Truing/preparing rough lumber?

[Peter G Denmark]

Hello.

Where i live, hardwood is not easy to come by, and when you find a dealer that will sell to private people, it costs a lot. So i've settled for reclaimed wood from old doors etc.

But recently i bumped into an old guy, who was selling his farm and forrest, so he wanted to get rid of at lot of hardwood.
I got about 6m3 cherry, 2 m3 oak, 1 m3 beech, 1 m3 birch for about £800. It's been air dried for 10 years, and it's all rough cut to 55mm slabs, 3 meters in length. I guess i will have hardwood for a long time now.
The slabs still have bark on the edges, so i have to find the best way of truing them.

I've seen those plywood sleds that people clamp the rough lumber to, and then run them through the table saw.
But i wondered i anything would be wrong with just using a straight edge (i have an aluminium straight edge that 4 meters long), and a regular circular saw to true one edge? I have a 40 cm wide jointer/surface planer, so i would surface one side of the board first, and the put the straight edge on that.

What do you do with wood, that still has bark on it?

 

[adidat]

6 cubic meters!!!! that is some haul. in cherry price of £60 a cubic foot that works out at £2100 just for the cherry you lucky man

the method you have suggested is fine. you my find the paler wood near the bark is full of woodworm, best to chop that all off and burn it to avoid bring an infestation into your home

adidat

 

[Jacob]

I wouldn't touch any of it until you have something to make, and a cutting list. Then start extracting the timber in accordance with the list. Saw it down to close to the finished size for each component and only then start planing, not before.
No point in preparing it for a hypothetical project!

 

[kirkpoore1]

I wouldn't bother planing it first either, just stack it until you need it. When you want to use a board, just clamp down the straight edge and cut. Normally I'd recommend ripping the really warped boards before thicknessing, but heck, you've got 2" to play with, let the thicknesser do the work.

Given how thick this stuff is, it's quite likely it will move (cup/bend/twist) a fair amount after you surface it. I would thickness it down to the point where you've got at least 3 or 4 mm over your final dimension, then stand it up and let it sit in a corner for a week or two. Any released tension will warp the board, then you can come back and flatten it again later.

Kirk

 

[woodbloke]

6 cubic meters!!!! that is some haul. in cherry price of £60 a cubic foot that works out at £2100 just for the cherry you lucky man

the method you have suggested is fine. you my find the paler wood near the bark is full of woodworm, best to chop that all off and burn it to avoid bring an infestation into your home

adidat

I'd be inclined to get rid of the sapwood too and then see what's left. It's a personal thing, some like to leave the sap on and others remove it. I never build anything with sap in it anyway, so the first thing I always do is take it off to see how much heartwood I've got to play with. The only exception as far as I know is yew, where the sap isn't prone to infestation and can be treated like the heart, but if in doubt, whip the sap off - Rob

 

[moz]

Cherry isn't a very large tree. You often have to live with using a certain amount of sapwood and facing the pieces accordingly. If you just rip all the sap off, it's going to be a lot of waste. Even with the oak, it's not so simple because trees rarely grow straight and cutting off the waney edge of a curved, three metre board is going to entail chucking out a lot of good heart wood. Better to cross-cut first, as already said, when you have actual components in mind. Just keep the piles stickered and dry, i.e. conditions enimical to fungi and insects.

John

 

[Peter G Denmark]

Sorry for the late response fellows. For some reason i didn't get an email notofication, so i didn't think there was any answers.

I'm building a replica of a big steamer trunk at my parents house, and it's 2,4 meter long, so milling the board isn't like pro active milling, just for the hell of it.
A real estate agent that came to see my parent place, went ape dung when he saw the trunk, and wanted to buy it for £1400, but my parents didn't want to part with it, so i offered him to build one for £800. Lucky for me, it's mostly mortise and tenon joinery - no dovetails. Onlly "tricky" part is, that i have to fume some oak, for some of the parts, but i've done this before with great succes in an old fish tank.

I've hauled the stock into the workshop, planed it and trued the edges to rough dimensions. Now im gonna let it rest for 3 weeks, before i start the project.

Thank you for all your replies.

 

[RogerS]

Peter, I'm with those who recommend cutting off the sap. Gets rid of any critters.

Re email notification...if you edit your post, down the bottom of the screen are some options including notification yes/no