oak sleepers

[wallace]

After my foray into the world of buying timber, it seems a bit mad. Is it worthwhile to buy new oak sleepers and dry them out and then saw them up to desired sizes. Or is the quality too poor.
Mark

 

[Harbo]

They could be full of tar and other nasties?


Rod

 

[Digit]

You can buy them as cut Rod, people use them for gardens etc, they've never been near a rail track.

Roy.

 

[milkman]

What do you want to make with them? I can't see the quality being top notch at all.

 

[andersonec]

I have used these in gardens quite a lot for raised beds and they come almost fresh off the tree, we use them straight away before they can start to move. They are straight from the sawmill and the quality has been consistently good and very usable as woodworking timber, if you were to cut and stack them make sure you have twice as much weight as what you think you will need.
At £20 a throw you can't go wrong except the drying time and that would depend on how you cut them.

Andy

 

[wallace]

I thought it might be usefull for things like garden gates. £20 for 200mm by 100mm. get a few cut them up. leave them for a year. Bingo, cheap oak for me to butcher.

 

[andersonec]

I thought it might be usefull for things like garden gates. £20 for 200mm by 100mm. get a few cut them up. leave them for a year. Bingo, cheap oak for me to butcher.

I think you might find a lot of it could be used for indoor furniture when dry enough, and the rest for garden furniture, just sort it when you cut it making sure, of course, that you keep any consecutive nice boards for matching side to side.

Check some of these images for rustic furniture http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=rustic ... 24&bih=653

Andy

 

[sparkymarky]

i`ve done this with some sort of untreated sleepers, i bought 3 of them and i`m still using up the timber. i built my bench here, railway-sleeper-workbench-wip-t52190.html i`ve also re-handled chisels, made mallets and more.
the only downside was the resin in the sleepers gummed up my bandsaw, i dont think this would be a problem now though as i`ve sorted my bandsaw`s speed problem and got a 2tpi blade from ian at tuffsaws.
to be honest i was in mole valley farmers the other day and they had untreated new oak sleepers there, no cracks in the end, i was tempted
hope this helps, mark.

 

[wallace]

Hi Mark, how did you manage with feeding the wood through the bandsaw. I have the same bandsaw with a blade from Ian. Did it cope ok. I think the hardest part would be man handling them, or did you have an extended outfeed table.
Mark

 

[sparkymarky]

hi wallace, i had a 4tpi blade from ian at tuffsaws with the startrite 352 on high speed when making the workbench, which was not ideal to say the least it would manage around 2 meters before needing cleaning due to resin.

I have after making the bench fitted a new pulley allowing me to use the lower speed this coupled with the 2tpi blade makes the bandsaw capable of cutting any timber without any problems at all.

handling the sleepers was problematic to say the least, i made a rolling out feed support by turning a small piece of beech and mounting onto a frame, and supporting the sleeper on the table and on the back of a old chair starting the bandsaw with a long stick whilst supporting the end of the sleeper :shock: not ideal i know but as a cheap timber its kind of worth it in the end. i always halfed the timber to cut down on weight if multiple large cuts were needed.

 

[Benchwayze]

You might be surprised at how many people like the 'rustic' look of the odd knot hole or shake in oak for their conservatories! :wink:

 

[Phil Pascoe]

I've never seen an oak sleeper!...Wooden sleepers lasted for decades because they were impregnated with creosote, pitch, whatever other nasties.
Oak is virtually impregnable (tried staining it?) but still rots inwards from the ends quite quickly when wet/dry wet/dry sequence.
Are people using "sleeper" as a new standard measurement of timber?
You'd be o.k. with a few reclaimed yellow jarrah ones, though!

 

[wallace]

Hi Phil, if you do a search on fleebay for oak sleepers it brings up suppliers of them. They are obviously not propper sleepers due to their size 100mm thick. But are freshly sawn timber.