Making long beams

[mesquite buckeye]

Randomly cracked and split beams are annoying. :(

[beenthere]

Is there a way to prevent a center cut beam from splitting?  Many of the beams I have cut from tulip poplar check or split badly when I center the pith in the beam.

OWW
Talking about surface checks/splits or end checking/splitting?

[Mountain Guardian]

If you want good long beams you are going to want to try and find wood without much taper to it, this makes making your beam a lot easier, especially if you want one side d shaped.  I have beams like this in my house done with an Alaskan chainsaw mill, a lot of character to those beams.

As for an Alaskan mill setup, quite easy to make and quite easy to make beams with.

Here is a design that I came up with years ago and have been using ever since... simple, easy, cheap and works well.



I just mount a piece of u channel to the bottom of this little unit and throw a square tube handle that comes up and back over the saw on it.  The u channel then rides over or inside another u channel that I mount to the log with short lags.  I mount the log u channel directly over the center of each end and then I adjust the saw out from there to where I want it.  Saw down one side and flip it all around and saw down the other side which will be equidistant from the center unless readjust the bar.

The next cut I lay the log on it's side and center the U channel again on the center and remount it, throw the saw on and cut again.

Beams are actually quite easy with an Alaskan mill, well easier than trying to make like 1x and 2x anyways, still a bit of work to run a saw through the length of a log no matter what.

A pic of some of the chain sawed beams we have downstairs.




Our beams are only partial d shaped on top, they cut about 2/3 of the d off flat on these beams.  These beams span 16 feet each and are cut from tamarack logged from this place many years back.

One thing to keep in mind is drying time for your beams, it takes a while for them to dry out and they are very weak wet as compared to what they will be dry.

I love when people use rough milled beams in the house construction, I have been here looking at these beams for almost two years now and I still find it as fascinating as when we first bought the place.

[Beefie]

Thanks for the pictures Mountain Guardian, gives me an idea on what to make and how to build it.
I did get my mills but have not had any time to play with them yet. Still working on getting my ripping chain made.

Beefie

[Ljohnsaw]

Mountain Guardian,

I can't quite "picture" how your set up works from your description.  Do you have a picture of it all set up?  Or maybe a drawing?

Thanks!

[Mountain Guardian]

I will see if I can get some pics of this one in action this weekend, I need to get this one finished and going to do some of my bigger logs anyway.


What kind of chain are you using for your ripping, I have just used my normal chains, but everyone around here says I should be using a skip tooth chain for it.

[OneWithWood]

Is there a way to prevent a center cut beam from splitting?  Many of the beams I have cut from tulip poplar check or split badly when I center the pith in the beam.

OWW
Talking about surface checks/splits or end checking/splitting?

I guess you would call it an end check that can run the length of the beam.

The problem does not seem as evident in oak.

[Mountain Guardian]

I try to get just off side of the heart wood to make my beams, if the log is big enough to do so, if not I generally aim to get the heart  wood close to the top or bottom of the beam.  I get end checking on a lot of my beams and I get a bit of side cracking on some, but nothing that is problematic.

The beams that I cut for my log trolley system a year ago are all still looking really good, I have a few some slight side cracking, but it is minimal.  Those have been out there in the weather being use to hold 1,000 pound plus log suspended from them for  a year now.  About 1/3 of them was cut from small logs where I simply squared off the sides with the heart dead center of them.  The others were cut from large logs where I able to avoid the heart wood.

Most of the beams in my house have some cracking in them, and I am pretty certain they were milled dry, it just adds character to them.  I have never cut one yet that split the length of the log that is for sure.  Most of the beams I have cut have been from red fir, although I have done a few from poplar/aspen hybrid for my gate to my hay field and the greenhouse, I did the 8 x 8 posts from red fir and then I did a 12x12 poplar aspen for the top piece running over the road.  I went with the poplar/aspen on top because it weighs a whole lot less than red fir when green.... lol

[barbender]

It will take a really big beam to freespan 24' without sagging, I think my longest span in my house is 14', and that called for a 10"X12" Red Pine when figuring for the snow load.

[beenthere]

MG
When the leaves come out in the spring, I will be interested in learning more about this poplar/aspen hybrid tree that you talk about.
Or do you have info on what particular species go into this hybrid?
Is it local to northern Idaho and do you think it was planted at some time or natural hybridization?

[Mountain Guardian]

I do not know the exact hybrid, the university said it is a poplar/aspen, my friend Mark swears it must be a cottonwood/poplar hybrid.

I know that I have never seen a tree like these before, they are flat out impressive, most of them were about 80 feet tall, the base of the trunks were running 6ft to 9 foot in diameter and most of the main trunks coming out of the bases were running around 20 to 24 inches in diameter.  They had the smooth bark and a leaf like a quaking aspen but larger.  The smooth bark was a silver grey in color.

It cuts into a very nice wood, it is light colored with a lot of brown grain intermixed into the near white wood, it is very strong and very light, not as strong as poplar and a bit lighter than poplar.  I like how it takes stain and sealer, it takes quite a bit because it absorbs so much but it looks good.  It is as smooth as silk sanded and wears rather than splintering.  I used a bunch of it an animal feeder building and after a year an a half I pulled some of it out and it was so smooth on the edges that it was shiny.  It is a very soft wood, very light and quite strong, though nothing near as strong as like red fir.  You want it pretty dry to try planing it, but you do not want it too dry or it will chip pieces out sometimes.  If it is not dry enough it will just get really fuzzy when you plane it though it is easy to sand out.  When you get it just right it planes out beautiful and with a light fine sand is some of the prettiest wood I have ever seen.

The growth on these trees was incredible, there were trunks that were 20 inches in diameter that had no more than 25 to 30 rings in them.  There are still a bunch of these trees left there, they are just off the property and on the railroad right of way.  There are also a bunch of slippery elm trees mixed in there as well, I would love to get a job removing all of that.  That elm is awesome stuff to work with, man that is a pretty wood.  I have several large logs of that elm left, I want to make a new table for the house out of that and maybe new kitchen counters, and if I hade enough of it maybe some new kitchen cabinets.

My friend Mark could be right in thinking it is cottonwood, but he does come up with some strange stuff at times, I think I will trust the University of Idaho more than him on this one.  As for what exact species, who knows, as for whether it is endemic in this area, I have never seen other trees like these around here.  I want to get some cuttings this fall and plant them in the field at the end of my biggest pond this spring.

[OneWithWood]

MG, what you describe as a poplar/aspen hybrid sounds a lot like a tree I mill a lot of.  The common name in these parts is big tooth aspen (Populus grandidentata).  The tree is also called white poplar in some areas.  It is a member of the populus family that includes cottonwood, quaking aspen and big tooth aspen.  Many people confuse it with Tulip Poplar (Liriodendron tulipifera), a member of the magnolia family.  I think the confusion comes from the populus term that is commonly referred to as popple.  Popple and poplar sound a lot a like some times.
Of course I could be all wet and there is a hybrid out there. 

[OneWithWood]

Back to beams.  When I have a log large enough to saw beams  away from the pith, that is what I have done.  I try to center the beam in the quarters so no part of the pith is included.  These beams tend to not split but do have a tendency to bow a bit as the beam dries.  I am not sure what this does for mechanical strength and integrity.

[mesquite buckeye]

Think prestressed. Put the bow up and load it and it will straighten. ;D

[Mountain Guardian]

Looking up the trees you mentioned I may have gotten a bit closer on figuring out this wood.  I know this is a hybrid because they do not produce a viable seed, so far I have gone with the Universities assumption that it is a poplar/aspen hybrid.

You mention people getting poplar and populus confused, poplar is in the populus  family the same as the aspen and the cottonwood.

I looked up the big tooth Aspen and looked at some pics, and in the process happened to run across something called Gray Poplar.

The big tooth Aspen


The Gray Poplar


If you were to take the Big tooth Aspen bark and put it on the Gray Poplar you would have trees that look just like these trees.

All of the trees are planted in a set of two rows in a straight line, so they were planted by someone in the past.  There are no younger trees or trees out line so I would have to say that these trees produce no viable seed, meaning that they are a hybrid of some kind.

I have always been impressed by these trees since the first time I saw them about 12 years ago, they were just huge and had relatively straight trunks that I figured would hold a great deal of millable lumber in them.

I was completely jazzed after years of looking at these trees and drooling to get a call offering them all to me for free.  That smooth silver grey bark is very pretty and the height and size of things has always impressed me.  Each main trunk had anywhere from about three to six large trunks coming out of them, in 8 trees we got right about 8 log truck loads out of that.  Many of my logs 24 inch butt diameter had to be cut down to 35 foot logs to load onto the log truck.

The University is interested in these trees because the strength to weight ratio is even better than spruce in this tree.

My best guess would be this is a Big Tooth Aspen/ Gray Poplar hybrid.  Not that I really know enough about tree hybrids to even make a guess.

[OneWithWood]

Ah, the problem with common names.  The only 'poplar' I am familiar with is commonly know around here as tulip poplar, yellow poplar, tulip or just poplar.  It is in the magnolia family, not the populus family.  Tulip poplar is the state tree of Indiana.

[Mountain Guardian]

I get it now, I had never heard of a tulip poplar before, so I looked it up.

Tulip poplar (Liriodendron tulipifera) Magnoliaceae family.....Also known by tulip tree, American tulip tree, tuliptree, tulip poplar, whitewood, fiddle-tree, and yellow poplar.  Not to be confused with poplar which is in the Populus family.

From the pics I am seeing of it, quite a magnificent tree.