Sawing old red pine

[jackpine]

 The red pines I am sawing have been cut for 1 to 3 years, peeled and piled. Because of the age there is a lot of early stage rot in the oldest logs and grey stain in the newest. What I notice is the amount of sapwood compared to heart in these pines. A 10" log will have 3" of sapwood and only a 4" heart. Is this normal in red pine? When sawing fresh cut red pine I have not paid much attention to the amount of sapwood.

The real problem though is sawing this old pine as pitch will build up on the blade unless the water is run continuously and the soft, fuzzy, sapwood wants to load up in the teeth and cause the blade to dive. A very sharp blade is a must and even then a slow feed rate is required and watch out for the knots. They would saw much better frozen but the recent warm spell has thawed them out. With the wind blowing sawdust back into my face and the logs not wanting to behave I called it a day early and came home :D

Bill

[ohsoloco]

A year or so back I sawed some red pine for someone that had them cut and piled for over a year.  I was thinking that they'd be easier to saw....perhaps not as sappy.  I couldn't get my resharpened blades to cut at all without diving, so I tried a brand new blade and got the same problem.  Pitch was loading up on the blades so bad that straight water wouldn't even work.  I ended up putting some dish detergent in with my water and my diving problems cleared right up.  Customer was real happy with how the boards turned out, and I was glad the job was over  :D

[fstedy]

If you keep having a lot of trouble with pitch buildup try taking a utility knife and scraping the inside of the blade clear of the pitch. When I cut Pitch Pine the sap really builds up on the inside of the blade and the scraping works for me. Some logs are worse than others and the use of heavy coolant flow with Pinesol doesn't work and scraping is the only option for me.

[jackpine]

Ohsoloco, I always run dish soap in the water while sawing pine but in this case even this, while keeping the sap buildup on TOP of the blade in check, did not prevent the blade from diving. I did notice just now while putting the used blades away that there is pitch buildup on the underside of the blade but only under the teeth. A clue?

I also found that new blades do much better than Re-Sharp ones but I think that is due to being stiffer not because they are sharper. In fact I bought 30 new bands last week to try to get this job finished, probably have a couple hundred more logs to go. This job is no longer fun >:( but I am committed to seeing it thru.

[SwampDonkey]

The Wood Tech book says the sapwood can be narrow or medium width, whatever medium width is. For jack pine it says the heartwood does not develop until after 40 years of age. Are your red pine pretty young and fast growing? I would say the older trees would have narrower sap.

[jackpine]

Swamp, These are plantation red pine, planted by the local paper mills about 30 to 40 years ago. Most plantations are now owned by Plumb Creek and after the last thinning but still with enough trees to be called wooded land they are sold. No money in softwood pulp around here now with the mill closings or converting to hardwood.

[SwampDonkey]

So there is the answer, fast grown plantation pines.  ;)


I thinned a 10 year plantation with some red pines this summer. The buts were about 8 inches. We didn't cut any pine, but there were a lot of black cherry coming up through them. Tried to save the best ones (cherry) that didn't have knot on them.

[stonebroke]

SD

Can you grow nice cherry that far north?  I would think you are at the limit of its range.

Stonebroke

[SwampDonkey]

Only short pieces stonebroke, they are badly infected by black knot most often. But, 4-8 foot pieces can be taken. In the thinning specs black cherry isn't a desirable crop tree, but I'm not one to go around and eliminate it, since we are on the edge of the range.  North of me a short distance and there is no sign of it. Had to educate of couple of fellows because they are used to seeing only pin cherry, which gets cut out. On this site there was not a single pin cherry that I saw. ;)

[isawlogs]

I cut red pine that is a few years old often ... if you want to be able to cut it and make money , put extra set on your blades ... 25 to 30 thousand . Have some windshield washer in the tank open the valve for it to run a little more then a drip and start sawing .

[jackpine]

Marcel, I would like to put extra set in the blade but I use Re-Sharp as I do not own a sharpener or setter. I do think the extra set would help some of the pitch build-up issues.

[slider]

Jackpine,  I started using concentrated liquid tide extra strength,orange jug .3 caps + 1 cup of pinesall  ,I wish I could remember the exact name.I picked this up on the forum a while back .I saw a good bit of heart pine and this mix is the next best thing than diesel ,smells better to.  Slider