I need your help guys. :P
Today I cut loose three extreme White Oaks (blow-downs) from their root structures and bucked the trunks/butt logs. Working in a swamp is such fun! 8)
Two of these were "twin trees", if you will, having grown super close at the butt, forcing each to meld into the other - almost. The result was some spectacular grain. These had popped apart on impact, revealing two flats, like crotch pattern grain or flame pattern, approx. five feet across. Each tree has this pattern in the stump, and each revealed an almost flat, flame grained surface, when they came apart.
The trees are astounding in themselves - abandoned in a clear-cut, only to be blown down in a storm last summer. This bonus of this "flame pattern" in the stumps may just make me decide to have the dozer push them out, too. I bucked the larger member of the pair into one 16' and one 8' log, the other into a 12' and an 8'. We coated the ends immediately. Also, we coated the stump end of one stump with the flame- the one which jumped up and fell back into its hole. The other stump is too close to the bole for coating it, until the dozer can be brought in.
Has anyone fully processed such a White Oak pattern before? It would require a slabbing mill of considerable "oomph". I can see several slab breakfast tables in each stump! 50"square!
Phil L.
Phil you need to get a digital camera. I want to see. :)
Phil,
There is a fellow down around Waldo, Florida who sells large slab. He does local stuff like cypress but his big money is buying burls in the N.W. and shipping them to Fl. on Railroad cars. Once here he slabs them with Huge chainsaw bars and fills containers with the slabs which are shipped to Europe. The name of his company is Tom's Cypress and he is located on US-301 in an old fruit stand.
He also has two woodmizer mills that he uses to slab smaller stock and make special cuts. He doesn't think there is a better way than his chainsaws to cut the larger pieces. Some of his saws have handles on the tip end of the bar,..I wouldn't want to be there..., and he inventories miles of chain and bars and sawheads. I had never seen bars of this size before and he took me for a tour of his "factory" about 5 years ago.
I never did see the jig that would allow him to make the 2 or 3 inch thick slabs but I'm sure they were not free hand.
If you ever get down in that neck of the woods you should look for his place and hang around a bit. Sometimes he has the time to spend showing off his equipment............and sometimes not. :D When he is pre-occupied, I've heard it is better to stand back. ;D
Thanks, Tom,
There are all kinds of niches out there, aren't there?
I had a friend nearby who was exporting old growth Southern Yellow Pine to Europe or Japan. They had some difficulties in finding the right scale for the business to make it work, unfortunately. :(
Your guy in Waldo seems to have a good system.
Phil L.