I have several thousand board feet of 4/4 walnut. I am short of thicker stock. I have a tree or two I can cut. I am thinking I will have the sawyer cut a 3" slab right out of the center. 1 1/2" above and below the pith and leave them live edge. Then saw the rest of the logs into 8/4 and 6/4 stock.
My reasoning on the 3" piece is it will contain the majority of the juvenile wood. If it warps badly or cracks I can box the heart by cutting a 3 x 3 out of the center and have some nicely quartered stock on both sides. If they remain reasonably flat I might be able to make a slab table out of them.
Any advice or thoughts on this would be appreciated. What thickness stock would you go after?
In 35 years in the lumber business we never got an order for any 6/4 lumber and I don't recall ever seeing any in a warehouse.
5/4 for tops and some other uses is good to have on hand.
I don't follow your reasoning on the 3" piece. The center of the tree is going to fracture when it dries. Not clear what you are going to do with 3" thick plank with a busted up middle and a good chance the board on either side of this one will fracture in the middle too.
I have been using a lot of rift grain (walnut rift and quartered are about the same). The last several logs I sawed I just sawed them through.
You will want to start with one or more 4/4 boards to get past the sapwood. An 8/4 plank all sap on one side is not useful for much.
10/4 enables the plank to be resawed to 4/4 if needed.
You have several thousand feet of walnut yet in a recent post you sought advice on uniforming color because you could not find lumber to closely match!?!
For table legs you want rift grain. Either quartered or flat makes ugly legs.
It takes good logs to saw 8/4 and thicker. If you don't have large clear logs this plan will not turn out favorable.
The reason I ended up with mismatched lumber is I bought some to get posts for the bed. I got 4 by 4's and cut them down a bit to about 3 by 4. The guy gave me all the 4/4 stuff that his dad had left. (dad is 93 and in poor health and has aged out) I thought I had enough of my own 4/4 stuff on hand, but did not. The balance of mine is in a barn on the family farm and it's bout fifty miles away. Weather has been unfavorable, I've been sick, both my truck and I are old, well really, I was just too lazy to go fetch more. My bad. I really wish I had over come the lazy gene.
I was just trying to figure a quick way to saw these logs. Figured I wanted to get rid of the pith But would take a shot at just leaving it in the center board and see if I can luck out.
Sure leave it in the middle of 1 or more boards but those boards need to be some thickness you need. Whatever busts up just saw it out when it comes time to use it. If you need 3" for legs it needs to be cut before you reach the center of the 3 x 3's will have quarter grain on one side and flat on the other... ugly leg. Those middle boards are good for nice straight grain pieces for frame and panel frames.
A friend asked me to make him a desk/table. Wanted QSWO. I had plenty of it in 4/4. Laminated two layers together and tapered them on the inner edges. Then Veneered the two faces with glue lines with homemade veneer of Quarter sawn Oak. Having accounted for the thickness of the veneer the legs were square. Cut a tiny bevel on the edges to disguise the edge of the veneer. It looked great and he is very pleased with it. If I had used full sized rift sawn oak, the medullary rays would not have been present. Probably nobody but a woodworker would notice either way.
What I would go after might be at odds with what is the most useful to you. First answer this question to yourself: do you have something specific in mind to make?
A second consideration is the diameter of the log. I might cut a 12" diameter differently from a 20".
And keep in mind if you saw a bunch of boards the same thickness then one or two boards in odd-ball thicknesses you may have trouble stickering efficiently for drying.
If I'm putting up siding or paneling on a building (yes, I've used walnut and cherry for siding, purlins, etc) I cut 4/4. Since I don't build furniture I don't otherwise cut much 4/4.
Much of the time I saw slabs with the intention of cutting them up after drying into turning stock. For this I mostly make 8/4, 10/4 and 12/4. These are good for shallow bowl and platter blanks and to rip into a variety of spindle blanks. I do make occasional 6/4 boards to rip later but sometimes just rip and resaw the thicker slabs. I sometimes leave the bark edge and sometimes cut it off, just depends on what I feel like at the time.
Sometimes I want 4x4 and 5x5 for turning blanks so I'll saw thick then rip - dries a quicker than when left in slab form.
When I want thicker bowl blanks I might cut a long log into shorter lengths, level the pith on a short log, and cut right down or just above the pith. These are usually turned green so I don't worry about getting too close. Then I make a second cut after examining the end grain to decide how thick and wide the bowl blank can be, usually drawing on the end with a crayon. This makes a thick chunk flat on top and bottom and easy to cut up further on the shop bandsaw. Or if the chunks are bigger (maybe 10-12" thick) I might square up the sides on the sawmill.
Note that unless the log is the same diameter on both ends one end must be shimmed up to put the pith the same height as the other end or it will go diagonally through the boards near the center. This is at odds with getting the best plain-sawn boards on the outside and with keeping the grain straight down the board, one of the tradeoff decisions.
The nice thing about having my own sawmill is I can make these decisions as I saw. A typical sawmill operator probably won't want to take the time and effort to do more than cut slabs and boards.
The nice thing about having no firm plan for the wood is whatever I cut will be used, one way or another.
As for rift sawn wood for legs, that doesn't, matter of course, if the legs will be turned.
Here I'm cutting some very short log sections into bowl blanks. Cutting them short allows getting the largest and best quality blanks out of the log.
These are a few of one day's blanks that I decided to square up on the sawmill since some were relatively large and all were going to a wood auction - I wanted them to be attractive to woodturners. I cut a bunch more of the same that day and the next, some 12" square and larger. The offcuts from trimming the larger pieces made nice smaller blanks.
BTW, the walnut I've sawn from large, straight trees tended to be quite stable and dried without warping and cracking, even with the pith in. From smaller trees, not so much. From smaller crooked logs or leaning trees, give up. If possible, I prefer trees cut in the winter.
As I recall, the tree I have in mind is at least 24" DBH, is inthe deep woods and is tall and straight. I hope that means minimal sap wood. I am looking of straight grained lumber. If I were looking for bowl turning stock I might not care so much for straight grain. I am hoping there is a decent crotch or two to get some nice figure, but that may be a different tree. I am going to meet the sawyer tomorrow.
Thanks JL. Part of the problem is I am building furniture for my family and friends and have no idea what they will want next. Years ago I had walnut sawed off the family farm. I had the vast majority of it sawed to 4/4. You get so many more boards at 4/4 than if you go with 8/4 or 10/4. I have made do with it quite nicely by laminating it where necessary and appropriate, but that only goes so far. Not good at all for turnings.
Thanks for your help.
Speaking of family and turning my cousin asked me for a table for her daughter out of the walnut, but her daughter wanted it heavily mixed with sap wood. I would have never thought of that. I had had the sawyer eliminate most of the sapwood. It turned out nice and she is thrilled. Had 4 x 4 turned farmhouse style legs. I had to rummage through the entire pile to get enough. Whoda thunkit?
"I had the sawyer eliminate most of the sapwood." Do you mean like send it to the chipper!?!
Sawing walnut or cherry for personal use is the same. First slice removes bark and establishes a board face. In these species this face will be all or mostly sapwood. The next slice of 4/4 will capture most of the sapwood in a typical log. This wood is not useless. Odds are it will be clear lumber. It will find its way into internal framing and other structural parts where color is irrelevant. Beats paying good money to buy poplar for these parts.
One of my lumber bays is labeled "Junk". It is not really junk. It contains odds and ends of lumber that doesn't measure up to go in the largely sap-free cherry and walnut bays, for example. This is the bay I go to when I need a piece for internal framing or other utilitarian use.
How to proceed sawing depends on a well established fact that if you need a 6" width, after sorting through 200 bd ft of possibilities the perfect board in terms of grain and color will be 5 7/8". Anybody that builds much knows exactly what I mean. (and if the width is adequate it is 1/4" too short )
The next slice will have bark and sap edges. Trim the bark, keep as much lumber as the bark allows. I would not even trim the bark from the entire length of the edge. Some times on a special log I don't trim the bark at all.
Scrutiny of my furniture will reveal slivers of sapwood where it would have been ideal to have none. But that perfect board had some. Overly trimming at the mill would have eliminated this perfect board from contention. If custom sawing for yourself don't over trim. Leaving bark and sap will increase the value of the lumber for personal use, not decrease it for commercial sale.
If table legs are cut out of a glueup as a diamond, with the glue line running between opposite corners, the glue line will not be noticeable and a lot of time is saved. Study the direction of growth rings on each when evaluating different pairs of boards, so the the resulting diamond will show rift grain on all 4 faces.
I am with you on that. Maybe I have matured? Walnut with mixed sap wood drys better than cherry. Cherry tends to warp badly. Even that can be salvaged by ripping it down for interior structure or narrow strips. I have salvaged a few pieces by ripping down the middle, jointing the edges and glueing them back together. With a good glue line this can be nearly invisible.
Making furniture, half the work is going into the woods and cutting the trees. Another half is sawing the lumber. And another one is drying it. and then there is stock prep. And the other half is actually making the piece of furniture. The last half is putting on the finish. Is there anyone here who does not believe there are at least six halves to making a piece of furniture?
I went down to the farm today to show the sawyer which tree to cut and saw. Low and behold, within a hundred yards of the tree I was thinking of, there was a better tree that had blown down. About 24" on the stump and over 32' to the first limb.
In Colonial times all the trees belonged to the crown. But If one blew down, it was yours. You got a windfall.
You missed the half of going through all the lumber to select the best pieces for the project and then going back again because one was 1/4" too narrow or too short, or had a defect the revealed itself upon stock prep. (only relevant if you have a large stash, otherwise 6/2)
You are right about that cursed board. I have been known to look at and measure one over and over. Also may have changed a project or two to accommodate such a board. I have one or two that are still taunting me.
Another one I forgot is the shop itself. Having to rearrange things for a project, or buy a new tool, or replace bearings, or sharpen, or spend a lot of time agonizing over building an entire new shop....That's at least half.
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