Curly Maple and Horse Chestnut at the Beach

[Daninvan]

Threading the needle on the weather these days. Rained over an inch yesterday, and it is supposed to start again tomorrow and rain solid for a week. Today was cloudy and threatening, but no rain fell on us, and it was quite warm. So off to the city log dump located on the beach.


The workers at the log dump spotted this horse chestnut (closely related to buckeye) and set it aside for us a week or two ago. These guys are unbelievable! I milled up some horse chestnut a few years ago but had bad luck with it staining as it dried so never bothered with it again. It is an extremely common street tree in town (it's the one kids used to make 'conkers' with) so it shows up in the log dump often enough. It can also get quite large, over 4' in diameter, although this one was more like 26-28". My bowl turning buddy got some recently and liked it so we decided to have a go at this one today. It was not much more than 3' long, but plenty long enough for him to get bowl blanks from


The other one was a log the same buddy spotted lying outside of the log dump. It was very obviously a maple with some fantastic possibility of quilting or similar pattern in it from the look of the outside of the log. It was about 8 or 9' long, so we trimmed it down to about 6' so the slabs would fit in our cars.


The city guys dipped both logs in the water to take any sand off them, then set them up on a slope for us! My buddy stripped off the bark with an axe, then trimmed the ends and removed any projections on the top of the logs, while I sharpened and gassed up the saws. We nailed our guideboard to the maple and took a cut. Wow! There was curl and figure all over the place.


Unfortunately the figure lessened as we got deeper into the log, but the first two pieces were pretty nice. As we got close to the pith the slabs started to split as we were cutting them! The split would follow along behind our saw. Eventually all of the slabs but the first two split completely lengthwise. Unfortunately there will likely be be a lot of stress in these pieces even after they are dry. Nice colour in them though.


Next we got into the horse chestnut. The contrast between the heartwood and the sapwood was quite striking. I definitely don't recall that from my previous horse chestnut experience!


Eventually my back started to get a bit tight, so my buddies took over running the saw and the mill. When a 'rookie' gets on the mill, the first thing they always do is push too hard and the mill gets constantly bogged down. My bowl buddy has run the saw enough he is great, the other guy has only been out a few times, he still pushes a bit too hard but is developing a feel for it. A nice day on the beach and we always seem to draw a crowd. A guy with earmuffs and flip-flops was even there watching and chatting with us for a while.


I took home the two best slabs of the curly maple, the other guy took home a couple horse chestnut and the rest of the maple which had cracked down the middle but that actually had a cool lumpy pattern on the live edge due to the quilting. The bowl buddy cut up a couple of the horse chestnut slabs that we had milled to 4" thick and got 6 or 7 nice blanks out of them.

We started at about 8:30 and were done with the milling just after 11. Goes quickly with 3 guys despite all the passers-by who want to chat!

Unfortunately the log dump is very near to empty right now. Unless there is a (very) late winter storm that knocks down some trees around town, we are hurting for suitable logs. Someone came and dropped of a couple logs today but they were second growth red cedar which we are not interested in. We have two more logs set aside for us and that is it. Hopefully more will show up otherwise we will be out one more time and then done until the fall.

 

[El Quachito]

That horse chestnut is pretty. I had some alder that looked like that after it sat for a year.
I don't have a mill but I sometime rip a round or two of my firewood to see what it looks like.

 

[Dobbs]

Another great post!
Thank You for sharing!



Dave

 

[bigbadbob]

Dan I have a friend in POCO want to know if you sell slabs??
BBB

 

[295 tramp]

Newby chainsaw Milling question.
Do you debark always before you mill?
How many chains do you go through in a days average
If you use one until it's dull then change out?
And last is most of that timber drift wood?

 

[Daninvan]

Bigbadbob, PM sent.

Tramp, I always debark before I mill as the logs have been lounging on the beach for a while, and so the bark is often full of sand. Hitting a pocket of sand pretty much dulls the chain instantly. Debarking with an axe does not take that long once you have done a few and get the hang of it. Plus I like to bring a friend or two along and assign the debarking to them!

Chain-wise I start the new 'season' (every September) with new chains on my saws and never change out until the next September. I just sharpen as needed and touch the rakers occasionally. My chains will last for years. For this day, I never had to sharpen at all. But the wood was pretty soft and the slabs not that big. Some days it doesn't go that well, maybe a dirty log and/or a wide piece of a hard wood will dull things up after a few passes. If I have to sharpen more than 3 or 4 times in a session though I would consider that pretty bad luck for the day!

The log dump contains a combo of commercial logs that have escaped from log booms and city trees that have been removed from parks, schools, boulevards, etc. I only mill the latter. The log boom escapees are mainly local second growth softwoods and extremely uninteresting to me. There is an occasional monster first growth piece that finds its way ashore, but I find these trees are typically covered in tiny cracks that are stuffed with sand and/or molluscs that are impossible to remove. I've tried a few of these logs and always need to sharpen multiple times just to peel out one slab. It is not worth it.

 

[Yellowbeard]

I am jealous every single time you post. Beautiful wood.