Whatcha Sawin' ???

[Southside]

Plantation SYP and Sweetgum......That is cruel and unusual punishment.  

It's not like I offered to throw in a Hickory or anything.  :D

[4x4American]

poor you and your veneer walnut logs lol  you oughta see the junk I'm dealing with!

[Magicman]

Maybe we need to get up a "welfare wagon" to go and bail old Bs out of his misery.  :D

[Busysawyer]

Oh wow guess I should if kept my mouth shut. Mm , Southside is sweet gum and syp that bad. I see guys here talking about how bad it is to mill but I kind of though you were all making out to be worse than it really is.
Ld the problem is most people around here think there walnut trees are made of 24ct gold and full of diamonds. I buy and cut most of the logs I mill myself so i get them about half price as buying from a logger or the big mill.  The good thing is I do get plenty of people contacting me to buy trees, after explaining how much I can pay and what I will sell them for most understand I need to make it worth while for me. Everyone's got to work and support a family.  Now that I'm selling retail instead of grade sawing wholesale I can pay more and gladly do so.
Yh, I have plenty of white oak I can cut I just have to drive about 4 hours one way to fetch it. I have a lonesome white oak on my property surrounded by red. They are around but not plentiful.
4x4 I'm not complaining just want to mix it up a little. I have some nice cherry and red oak I want to get cut up as well. If i ran my mill as fast as you do I'd burn through everything here and have nothing to do.

[Southside]

There is something awe inspiring about watching a 6 x 6 cant pull up two inches from the sawmill bed, of course that's not quite as startling as watching a 2 x8 jump off of the cant and just about land off the mill, so yea- it's not booring stuff to saw. 

[WDH]

The sawing is not so bad, it is the drying the stuff flat that will teach you religion.  

[Lawg Dawg]

Speaking of SYP and Sweet Gum



 
Tight rings


 
Nice and clear lumber sells quick


 
Pop them in the kiln, these dry fast, no mold




 
Gum


 



Sawed and planed stickers from dry boards

 



 



 



 
Took the boy for a ride


 
Give the dog a bath




Couple pictures from this week

[Magicman]

Yup nothing wrong with SYP, matter fact it is my go-to money maker that I saw.  Like LD just pictured above, nice straight tight grained logs are a joy to saw.

Now plantation grown 18 year old SYP with ½" growth rings will eat your lunch.  As Southside mentioned, it will 'bout jump off of the sawmill and you gotta turn it 180° every time that you take a board off.  No joy there.  :-\

[Andries]

..... Oh wow guess I should if kept my mouth shut. ....

Busysawyer, most of us appreciate a bit of sass getting thrown out now and then.
Too serious is just too darn serious!
;D

[No_Dude]

Yup nothing wrong with SYP, matter fact it is my go-to money maker that I saw.  Like LD just pictured above, nice straight tight grained logs are a joy to saw.

Now plantation grown 18 year old SYP with ½" growth rings will eat your lunch.  As Southside mentioned, it will 'bout jump off of the sawmill and you gotta turn it 180° every time that you take a board off.  No joy there.  :-\

What makes SYP hard to work with and how do the thick rings affect things?

[Ianab]

What makes SYP hard to work with and how do the thick rings affect things?

It's the 18 year old logs that are juvenile delinquents. The first few years growth in a pine log are "juvenile wood", which is weaker and will shrink in length as it dries. A log that's only 18 years old is probably 1/2 of this wood, so although it's technically big enough to be called a saw log, it's not a very good one. It will have tension in the log, and the boards wont behave any better. 

Things seem to settle down as the tree gets a bit older. I've cut radiata pine with 1" growth rings, and it behaved well. But that was a ~30 year old tree. Most people don't do thinning harvests on their pine here because the smaller logs are such low value, costs more to extract them than they would sell for. 

[Magicman]

Thanks Ianab.  I don't have any "educated" technical knowledge, only "learned".

Our genetically "engineered" Loblolly SYP is "bred" to grow fast for the pulp industry with hardly any thought of it ever being a saw log, especially that planted on timber company owned land.  They also aerial fertilize vast tracts of land which gives then a distinct growing advantage.  I know that is virtually impossible for a private landowner to compete with them.   It's their game and their rules.

Private landowners, such as myself, buy these same "low density second generation" seedlings  and do get some fast growth.  It's when a landowner sees these 14"-16" trees and decides that he wants some 2X4's that there is a problem. 

Tight ringed logs such as Lawg Dawg pictured above are a joy to saw and produce excellent and very stable lumber.

[olcowhand]

Dawg,
That looks like one wonderful day you had. Thanks for sharing the pics with us. I only get days like that with my 8 year old (I have older kids, but they don't hang around here much....) and animals on weekends and vacation days, but they bring me much joy.
Thanks.

[Ianab]

Tight ringed logs such as Lawg Dawg pictured above are a joy to saw

With a log like that, there will still be ~10 years of juvenile wood around the pith. But that's only a couple of inches, and you expect a board that contains the pith to misbehave. The other ~90% of the log is the more mature wood, and is the good stuff. But when you compare that to a 15 year old log with 10 years of juvenile wood, then most of it's going to misbehave. 

With the NZ Radiata pines the selective breeding has been going on for over 100 years, so the modern trees bear little resemblance to the originals from California. Less juvenile wood is one of the things they have been selecting for. They also have tricks like growing from cuttings / cloning to produce seedlings that "think" they are older. This means they start producing "mature" wood much sooner.

[No_Dude]

That makes sense, it's really just a game of percents. Large rings mean a higher % of juvy wood to mature wood than the tight rings.

[Peter Drouin]

That longleaf pine cut's like butter, 

[nativewolf]

Hickory sawing question for all you guys:  my sawyer complains about sawdust and gum buildup.  Will that cotton picking lube cut down on problems?  Any other tips?  We find ourselves needing to saw 300 hickory tie logs that sat too long.  

[Magicman]

Someone else will have to answer that Hickory question nw.

Notice that the first SYP log in Reply#10506 has developed heartwood and it also has an off center pith.  Care must be taken with it to saw through from the hump or horn side to prevent some seriously bowed lumber.  With that heartwood the lumber should be pretty.  The SYP log in the second picture has not developed any heartwood and will be much more forgiving as to which face is opened.  That lumber will be more stable but also more bland.

[pineywoods]

re- sawing hickory...There are 2 situations. Dry hickory ain't too bad, just very hard. The first few inches are the driest and thus harder. Enter the cut SLOWLY to give the blade a chance to establish a kerf. Needless to say, blade gotta be SHARP SHARP. It's hard to comprehend how quickly a hickory log will dull a blade. I have had one log consume 3 or 4 blades. Common knowledge says use a blade with less hook angle, but I find that this somewhat of a gottcha. 4 deg blades will appear to cut better, BUT, they will cut slower. Slowing the feed rate with a 10 deg will do mostly the same thing.

The really nasty problem is hickory sap. Stuff is closely kin to super glue. Sticks to everything and the sawdust builds up on blades, belts, guide rollers etc. LOTS of water and soap helps but once buildup starts, the only thing that cuts it off is a sharp scraper. A guide roller with a buildup of sap and sawdust is no different from a roller that's badly out of alignment, the effects are the same. The key is to prevent buildup from starting, lots of water and your favorite additive. Once it gets started, just bite the bullet and get out your favorite scraper.

I avoid hickory if I can

[Southside]

I would invest in some carbine bands for that job nativewolf.

[RPowers]

Hickory sawing question for all you guys:  my sawyer complains about sawdust and gum buildup.  Will that cotton picking lube cut down on problems?  Any other tips?  We find ourselves needing to saw 300 hickory tie logs that sat too long.  

Lube with straight diesel fuel on a wiper pad for the inside of the blade. I run nothing else on my LT50 and can cut anything from pitchy pine to sappy hickory with no build-up at all. 

[Lawg Dawg]

Sawed a little White Oak today pretty good grade. Went through 4 T7 Resharps on two logs 




 



 



 



 



 

It's a DUSTY job...but someone has to do it!

[Lawg Dawg]

Hickory sawing question for all you guys:  my sawyer complains about sawdust and gum buildup.  Will that cotton picking lube cut down on problems?  Any other tips?  We find ourselves needing to saw 300 hickory tie logs that sat too long.  

Lube with straight diesel fuel on a wiper pad for the inside of the blade. I run nothing else on my LT50 and can cut anything from pitchy pine to sappy hickory with no build-up at all.

You got a little picture or two of that setup? I'm interested

[nativewolf]

I would invest in some carbine bands for that job nativewolf.

I think that's a good idea, we'll try the diesel suggestion as well.

[Magicman]

I am actually glad that I saw very little White Oak.