumber.
My answer to cutting creosote wood is always NO. I am expanding that to a blanket NO for any treated wood after reading the comments from those forum members with much more milling experience than I have.
Quote from: petefrom bearswamp on May 03, 2018, 07:47:16 AM
Sawed bunch about 10- 15 yrs ago.
I agree with sixacresand never again.
Too much hardware and very noxious dust.
I remember when I got my mill, Pete!
I actually ran the mill for somewhere around two years before the creosote smell was gone!
Even the service manuals smelled like creosote!
All was still good, it was just the smell, no dust!
in some areas they drill the poles and inject pesticides in them. The utilities here cut them in short lengths and send them to be disposed of. They no longer give them away.
I have a large number of telephone poles I am going to cut into 6 X 12 X 20 timbers for a pole barn. They are all 40' +++++.
I will be cutting the bottom 6'-0" that is treated. I cored 4 poles and only the bottom is treated so I don't see a problem.
Do you know what kind of wood the telephone poles are?
I just bought quite a few used poles and should have them here in a month or two,,,we shall see. :)
I call the ones on the street telephone poles and the ones that run along the railroad tracks telegraph poles. i got some back in the day. cannot pass up free stuff, gave them all away. of course now telephone land lines are about to go the way of the telegraph!
Only treated on the bottom? Not so sure about that. Treat a pole and stand it up, all the extra treatment settles down. Look at new poles in a yard they look the same top to bottom.
This child will not saw such a thing :).
If they are pressure treated, then it's not just the bottom as the whole pole goes into the pressure vessel and is subjected to both a vacuum to remove moisture, then a submersion and pressurization to force in the treatment chemicals. Either way like WDH said, when it comes to poles, this dog won't cut.
Not a healthy thing to do.
Use them round just cut with a chainsaw flat to put your cut lumber too.
(https://forestryforum.com/gallery/albums/userpics/22511/2948/132.JPG?easyrotate_cache=1285724999)
is what I did
30 years later and the cut off power poles holding up my shed still in great shape, just stuck in bare ground and built on them.
Quote from: Peter Drouin on June 20, 2020, 12:51:14 PM
Use them round just cut with a chainsaw flat to put your cut lumber too.
(https://forestryforum.com/gallery/albums/userpics/22511/2948/132.JPG?easyrotate_cache=1285724999)
is what I did
Looks nice Peter 👍
From what I've learned over the years, utility poles fall into one of three categories.
Cedar poles, if treated it is only at the bottom. Ok to mill if the bottom cut off.
Creosote treated poles, not ever a good candidate to mill. Very carcinogenic, sticky residue on the bands and mill.
Salt treated/ copper treated (green) poles. Not as bad as creosote treated but still hazardous sawdust. Not an ideal candidate to mill.
Different parts of the country used different types of poles
All have high potential for metal strikes.
I would reread this whole thread, slowly, again. ;)
I got a call 2 weeks ago about cutting 15 old treated poles .
I declined .
The guy was mad as heck.
Sorry
I would do cedar poles after the first 6' are cut off.
I get calls to cut poles from time to time but have never entertained the idea based on the information here on the forum. Thank you all for saving me from having to learn this on my own.
Another thing to remember if you're cutting them at your location; the sawdust from both creosote and pressure treated is considered a HazMat when it comes to disposal.
If I was approached about sawing power or phone poles, I would REFFER them, so fast, to my strongest competitor! ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D + ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D
Kindly older gentleman around here built a log house out of creosote poles. Only went to his place once to work on horses, and my eyes burned just standing outside. He passed not too long after moving in, from cancer.. May not be related, but spouse passed also within a year. No one interested in purchasing it from family, who are now trying to sell.
Maybe just coincidence, but.....
Doc
I sawed some cedar poles for myself after sawing off the butts. Got some nice big beams out of them and quite a bit of 1" side lumber. Some of the side lumber was real nice and some of it had splits from the pole cracking as it dried.
This spring a fella wanted me to saw some cedar poles into 1x lumber and I told him no problem, just cut off the butts. His poles turned out to be in much poorer condition than mine and the large drying cracks were full of dirt and gravel. It was a lot of working trying to get the best possible boards out of those poles with much waste. Boards weren't very good.
On both of those jobs I went through a lot of blades. I don't think I'm going to stand in line to cut cedar for a customer again but wouldn't rule it out depending on the quality of the poles and what type of lumber they wanted out of it. I think I'd raise my rate next time, probably figure something hourly.
I've still got some poles left to saw for myself and am hoping to get more this fall that the city will be pulling out. Happy to saw it for myself.
I know there's another mill about an hour away that has accumulated a lot of poles. I think he saws a lot of them into 8x8.
Alan
I remember Muhamad Ali had a training camp in Pa. and his cabin was made from creosote bridge timbers. I am sure his boxing contributed to his later life tremors,etc. I have always wondered about the effect of creosote.
Most poles are not worth sawing
Quote from: richhiway on May 06, 2018, 09:55:40 AM
in some areas they drill the poles and inject pesticides in them. The utilities here cut them in short lengths and send them to be disposed of. They no longer give them away.
A few months ago, we cut 22 PT poles, in exchange for an old farm truck. I personally went over every one of them, looking for any metal, and removed it all. Then, we found enough, some inside the poles, to ruin six blades. It seems that they bore holes in the pole, then insert an aluminum tube with pesticide and plug the hole. No way you would find them, until it's too late. Maybe, if you have a metal detector and know how to use it. I didn't. I suppose the good thing is that one strike of an aluminum tube, didn't seem to damage the blade much. I think we've learned our lesson.