# Firewood or Milling



## burningwood (Sep 14, 2011)

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Have a leaner(cherry) it will either be firewood or I'll mill it, most of the wood in the house is light colored so if I do mill this what are some small projects I could use it for?

bw


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## stihlman95 (Sep 14, 2011)

*cherry*

cherry is great for tables,night stands,chairs, or trim in a house. depend on what you want it for. would make nice cabinets!


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## Burlhunter13 (Sep 15, 2011)

Probably one of my favorite woods.....smells wonderful when milling. Fantastic wood to use as a accent or inlay. Especially with light colored woods such as maple.


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## Sawyer Rob (Sep 15, 2011)

It would be an absolute waste and a shame to cut that cherry into firewood!

Rob


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## Talltom (Sep 15, 2011)

Agree with all the above. Wish I had a cherry tree that size, but even small cherry trees are valuable. You'll get plenty of good lumber out of the trunk. If you cut it through and through you'll get a combination of narrow straight grained pieces and wider, flatsawn pieces that is ideal for making small tables and cabinets. Cut at a slight angle to the surface and you'll get cathedral grain which looks great on doors, panels and table tops. Even very small pieces are good for turning. If you know a woodturner, let him have his choice of the upper parts of the tree and he'll be your friend for life. I'd cut the really crooked part near the bottom separately in order to maintain the crook. One of the hardest things to do in woodworking is to make curved pieces out of straight lumber. It probably has some interesting grain in it, too, since it looks like it was the result of damage at some point in the tree's life. Can't see the top of the tree well from the pictures, but don't forget the crotches. Cherry crotchwood is gorgeous!


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## Burlhunter13 (Sep 15, 2011)

Talltom said:


> Agree with all the above. Wish I had a cherry tree that size, but even small cherry trees are valuable. You'll get plenty of good lumber out of the trunk. If you cut it through and through you'll get a combination of narrow straight grained pieces and wider, flatsawn pieces that is ideal for making small tables and cabinets. Cut at a slight angle to the surface and you'll get cathedral grain which looks great on doors, panels and table tops. Even very small pieces are good for turning. If you know a woodturner, let him have his choice of the upper parts of the tree and he'll be your friend for life. I'd cut the really crooked part near the bottom separately in order to maintain the crook. One of the hardest things to do in woodworking is to make curved pieces out of straight lumber. It probably has some interesting grain in it, too, since it looks like it was the result of damage at some point in the tree's life. Can't see the top of the tree well from the pictures, but don't forget the crotches. Cherry crotchwood is gorgeous!


 
Damn.....Couldn't have said it better! That cathedral grain is beautiful on doors.....mmmmm


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## gemniii (Sep 15, 2011)

You should DEFINITELY make firewood out of it.
When you trim the minimum off the cants for lumber 
Although it looks like a great tree for a CSM project the fact that it is cherry puts it in another ballpark. If it's in a place you can get it to a BSM, or get a BSM to it you will get the most BF out of it.

We expect more great pictures until it's furniture.


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## burningwood (Sep 15, 2011)

gemniii said:


> You should DEFINITELY make firewood out of it.
> When you trim the minimum off the cants for lumber
> Although it looks like a great tree for a CSM project the fact that it is cherry puts it in another ballpark. If it's in a place you can get it to a BSM, or get a BSM to it you will get the most BF out of it.
> 
> We expect more great pictures until it's furniture.




Thanks for all the input. Looks like I'll get some questions for you on milling this cherry this weekend. Some of the Cherry here has what I call black rot in the middle.

Not much of a furniture maker but would always look for ways to sell the cherry. 


bw


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## pnhd65 (Sep 15, 2011)

I'd hate to see a tree go to firewood instead of lumber, however, it's been my experience in the past that a tree like that has a lot of 'internal stress', and might start to move around a bit once you start milling it. 
Be careful and good luck.


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## Ax-man (Sep 15, 2011)

pnhd65 said:


> I'd hate to see a tree go to firewood instead of lumber, however, it's been my experience in the past that a tree like that has a lot of 'internal stress', and might start to move around a bit once you start milling it.
> Be careful and good luck.



I agree, I didn't know about internal strees on a leaner till a few months ago. I was at a my friends sawmill dumping off wood for his grinder to make mulch . They were sawing a small oak with a bandsaw mill and that tree was a leaner . As they were making that first cut the slab was litterally lifting off the log as they were sawing. Trees like that don't make really good lumber.


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## john taliaferro (Sep 16, 2011)

Cherry is good in the smoker also so save the scraps , and use a lot of black pepper ,ribs,and tenderloin , turkey breast .


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## tomsteve (Sep 16, 2011)

i think its junk and shoud be bucked to 8' lengths and shipped to the tomsteve foundation, a non profit woodworking foundation!!:jester:


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## smokinj (Sep 16, 2011)

Mill it! As long as it is would make nice hutchs!


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## burningwood (Sep 16, 2011)

*Coup*



smokinj said:


> Mill it! As long as it is would make nice hutchs!


 
How is the chicken coup coming? 


bw


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## qbilder (Sep 16, 2011)

Mill it. That first 6' with the bulge & curve will likely have some broad curly figure on the quartered boards. The rest looks like great saw logs. Doesn't look like it has been leaning long so it might not be so stressed yet.


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## zopi (Sep 16, 2011)

If you have trouble finding a local portable bandsaw operator, go to woodmizer.com...they have a locator fo rsawyers...I would imagine the other manufacturers do too, but since I refuse to own any color sawmill but orange, that is what I know...if $$$ are a problem, alot of sawyers will saw on shares, I know I will for cherry, or walnut in particular...rates should be going around .25 to .35 cents a bdft..probably be a setup fee...


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## thepheniox (Sep 17, 2011)

It's hard to tell from the picture but has the tree fallen over or did it grow like that? If it grew like that I think it would not be worth milling. I milled a white oak that grew leaning like that. As it milled you could see it curve off the saw. I milled it into 1 by 6 inch boards that were about 10 feet long. I used it as decking boards and had to resaw the boards to make them straight after air drying for 2 years. Some of the 6 inch wide boards turned out about 2.5 inches wide after I cut the curve out of them. I would look at the heart of the tree when you cut it down. If it's in the center I'd mill it. If was way off center I'd make firewood.


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## smokinj (Sep 17, 2011)

burningwood said:


> How is the chicken coup coming?
> 
> 
> bw



Almost there got 25 bails of straw drop off Friday....Making a 8x8 run this weekend and I am walking away form it...lol it on the gf after that.

She got everything she needs to be a chicken farmer, now its back to the big saws for me! YEA


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## Talltom (Sep 17, 2011)

I don't understand the reticence about milling this tree, unless you've got 5 other cherry trees waiting to be milled. You've already got a saw mill. You might end up with a lot of some fancy firewood, but you've only wasted a couple hours of your time and a little fuel. The potential rewards are great, especially for slabs out of the lower gnarly part. 

You can successfully mill logs with reaction wood or their hearts off center into boards if you keep track of up and down. If you're sawing horizontally, you want to have the log in the same position it was in when it was standing (or 180 degrees off.) This would put the shortest distance between the heart and the bark either at the top or bottom. Sawing this way will reduce warp and the warp you get will be bow, the easiest to deal with in thinner and narrower lumber. If you cut boards at 90 degrees to this, you will get crook, which is what the pheniox ended up with, requiring him to rip the boards to get a straight edge. If the boards had been bowed, the deck fasteners would probably have been sufficient to hold the boards flat. The remainder of the log may bow as you cut boards off, but if you're using an Alaskan mill or similar, this will not affect the thickness of the boards, since you can reference off the previous cut. Stack and dry your boards full width, so you can take care of any crook when edging them.

For slabs from the bottom 6 ft, saw them the opposite way, since bow is a much bigger problem for thicker slabs and you you want curved edges anyway. Curved, live edge slabs make attractive benches and shelves and they can be built with a minimum of woodworking skill. Just replace those plain, store bought 1x boards you have on the cinder blocks with some 1.5 x 12 cherry slabs, or cut the narrower outermost slabs to length to use as uprights. Screw through the slab into the end of the upright, countersink and plug the holes and, voila, an attractive and unique shelf or bench.


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