Rough dimensioning of riven oak

[Jelly]

This afternoon I split one of my oak logs (1.8m long, 14" in diameter) into 10 reasonable segments, which should give a selection of boards between 1.5x3 and 2x4, once the remainder of the sapwood and pith is gone.

Two in particular have a marked twist, and all are distinctly trapizoidal, in principle its easy to sort with a scrub plane and try plane... At least it would be if I could work out how to hold them whilst getting the first flat surface. Oh and I only have two sawhorses (albeit the sawhorses are built from 100mm redwood firsts, which gives them some heft) to work on.

Would I be better attempting to hold them between wedges nailed to the horses and resaw them to a rough dimension, or try to pin them down and plane them somehow.

If all else fails i'll leave them on their stickers under cover for another 12-18 months and run them over my planer (the seasoning gives me ample time to have sorted the tables and knives out) by then.

Edit: In the process I learned that if one owns a hatchet, a froe is optional; much in the same way that owning molegrips makes a steering wheel optional...

 

[Jelly]

So I kind-of solved my own problem today whilst off work...

I found that if I used the axe to roughly hew the high spots off of one side of the board, I could get it to sit securely against two battens nailed in an L configuration to a heavy ply board and butted against the house in the direction of planing; this allowed me to get a trued up face on the opposite side using a jack plane, and made the hewn face much quicker to bring parallel to the reference face; the major difficulty is actually selecting which face to hew, to both get most timber out and minimise the amount of work with the axe.

The oak is however absolutely beautiful, with a really sublime sliver-figure.

 

[NickWelford]

We need pics......

 

[DTR]

In the process I learned that if one owns a hatchet, a froe is optional; much in the same way that owning molegrips makes a steering wheel optional...

:lol:

 

[Jelly]

We need pics......

Of the nice timber that I'm getting out of it, or me wildly flailing with a hatchet?

I'll try to get some pics next time I'm home.

 

[Jelly]

Grabbed some quick pictures of one of the little bits, this still has the sapwood on, and was from a larger bit i ripped and cut into sections. The twist was too great for planing it out to make sense.

Figuring, kindof.

End Grain.

Mod Edit: Image URL completion.

 

[wills-mill]

The beauty of riving is that it gives you fully quartersawn timber, so you get fantastic figure in Oak. As you've found, the minor downside is the amount of waste if you are heading towards square/flat boards.

I've always made the assumption that early weatherboarding was made with riven/ cleft sections, which is why we have the hangover that weatherboards must be feathered to give a wedge shape?

 

[Jelly]

The beauty of riving is that it gives you fully quartersawn timber, so you get fantastic figure in Oak. As you've found, the minor downside is the amount of waste if you are heading towards square/flat boards.

Yup...

I've always made the assumption that early weatherboarding was made with riven/ cleft sections, which is why we have the hangover that weatherboards must be feathered to give a wedge shape?

Correct, the village carpenter (a fine book if you have a few hours to spare) says as much, as an aside to taking about the saw pit.