First Foray into Milling

[Chainsaw Bandito]

I grew up on the "a black walnut tree can pay for your college" folk tales thanks to pops. He did some woodworking and turned me onto the hobby. No one in the family ever actually milled a tree though.

Fast forward 30 years and my first home purchase had a great looking walnut (English I believe based on the nuts) outside. I knew it was sick and would have to be taken down and that happened last year after enjoying it for about 7.

I knew I wanted to mill it so that was my push to get an Alaskan mill and a G660. I'm about 40% through it and getting to the trunk. I used this site for alot of the research and prep. Thought you guys might like some pics.

Feel free to comment, question, roast, or otherwise make a spectacle of my efforts. Any advice is always welcome.

 

[Coralillo Lo Pro]

Looks good. Only problem with that kind of tree which I run into with most of our similar shaped trees here in south Texas - short big trunks, crown sprawls twistedly all over - is it's hard to get particularly valuable or useful slabs from a lot of them. For the most part I just mill the trunks and ignore the rest. I did mill the big limbs of a huge cottonwood for mantels and smaller narrower tables like entry tables and the like, but the limbs were reasonably straight and consistent width. I see a lot of folks cut live edge slabs like those irregular three phallic shaped pieces, and as a woodworker I'm never quite sure what you can do with that. Bit of a disconnect often between what looks good to people milling and what looks good and useful to a woodworker. Only so much you can do with totally irregular live edge slabs. They look real cool when you mill them, but when you need to turn them into something functional they often don't work.

 

[Chainsaw Bandito]

As I have progressed through the tree I agree. Leading into this I was aware of the demand for live edge slabs and thought it might be an easy market to move a few pieces. Now in the learning process I believe the couple good live edge pieces I may just hold onto.

I also had the idea of doing mantels. Its something that would sell here in the Northeast easily I believe.

What I'm inclined to now is rails/styles for doors. Seeing what is coming out I could realistically get a few doors possibly minus the panels. I have a contact with a shaper and joiner that may be interested in working on this. The remainder I'm thinking monastery style benches.

Made a little progress this week. Gonna take an evening to look over the saw. Only a few more miscellaneous pieces from the canopy left before the trunk.

 

[Coralillo Lo Pro]

What I'm inclined to now is rails/styles for doors. Seeing what is coming out I could realistically get a few doors possibly minus the panels. I have a contact with a shaper and joiner that may be interested in working on this. The remainder I'm thinking monastery style benches.

Good call on the rails and stiles. There's a lot of pieces you can get out of that which are good for that kind of thing. I have to use my imagination a little sometimes, thinking beyond conventional kind of table pieces to remember how many different things can be made from nice wood. I've salvaged short thick slabs from so many rounds cut by tree services because I didn't want to waste the wood, and can usually come up with a purpose for them sooner or later. Or cut a lot of them into uniform small blocks for bowl turners, etc. Little turning blocks of English walnut sell for $15-30 if you can find buyers. Mantels are definitely a great use of big limbs as you don't need a lot of width, and have to imagine walnut mantels would command good money. Mesquite mantels here get big dollars. Most folks discover there's not that big a market for slabs but formally trimmed pieces for specific purposes can find buyers. Especially a prized wood like walnut.

 

[chunky]

I see a lot of folks cut live edge slabs like those irregular three phallic shaped pieces, and as a woodworker I'm never quite sure what you can do with that. Bit of a disconnect often between what looks good to people milling and what looks good and useful to a woodworker. Only so much you can do with totally irregular live edge slabs. They look real cool when you mill them, but when you need to turn them into something functional they often don't work.

I rip those in different widths to make tables. Cut them to any length/width you want for legs, shelves, bracing, etc.

 

[Coralillo Lo Pro]

I rip those in different widths to make tables. Cut them to any length/width you want for legs, shelves, bracing, etc.

Yeah, I don't mind milling odd shaped pieces like that, I just never leave them whole. The widest part I cut off to use for short wider tables or whatever, and the narrower parts I trim like you say for legs/shelves/bracing. Often I'll roughly chainsaw trim off anything on the sides before I mill it that I'm not likely to keep in the end, just so I don't need to use a larger bar than necessary or do more milling work than I have to. I work with mesquite a lot that varies a lot in width and rarely stays straight for more than 3-4', so I have to constantly figure out how to make the most out of logs so I don't waste a ton of wood trimming them into straight pieces. Have endless 1-3' pieces of trimmed mesquite of different thicknesses and width now as a result, not a bad problem to have. Thought for awhile I had to know what its purpose was and keep trying to make things from all of it, but finally accepted it's great just to have a huge stock of it for future projects.