I had a fellow stop by the other day and said he had a bunch of dead elm trees on his ranch and wondered if I could saw them. Sounds like they've been dead for about 3 years but they are still standing. I expect they would be hard to saw but thought I would ask.
Mark
Mark,
I can gaar on tee you they will be hard. I cut the blocks my saw sets on out of elm I got out of my tree dump. It had been dead a few. I was surprised how good looking the wood was. I beleive it was Arkansawyer or Bibby that told me they had seen a gun cabinet that was made out of elm.
What have you got to loose? May dull a blade but when you are starvin for trees up there, what the heck?
Somehow every elm log I've ever sawn has been dead. I've never tried to saw one still standing before so I don't know what it would be like. How you going to get your mill up beside one?
Anyway, likely there is good wood under what is sap rotten. With your dryer climate should preserve them longer than if they were here. Still standing is a good sign. If they had already fallen over, I'd be more suspicious.
Logs cut from standing dead trees are usually not that much harder, if any, than logs from live trees. They are not as hard as logs that have been cut for a while and the ends dried out.Logs cut for three years would be very hard - especially the first foot of each end and any side that was exposed to sun and wind.
Looks like a risk worth trying. Shouldn't be too bad. But you never know.
DanG! - I hadn't thought about having to stand my mill on end. :D
I'm afraid it might get a little tippy when I reach the top of the tree.
I did saw some fresh cut elm the other day and it saw really nice. Too bad the tree had so many splits running thought it but I did get a few boards that are pretty nice. When it is wet it looks very similar to teak or some of those exotic hardwoods.
Mark
Mark,
Expect to change blades more often as the drier wood eats the edge off rather quickly and the boards tend to warp more than some other species. The ones I sawed last week were from smaller trees and had just died so they had plenty of moisture left, but they sure wanted to warp. The ones I sawed looked more like White Ash. Try to get the boards out of the direct sun as quickly as possible and you may limit the warp some.
One of the first logs I cut with my new MD was a dead Elm. I was pleasntly surprised at the quality of the wood. I 've since read that Elm is kind of a poor mans Oak. The early pioneers left it alone, for the most part, because hand tools made it too hard to work. But with modern power tools it is no problem and the wood has a nice grain pattern. I have a bunch of dead Elm on my property and once the weather cools a bit I'm gonna harvest some for some projects. I'm not sure if I can sell any of it or not.
Haven't cut any dead elm (yet), but I sawed a few 20+" dia. elm logs that were pretty fresh. The saw whizzed right through the log (until I hit the log post ::) ) and the lumber was beautiful. I don't know what kind of elm it was, but the lumber was really red right off the mill with some nice grain :)
If an elm tree has been standing dead for three years, it is probably red elm. Red elm makes beautiful lumber, hard to dry sraight, hard to plane because of tearout, and just plain hard, but it sure is pretty. I know this picture is dark, but it might show some of the beauty of red elm.
(https://forestryforum.com/images/04_01_03/sp006.jpg)
Hey Mark!
I saw all the red elm I come across dead on my place, seems like the bigger trees tend to lay up nicer with less twist.....a nice straigh run of trunk yields some really pretty lumber, and acording to the book some of the strongest youll find
Don
It was after 8 pm and on Sunday so I thought it was safe to take my boots off. Comfort for a few moments when our "early warning system" called to say there was a tractor heading our way pulling a wagon load of logs.
Back on with the boots. It was our neighbor who we sawed the barn out for last summer. He had five or six elm logs he wanted sawn. We got him unloaded and lucky for us, he couldn't stay. When he went to unboom the logs, he discovered his chain saw was missing. Soon as we had him unloaded, he wheeled around and headed back home - hoping to find his saw before someone else..
(https://forestryforum.com/images/YaBBImages/userpics/ferg1.jpg)
Picture from his visit last summer.
I can relate to that picture. Had the spindle on my little ford 850 break a couple weeks ago. Glad I had my bucket down. LeeB