Logs to lumber from a novice.

[Travis]

My first picture upload. Cool, I think? Hope you are able to pull them up. I could not figure out how to insert the actual image in the post.

I wanted to post pictures of converting logs to lumber. I used advice I received on this forum to accomplish this task. The logs are white oak and red oak from the lot I had cleared of to build my house. The fellow on the Woodmiser saw is Tony out of Lenoir. I choose Tony because he was able to come to my site to saw the logs. It was only a $50 buck set up charge.

http://www.ncwoodworker.net/forums/a...1&d=1156215972



Below is the yield (750'BF) of the logs with my little helper painting the ends to help reduce checking.

http://www.ncwoodworker.net/forums/a...1&d=1156215972

I would like to use some the red oak to build my first work bench. I am kind of impatient and don't want to wait a year to build my bench. Anyone have any ideas to speed up drying time short of placing them in kiln.

[DaveO]

Good for you Unfortunately several of your attachments didn't show up. Why, I have no clue, but I am pretty stupid when it comes to these things.
My only suggestion for drying the boards faster is to increase the rate of evaporation of water from the wood. Higher heat, more air flow and lower humidity will help to speed up the drying process. If you can store the wood in an enclosed structure with a dehumidifier and several fans blowing across the well stickered stack, that will be your best bet, short of a solar kiln or paying to have it kiln dried. Get a moisture meter, it will take a lot of the guess work out of determining if the wood is dry enough to work with.
Try uploading your pics to www.woodworking-galleries.org and then inserting them into your post, the size limitations are more flexible and you can have them to post elsewhere/again if you desire.

Dave

[jeff...]

Tavis, very cool , your treecycling. Not only will you get the satisfaction of making cool stuff from your own trees but you saved some valuable lumber from the landfill or burn pile. That means a few less trees will be cut from our forests. I'm glad for you, Treecycling just makes plain sense.

Do you have your lumber stickered inside a building? If so you could tarp it along with a dehumidifer and it should speed things along a little faster, just keep an eye on it to see how it's doing. I would recommend air drying it first for a few months though... Get yourself some cheap 1" ratchet straps and keep the bunk good and tight, as the lumber starts to dry re tighten the straps. I think ratchet starps works much better than weighting down the bunk with a bunch of weight.

[frigator]

Can you let me know how to get in touch with "Tony" in Lenoir, I have a budy who has some walnut logs in Hudson, near Lenoir, and he wants them sawed up. He didnt seal the ends of the logs though.

[woodguy1975]

That is great Travis! It is nice to know there is another local sawyer in the area that will do jobsite work.

John

[Kyle]

I wouldn't recommend speeding up the drying process especially oak. Oak is very prone to honeycomb and checking and needs to be throughly air dried before kiln drying. If is 4/4 material it will be air dried within 45-60 days to around 15-17% MC. If it is 8/4 material 6 months may put it closer to 25-30% in the core.

Looks like tony has an LT70? Thats a nice mill. Does he do it full time?

Kyle

[sapwood]

Good on ya Travis
That's a lot 'o lumber
No advice here, just admiration and a little envy

Roger

[walnutjerry]

Originally Posted by Travis

I


I would like to use some the red oak to build my first work bench. I am kind of impatient and don't want to wait a year to build my bench. Anyone have any ideas to speed up drying time short of placing them in kiln.

Travis--------if you want good lumber don't rush it. Air dry at least 6 mo. for each inch of thickness. 4/4 and 5/4 should be around 17% in a years time. Then speed up the drying.

Jerry

[jeff...]

Tony has a Wood Mizer LT70 - Wood Mizer's top of the line saw mill, complete with a 62 HP Cat desiel engine and all the bells and whistles, sweet!!!

http://www.woodmizer.com/en/sawmills...t70/index.aspx

Only $46,000 I'd love to own one - but I would be dead, cause CFO would kill me.

[cskipper]

Travis - good treecycling (to steal Jeff's term - although when I first read it I was trying to see a tree on a bike ).

[Ray Martin]

Travis,

Good for you. I sure wish I knew about these services back around the time of hurricane Fran. I only lost pine, but some of the neighbors lost some good size oaks.

At $46,000, buying a mill is like buying a house. I guess you have to do the sawing full time in order to make the thing pay for itself. Does the sawyer provide the sticker wood? Or is that a whole other business opportunity?



Ray

[Kyle]

Stickers are seperate. An LT70 is a full bore production mill only a step below the LT300 that large sawmill outfits use. I hope he is doing this for a living as thats a pretty pricey piece of equipment to not use in a full production setting. When I saw for people my charges run .40/bf with a minimum 200 bf charge unless you are a regular customer( I do have plenty of those) and I dont include stickers but will sell them for .30/each.



If I do a large job for someone which includes kiln drying then I will sticker but the costs go up to .50/ bf including stickering. Kiln drying is .50/bf under 1000 bf of lumber and .45/bf for over that.

[michaelgarner]

man that is cool, I hope some day to get into felling trees and make something of it, or at lease do it a couple times just to say that I made something from a tree that I cut down and milled myself. Awesome job bro.