Big Slabs in an old sawmill building.

LOST

Mark Mandell - Gone Round In New Jersey

your mind?

You should live long enough to be able to be around when they all get sold.

Re: Big Slabs in an old sawmill building.

Dick Coers

I’d sell as is, where is. Less money, but less worry about powder post beetle and drying degrade. If you haven’t already, a good coat of Timbor would be really smart.

Re: Big Slabs in an old sawmill building.

John K Jordan

The drying time will depend mostly on the thickness of the slabs and on the ventilation in the building. I'd cover the stacks if water could drip on them through the roof. If concerned about the drying time haul them to a kiln.

JKJ

Re: Big Slabs in an old sawmill building.

Bill Tindall, E.Tn.

note: no information was provided on thickness. nor how one handled 6' wide lumber. I would need a picture to believe a 6' wide oak.

If water drips on oak off a tin roof there will be a black iron stain where the drips land.

I don't believe the bits through the roof story. I am quite familiar with circle mills that used insert bits and I don't see a mechanism to hurl them through a tin roof. The blades just don't spin that fast and they don't come out easily and I don't see any way they would come loose on the back side of the cut to be hurled upwards. They typically deflect when they hit a nail or whatever.

Re: Big Slabs in an old sawmill building.

Barry Irby

Bill, I just sent you pictures of a center slab from the butt cut log. It's 128" long and 54" wide on the small end. The buttress or flare was over six feet but they had to trim it down to get it through the mill. The slabs are about 3" thick. Most seem to be pretty accurately cut at three inches, but one or two are four on one end and three on the other.

Re: Big Slabs in an old sawmill building.

Barry Irby

I forgot to post the thickness. They were supposed to be 3" thick, but I have one or two that are closer to four on one end and three on the other.

The butt cut on the log was about 6', but they trimmed some of the flare off to get it through the mill. It is now closer to 67" on the wide end and 54" on the other. So I guess you could say that was a 54" log and it 10' 8" long. This was originally a log that was 6' at the ground and 4' at the other end. It was 28' long and they cut off a piece almost 11' then a 9' and an 8' piece.

The top piece measures about fifty inches on both ends.

Re: Big Slabs in an old sawmill building.

Barry Irby

Dick I was thinking about spraying them with BoraCare. Should have done it, and may still go back and spray into the sticker spaces. Wonder if drenching the barks and outer edges would do any good? I have no experience with Timbor. Have you sprayed it? How was that?

And I agree, I would sell some now and be done with them.

Most of them are clear and straight grained. There are some defects like splits in the tree. They turned those horizontal and tried to confine them to one or two slabs. There is very little of the "character" the Internet seems to like to fill with epoxy.

I am not sure I believe the story....

Barry Irby

About the teeth from the blade flying through the roof either. That's the story they told me, but I don't think they were there to see it happen. And the ten or fifteen holes are in an area bout five feet in diameter. Hard to believe the saw was that accurate.

There are a few other holes through the roof and a skylight as well. Not positive but I think my wood is in a dry corner. Hopefully won't get wet and stained.

The wood was sawed over a period of four or five days and then sat in a pile with out stickers for a couple of more days. There was some mold on the boards when we moved them into the piles with stickers.

Another good reason to spray with Timbor or Boracare.

Its value in lumber

Bill Tindall, E.Tn.

White oak is red hot now with good logs bringing $2/bdft. I think the pin oaks grade in with the white oaks. As best I can tell from your description the log would have scaled about 4000 bdft. So if you would have hauled it to whatever mill serves your area you could have returned with a check for at least $4000 and maybe up to $8000 minus the truck bill. Best of luck marketing what you sawed.

Cut this time of year the sap wood will be invaded by insects before the summer has passed. I cut an ash last month and before I could get a tractor on site to load it it was invaded and ruined.

measuring logs and trees

Bill Tindall, E.Tn.

Logs are measured from the small end, inside the bark, averaging if not circular; trees at breast height.

Re: timBor is the same thing

david weaver

However they brand their stuff, it's just a product that delivers boric acid in anticipation of bug or termite pressure.

I used some, IIRC, it was a powder (this was about 15 years ago), and like anything else, it needs to be on the wood before the bugs are in the wood.

If you're in an area where it's dry in the winter and the wood stays dry in the summer, an inch per year of thickness should be fine.

The challenge is staying on top of any issues.

Friend of mine was given a ten year old pile of white oak slabs that someone sawed, stickered and then expected to have as a gold mine. He got them for almost nothing, and gave me two. They were worth almost nothing - sections were usable, but most of the wood managed to rot (by getting wet and then drying again?) even though the wood was sawed green and solid and wasn't a snag or a log that was already down.

It taught me that it's probably not worth the trouble if you're not going to follow the wood by checking it periodically and then using it soon after it dries (so that it doesn't just become an obligation).

Slab value is a funny thing. The explosion of portable bandmills has made it so that craigslist here is full of slabs. Many are pinoak or something similar, and if what Bill says is true, I don't think most get much more than log price for the trouble. Lots of wannabe lumber jockeys sawing little logs on youtube claiming that they're getting $15 a board foot for slabs, but I have some trouble believing that.

If you can dry the wood and use it, though - that's a different story. Schedule yourself time to check it on a regular basis more often than less at first.

in-situ stationary mills were common where I grew up and the roofs showed abuse, but it was more often something that flew off the mill or that was thrown by the saw blade. Barn roof holes near us were usually firearm related unless the barn was really old.

Re: Big Slabs in an old sawmill building.

Dick Coers

I have no experience with Timbor or equivalent. All I have experience with is a horrid powder post beetle infestation that wiped out a giant stash of lumber. That's why I suggest you sell now, make some money, move the wood, and you won't end up with a pile of firewood like I did.

Re: I am not sure I believe the story....

Larry Clinton At Frankfort, (Central) Indiana

I sure wouldn't believe a saw would send shards to a circular area! When I was a fairly young lad there was a saw that disintegrated in the Youngstown Steel mill in East Chicago, IN.

I worked in the #3 Seamless Tube mill (oil drilling, nuclear steam pipe etc.). The manufacturing process made pipe too long for train cars so was cut with a (as I remember about a 3' ~ 4' dia. blade with I assume carbide tips. It came apart one day and sent shards through the metal roof about 40' above. There were holes in a line parallel with the blade. It was pure luck no one was hurt!

I would be very surprised to hear of a wood circular blade doing the same. I have never heard of any in my life even throwing any carbide, I think they run too slow and never have enough pressure to do that.

The way forums work..

david weaver

...we are in grave danger of completely missing the point of your original post and going onto a 50-post string of theories about the holes. Hopefully the string of theories doesn't get all the way to string theory.

Re: The way forums work..

Barry Irby

Have you heard about Dark Matter? Apparently the people that study the universe did some calculations and figures a large percentage of the matter that should be there is missing/invisible. they have labeled it Dark Matter, and theorize lights bends around it. Then some calculations indicated some of the energy was missing and now we have Dark Energy. I figure in a few years they will realize they slipped a couple of decimal places or failed to make the conversion from Imperial to Metric correctly and Dark whatever will truly disappear.

Now, I was fascinated with how much sawdust was generated by the Lucas Mill cutting my slabs. A rough calculation indicates there was about 1500 pounds of it. (40 cuts, 1/4" thick, through logs averaging 4' and oak weighs 60 lb/CF.) It was a huge pile. Then it disappeared while I was gone. Could this be Dark Sawdust?

Barry, I'll bet your calculation is off by 33%

Keith Newton

A sawblade that long would be at least 3/8" instead of 1/4" wide.

A good video with views of the blade type

david weaver

I've been subscribed to this fellow (mike mccoy) who used to saw production but now sounds like he saws a couple of hours a day. Gives him time to talk more about the saw, etc, and less about making marginal pennies sawing 2x4s.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=STbLa7FnpPk

Frick type mill but with modern insert blade.

Frick Co. operated in a town that is about 20 miles from where I grew up. These mills, probably mostly smaller than this one, existed in quantity in the mountains west of town and have been left to rot. Often with farmall UD type power or other old stationary power (that won't mean much to someone who has never lived rural).

Not sure when it became unprofitable to operate them, but all of the ones rotting away near home seem to have about the same era stuff on them.

The one in this video is detroit diesel powered. I'm guessing 6/71. I don't believe the teeth theory, but anything thrown by a mill like this could go hard and fast into the roof.

big kerf compared to what we're used to with woodworking tools. Looks almost as wide as the .325 pitch narrow chains that are showing up on chainsaws now.

many videos of the mill shown in use - quickly answers a question that I had early on, as in, why does most commodity lumber show up flatsawn only.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gcdqmoe6f8g

Circular wood saws can throw carbide

Jesse Cloud

The guy who sharpens my blades told me that he does occasionally get blades in for repair where carbide tips have fallen off. He noticed that most of them seem to have been abused, showing chips in the carbide, probably from being dropped on a concrete floor.

His advice was to routinely inspect your blades and get any chipped teeth replaced before using it again.