Craigslist win!

[TSRuff]

I put an ad up on Craigslist offering to take hardwoods off people's hands if they had already dropped the tree and just needed to get rid of the wood. Besides a couple of crazy people saying they had huge trees 3" from their house that I can have if I drop them I had a couple of legitimate responses, including one from a guy with a fairly good sized red elm just 10 minutes from my house.

Headed down there on Valentine's day (I have a very understanding wife) with low expectations, but ended up with a pretty good haul. Took away 12 boards 1 1/4" x 28" x 7' and 8 boards 1 1/4" x 22" x 11'. Beautiful wood that looks like cedar when freshly cut but quickly looses its red color and washes out. Hoping that with a coat of polyurethane on it that the color will come back, but even if it doesn't it still has great grain.

 

[Andrew96]

Nice job...what..... the guy just had it sitting around and didn't want to do anything with it? What's the story..why was it for sale in the first place?

 

[BobL]

That is one sweet little score!

 

[TSRuff]

Nice job...what..... the guy just had it sitting around and didn't want to do anything with it? What's the story..why was it for sale in the first place?

Not even for sale... the tree had been dieing a slow death and he finally had it dropped by a tree service a couple of weeks ago as it was overhanging some power lines. He was just going to cut it up for firewood and put it out at the end of his driveway for people to take.

I gave him a couple of each size of boards as he was looking to have a new desk top put together, but otherwise they were free.

Besides cutting through two nails that snuck past my metal detector (lost two cutters) and then a bullet(!) it all went pretty smoothly.

 

[Andrew96]

OH....hmm...seems I got it wrong. So you 'picked up' a free tree...a nice red elm..took it home and milled it....then took photos. I guess I'm a bit thick. Nice score. Bullet eh? Geez. Well...still a score.

 

[Can8ianTimber]

Hey that looks just like the elm I cut up a couple years ago. I started out really dark when green and got really light when dried and ended up somewhere in the middle when it was finished. Here are 3 pictures of the color transformations.

Green Slab

Dry Slab

Finished

 

[Sawyer Rob]

Good for you, you ended up with some nice looking lumber out of that deal!

Rob

 

[Brmorgan]

Nice stuff!

So how is Elm to work with anyway? I remember as a kid when we were still back in Ontario, the guys used to cut Elm for firewood up at the cottage since Dutch Elm Disease had wiped an awful lot of them out in the 50s-70s. I remember they had a sonuvab**** time splitting the stuff because the grain was so tight and all over the place and quite fibrous; it would never just split in a nice straight line like good Birch firewood etc. would.

 

[mikeb1079]

sounds familiar

Besides a couple of crazy people saying they had huge trees 3" from their house that I can have if I drop them

ha! classic. i've experienced about the same thing. i posted on craigs that i'd donate free labor to any project in exchange for a tree trunk or two for milling. the first response i got was a fella who said i could have a walnut tree in his front yard if i took it down. it was about 10' from his house and boxed in on all sides by high voltage lines! i said thanks but no thanks.

anyways, good score. i've not worked with elm yet but it looks really cool.

 

[BlueRider]

Nice stuff!

So how is Elm to work with anyway? I remember as a kid when we were still back in Ontario, the guys used to cut Elm for firewood up at the cottage since Dutch Elm Disease had wiped an awful lot of them out in the 50s-70s. I remember they had a sonuvab**** time splitting the stuff because the grain was so tight and all over the place and quite fibrous; it would never just split in a nice straight line like good Birch firewood etc. would.

It machines well but is murder on blades, bits, and knives. It is so hard on plander knives that I converted a set of knives to a york pitch just for working elm. It sands nicely and takes a finish well. As a furniture wood I like it alot.

Red elm is one of the harder of the elms while siberian is not nearly as hard the odd thing is that if you are carful in sellecting boards from each type you could use both is the same project and no one would be the wiser.

Elm has interlocking grain which means it is resistant to spliting. This same quality also makes so that you can send it through the planer in just about any direction with little noticeable difference.

 

[julian 1973]

I had a 36" american elm milled a few years back and I built a solar kiln to dry it. I have mostly 18" wide boards that all dried flat and with no end checking at all. I guess American elm is different than red because it planes with much less fuss than white oak, and it stays flat.

 

[Andrew96]

It machines well but is murder on blades, bits, and knives. It is so hard on plander knives that I converted a set of knives to a york pitch just for working elm.

So what is a "york pitch". A set of angles on your blades?

 

[TSRuff]

Hey that looks just like the elm I cut up a couple years ago. I started out really dark when green and got really light when dried and ended up somewhere in the middle when it was finished. Here are 3 pictures of the color transformations.

Thanks for the pics... now I have a good idea of what the finished product will actually look like.

It machines well but is murder on blades, bits, and knives. It is so hard on plander knives that I converted a set of knives to a york pitch just for working elm. It sands nicely and takes a finish well. As a furniture wood I like it alot.

Red elm is one of the harder of the elms while siberian is not nearly as hard the odd thing is that if you are carful in sellecting boards from each type you could use both is the same project and no one would be the wiser.

Elm has interlocking grain which means it is resistant to spliting. This same quality also makes so that you can send it through the planer in just about any direction with little noticeable difference.

Good to know as well, I've never worked with elm before so it was a bit of a gamble, but looks like it will pay off.

 

[TraditionalTool]

So what is a "york pitch". A set of angles on your blades?

York pitch is the angle of the blade/cutting-edge for a specific edge tool, like a hand plane. It is what was considered to be a decent angle for edge tools in days of lore...however, some companies such as Lie-Nielsen offer steeper pitch to handle more difficult grain or figured woods, such as curly or flamed wood.

The York Pitch is 50 degrees I believe, and 55 degrees or even 60 degrees seems to work better on woods that exhibit tear out in unusual figure patterns where the grain is running in different directions.

As a rule of thumb, York Pitch is a good place to start, and if you are getting tear out, taking the pitch up 5 - 10 degrees could help that situation, and if all else fails, use a scraper in the worst scenario.

EDIT: I should add that this pitch is primarily for bevel-down (traditional) hand planes. A bevel-up design allows one to change the angle of which the bevel is sharpened, which directly effects the cutting angle, since the flat side is on the bottom and fixed. Since bevel down blades have the flat side on top, you need to change the angle of the blade itself. Clear as mud? lol

 

[Andrew96]

York pitch is the angle of the blade/cutting-edge for a specific edge tool, like a hand plane. It is what was considered to be a decent angle for edge tools in days of lore...however, some companies such as Lie-Nielsen offer steeper pitch to handle more difficult grain or figured woods, such as curly or flamed wood.

The York Pitch is 50 degrees I believe, and 55 degrees or even 60 degrees seems to work better on woods that exhibit tear out in unusual figure patterns where the grain is running in different directions.

As a rule of thumb, York Pitch is a good place to start, and if you are getting tear out, taking the pitch up 5 - 10 degrees could help that situation, and if all else fails, use a scraper in the worst scenario.

EDIT: I should add that this pitch is primarily for bevel-down (traditional) hand planes. A bevel-up design allows one to change the angle of which the bevel is sharpened, which directly effects the cutting angle, since the flat side is on the bottom and fixed. Since bevel down blades have the flat side on top, you need to change the angle of the blade itself. Clear as mud? lol

Yup...the mud is clear today. Nice explanation. Don't see how I can alter the cutting angles on my jointer though. I think it should be called a bevel up design but the cutting angle is fixed, Non adjustable blade angle. The bevel has no affect on the cutting angle. Only affects the strength or longevity of the cutting edge...well..as far as I understand.

 

[TraditionalTool]

Yup...the mud is clear today. Nice explanation. Don't see how I can alter the cutting angles on my jointer though. I think it should be called a bevel up design but the cutting angle is fixed, Non adjustable blade angle. The bevel has no affect on the cutting angle. Only affects the strength or longevity of the cutting edge...well..as far as I understand.

Andrew,

Is this a hand jointer, IOW, a Stanley No. 8 or similar? Those are all bevel down if so. You would need to change the angle of the frog, which the blade rests on, in order to change the cutting angle. If you visualize how the edge of the blade protrudes from the bottom of the plane, the flat side is on top and it never changes no matter what degree you sharpen the bevel at, this is why you can't change the bevel easily.

Also, if you refer to a power jointer, those are also bevel down, for all intents and purpose of this discussion. The reason is that the flat side of the blades are held against the back of the head slots, so you could only change the angle of the bevel which will never change the cutting angle, only the acute angle of the edge. The flat is fixed and rotates with the head, but stays in the same angle to the back wall, or 90 degrees. In order to change the pitch on a power jointer, you would need to change the angle of the slot itself, similar to how you would need to change the actual angle of the frog on a hand jointer. Power jointers are a different beast and they spin faster than one would cut with on a hand plane, but they still tear out and that does have to do with the figure, amount of wood taking off, and the sharpness of the blades.

For a bevel up jointer (Stanley 62 or similar modern Lie-Nielsen or Lee Valley or equivalent) the flat back of the blade is down, so as the bevel angle changes it directly effects the cutting angle of the edge. On these planes it is easy to change the cutting angle, just resharpen the blade on the angle desired in relation to the bed angle, which is typically about 12 degrees.

Lie-Nielsen does offer different frogs for some of their bevel down designed hand planes. They offered those so you could get a higher cutting angle than York Pitch, and offer 55 degree and 60 degree frogs for those planes.

 

[BobL]

For a bevel up jointer (Stanley 62 or similar modern Lie-Nielsen or Lee Valley or equivalent) the flat back of the blade is down, so as the bevel angle changes it directly effects the cutting angle of the edge. On these planes it is easy to change the cutting angle, just resharpen the blade on the angle desired in relation to the bed angle, which is typically about 12 degrees.

When I make bevel up plane blades I often make a set with slightly different bevel angles - like this.

 

[TraditionalTool]

When I make bevel up plane blades I often make a set with slightly different bevel angles - like this.

Bob,

Very nice! I have a Lie-Nielsen Low Angle Bevel Up Jack, it is one of my favorite hand planes to use. I have 3 blades, but one is a toothed blade, and for difficult grain it works remarkably well, and it will leave small ridges that can then be taken down with a smoother.

I haven't made any of my own planes yet, but do make my own handsaws by milling the backs and split-nuts. I need to keep myself from making all my tools so I can spend more time working on the log house...lol

Are those blades O1 or D2? (or something else?) They look like O1...how do you temper yours? Those bevels look ground on a wheel as they look to be hollow ground, which is typically the results of a grinding wheel. Nice thick blades, I like that.

 

[matt9923]

Got any pictures of you milling setup, I'm thinking about making one.

 

[BobL]

Got any pictures of you milling setup, I'm thinking about making one.

Who are you talking to here matt?

Bob,
Very nice! I have a Lie-Nielsen Low Angle Bevel Up Jack, it is one of my favorite hand planes to use.

Me too.

I haven't made any of my own planes yet, but do make my own handsaws by milling the backs and split-nuts. I need to keep myself from making all my tools so I can spend more time working on the log house...lol

That all sounds very familiar!
Here's a combo pic of stuff I made in 2006 before I got really distracted by milling

Worse still is making tools to make tools.

Are those blades O1 or D2? (or something else?) They look like O1...how do you temper yours? Those bevels look ground on a wheel as they look to be hollow ground, which is typically the results of a grinding wheel. Nice thick blades, I like that.

They are M2 - the bevels were ground using a water cooled green stone surface grinder at work.

It has micron level vertical adjustment.

I have worked with some O1 - here's a link to a post about some O1 plane makers floats I made a couple of years ago.