A busy weekend milling Oak.

[Wood Monkey]

A fews years ago I was given some freshly felled Oak trees which I had converted to planks. The planks have been stacked in my dry store and my garage and this weekend I decided to take a few boards and machine them for some final drying. I posted details back when I milled the logs, but I thought I would share some updates as several people asked for progress reports.

Here's a freshener.

There were 6 trees varying from 30 to 48 inches diameter. All were around 8ft long.

A Woodmizer did all the hard work.

The result was, errrr...... more wood than I expected. Initially I had a cutting list in mind, but as the stack grew we just cut whatever took our fancy.

I ended up with several stacks like this one. I stacked some in my garage, some in my dry store behind my workshop and some in open air with a top cover.

After a couple of days of effort I have a reasonable stack of rough dimensioned stock ready for some table building in the summer. I'm planning to stash some in the spare room but for now just put it on my timber rack in my workshop.

I took the boards from the stack in my dry store which is open ended and hence has very good ventilation. I wasn't at all selective and simply grabbed some from the top plus some thicker stuff for leg blanks. A quick poke about with the moisture meter was giving readings around 14-16%. The shavings coming off the planer and thicknesser felt pretty dry. As my planer can only handle 150mm boards I ripped down the wider planks and cut them in half length ways to make them easier to handle.

Although I haven't actually made anything I found it strangely satisfying and will probably do more in a few weeks.

Jon

 

[nathandavies]

would you mind saying how much you paid for the guy with the woodmizer

 

[Random Orbital Bob]

Very nice Jon. English Oak isn't cheap and that's a good haul well managed you have there. It'll be nice to see the resultant finished table to go full circle. I also find creating usable timber from "tree stage" immensely satisfying so I understand your feelings about it. Great post. Thanks.

 

[Wood Monkey]

Hi Nathan

I recall it was less then £400 all in. You pay for the day pus mileage. There was a lot of work and it was a pretty full day so very good value as the trees were free.

I used Richard Maynard from trees2timber. http://www.trees2timber.com He's very knowledgeable and a pleasure to work with.

Jon

 

[nathandavies]

cheers, I need to start gathering trees, seen a load cut into firewood recently, made me want to cry

 

[JustBen]

cheers, I need to start gathering trees, seen a load cut into firewood recently, made me want to cry

I'm so glad I'm not the only one who feels like that.
After the winds a few weeks ago, a tree fella was cutting a large tree into firewood near work.
I don't know what tree it was (possibly beech) but the trunk was 36"+ wide.
In my head I was shouting 'NO!!!!!!' But I have nowhere to store it so had to pass it by.

 

[carlb40]

Nice little haul you have there. Was is it flat sawn or did you have it quarter sawn?

You have the same planer as me

 

[Wood Monkey]

It was trees being cut down and burned on site at the golf club where I am a member that led me to this. After I pointed out the error of their ways they milled a bunch of Oak trees for use on projects around the course and they put some aside for me. To be fair to them, there was no interest from commercial mills despite there being a good number of trees and reasonable vehicular access. They have some Beech trees also.

Carl - There is a mixture. The bed of the Woodmizer has hydraulic rams so you can flip the log around. I recall from the stacking that there was a good % of quarter sawn.