walnut slabbing

[metalspinner]

Teenswinger came by last week to do some cutting for me.

We started with slabbing this walnut crotch....



here it's set up under his Peterson...




Notice his new slabber. 8)

The top taken off...



The biggest one...



This one is 44" at the widest part and six feet tall.  We cut them all at 2 1/4" thick. The crotch was a three-way and this slab shows good figure on the three crotches. 8) 8)
here is a pic without my helper...




We also cut 1,000 bf of red oak.  I sorted it coming off the saw into good looking qs ray fleck and rift sawn.  Surpisingly, it came out to about 50/50 of good fleck/straight grain. 8)  I thought it would end up more 60/40 rift/QS.



I am still amazed at the precision  the swing mill can operate.  Of course, Teenswinger has a lot to do with that.  This lumber comes out perfect every time.  For fun, we even doublecut some of the right hand side of the log to get 12" wide QS boards.

And last but not least, today I cleaned up the slabs and ended up with a trailer full of firewood!

[Dan_Shade]

looking good!

I see you have a helper being trained up right

[brdmkr]

Wow!  You guys got after it.  Looks like you had a good time.  Slabbers make me a bit jealous ;D

[Norm]

Now that's some nice looking lumber! I cut a three way walnut crotch a couple of weekends ago, not much fun to do on a bandsaw but boy some of that flame grain makes it worth it. Do you have any projects in mind for the big slabs?

[metalspinner]

Norm,
My wife came up with ideas for each of the slabs! :D  She wants a coffee table from the medium sized slab, a sofa table for the smaller slab, a kitchen table from the largest slab, and two end tables cut from the other medium slab.  I didn't even have a chance to think about what I wanted.  In the end, making her happy is what I want, anyway.

[LeeB]

If momma ain't happy, nobodys gonna be happy :D LeeB

[TeenSwinger]

Metalspinner,
Do you anchorseal your walnut slabs? My Dad and I are going to slab up this one walnut log that we got, but was not sure if we should seal-up the whole slab or just the ends. Thanks for showinge pics.

[metalspinner]

I've had to sealed crotch areas before on oak and maple, but have had good luck with walnut crotches holding together.  With this cooler weather things should be O.K.... But now you have me worried.  Maybe I have too much faith in walnut?  Tomorrow I will check a smaller walnut slab milled last sping to see how it held up.

[Ianab]

Walnut shrinks much less than most other hardwoods as it dries, so less tension to tear the slab apart. It's a lot more forgiving than most. End sealing is still a good idea, to even out the drying and reduce end checks, but I'd say thats all thats needed.

Cheers

Ian

[metalspinner]

Just checked some other walnut crotch slab pieces and the face of the slabs are doing fine.  I don't think sealing the face of the crotch is neccesary for the walnut.
Thanks for easing my worries, Ianab.