Milling timber?

[Selwyn]

I recently felled a few trees after the storms. Got a decent bit of leyandii, some ash and some beech. Found a man to mill up for me and I fancy giving it a go.

Not exactly sure what I want - the best I can say is a mix of everything, so ash and beech mainly for furniture and thinking of some leylandii for waney edge and a bit of furniture etc.

Any comments about the best way to approach it? My inner hippy wants to make the most of the trees rather than just cutting them for firewood but I also know I won't be able to use the timber for 2 years so want to cover a few bases. Any advice?

 

[carlb40]

Maybe just have them milled to 1'' and 2'' boards? That way you should be covered for most furniture.

 

[Selwyn]

Seems like a good plan

 

[Random Orbital Bob]

And perhaps add one thicker (instant table top) with the waney edge kept to make a nice Hippy piece. For that I would suggest you mill to a chunky 3" thickness for that real slab feel. Keep all the edges as natural as possible. Now where's my sandals.......

Remember that whatever thickness you mill it to, once dry you need to assume circa 5-8mm will be removed during planning. So if you want to end up with truly 2" rather than nominal then mill adding +10 to be safe.

 

[Woodmonkey]

I have found 32mm seems to be a pretty good thickness to mill stuff too, gives you enough that once you've planed It up you can still get a good inch out of it for table tops etc. Depending on the species I normally do some to 3-4 inches to be made into bowl blanks. 32mm should be useable after about 12 months if stacked and dried correctly. Not sure what use leylandi is for furniture it's sticky and horrible, have seen it used for waney edged fencing.

 

[Grahamshed]

Maybe a few thicker pieces for blanks if you are into turning ( or friends with someone who is )

 

[marcros]

i wouldn't waste any time on the leylandii, and just cut it for firewood.

With the rest, I would do a mix of generous inch and 2", although it depends a bit on what you have planned. I find that it is useful to be able to get 3/4" boards when finished, so it is useful to have 27mm rather than actual inch. If it was anything with interesting grain, I would cut it thicker- all 2" + so you have the option of bookmatching- I guess you can if you have the whole logs, and i am probably thinking of when buying a few boards.

 

[heimlaga]

2 inch thick and 1 1/2 inch and 1 1/4 inch thick unedged slabs are the most useful for most general woodwork. They can later be egded or ripped to any width you need. 1 inch boards tend to become a bit thin after planing.

For stickers you need some 1x1 or 7/8x7/8 inch battens but they should be dried beforehand so they should not come from theese logs. Pine is not very good for thickers in my oppinion but spruce is excellent. You could scavenge some spruce board offcuts from a construction site or some discarded pallet and rip them for stickers.
Then you need a few old pallets or concrete blocks or useless logs to put the stack on to keep it off the ground.

I prefere to have some 30cm of free airspace under my woodstacks. I stack the boards/slabs with plenty of air gaps in each layer. Between the layers I put stickers. If the board lengths vary I normally let every second board end short of each end in the stack. This in order to make the stack stable and airy. When all the wood is stacked I build a temporary sloping roof over it using old currugated steel roofing that I have scavenged from demotition sites.

Good luck