Sawing Some Walnut

[john taliaferro]

Wow nice pile of Walnut ,did the nails trash the band or just dull a few teeth . Nice setup .

 

[tjbier]

Nice stack of walnut Rob! If that were on a box store lumber rack or at a lumber yard all that lumber would be about $1000:msp_ohmy:
Makes paying for mills awful quick. Hope I can get some jobs going where I can use/charge for using my own lumber.:msp_thumbup:

As you can see, i'm starting to get a very nice stack of walnut, and many of the boards are clear and wide!!

I'm getting the best lumber out of this tree that i can, and i still have some limbs to deal with too...

Rob

 

[Sawyer Rob]

Wow nice pile of Walnut ,did the nails trash the band or just dull a few teeth . Nice setup .

Nails like that rarely ruin a band, but you can be sure the sharpness is gone. I don't hit trash all that often, so it really isn't a huge deal, if it's a customers logs, then they have to pay for a resharp or new band. It only takes 5 minutes or even less than that to change out a band...

Rob

 

[mikeb1079]

that's a awful nice stack of walnut. nice work. one of next years mill projects is a winch log turner similar to the norwood. that looks pretty slick.

 

[qbilder]

Beautiful stack of walnut!!! I had a nail scare a few weekends ago milling a maple. Saw the shiny exposed flash of metal & just knew it was time to swap blades, but fortunately for me it was lead, a .22 long rifle slug :smile2:

 

[Sawyer Rob]

Thanks guys,

Here's how i dealt with the bigger limbs,

Now it's time to mill up the bigger limbs on the walnut tree that was given to me... So, i loaded one of them on the mill,

I decided seeing it was so small, i'd leave the curve in it... Perhaps i can fit that curve into a design of what ever i make out of it?

The next limb has a big crook in it, so i had to make a decision on how to cut it to fit on the mill,

and opened it, sawing it into 5/4 boards...

Then i loaded another piece on the mill...

And started milling it into 5/4 lumber too...

 

[Sawyer Rob]

As you can see, this last piece is too short to go on two bunks at once... In that case, i use one of the hydraulic toe boards to hold one end up...

Then opened it up, and started taking boards off...

Well, here's the tally from the limbs that i sawed. As you can see, i sawed one board at 10/4...

So, now it's time to get all of the walnut i've sawn from this tree, properly stickered and covered. So, i pick up the whole stack and move it to where it will be untill it's air dryed!

I then restacked the whole pile with the "best" boards in lower part of the stack. That puts the "most" weight on the "best" boards, helping them to dry flatter for the best quality possible!

And, isn't it fitting that a nice walnut tree has come up right by my stack of walnut???

That's it for this tree, other than a few short pieces i'll square up and dry for turning squares...

Rob

 

[Can8ianTimber]

Nice Thread SR. I am glad I am not the only one that hits nails. Last week I hit 6 nails in a single pass in the last 2 feet of the log. We put a new band on dropped down 4" since we were cutting 8/4 lumber hoping we would get down below the nails. Ran into another 2 nails on that pass with a brand new band. We cut off a section of about 2.5' of the end of the log and kept cutting. We did not end up hitting any more metal after that. At the end of the day I was wondering if I was going to make more money by taking the metal I hit to the metal recycler than the value I came up with in lumber. I love milling but hitting metal is frustrating.

 

[Sawyer Rob]

My worse day, ruining 2 bands on one log, was milling a really "nice" oak that had TWO glass insulators in it! lol One band was an older band, no big deal, BUT the other one was the second pass on a NEW band! :msp_ohmy:

That's a rare occurance for me, and really not too bad, especially when you consider how long i've been sawing...

Rob

 

[Mike Williams]

That's some nice lumber. Thanks for sharing the pics

 

[peterrum]

Nice thread going through your milling of the whole tree and good job on stickering and stacking.

 

[RedArrow]

In your pic here, with the shorter boards on top and the end stickers don't have them under all the way down...View attachment 215080
Is this ok? Depending on the thickness of the boards I suppose? Have I been wasting stickers by lining them all the way down?

 

[Talltom]

When I put short boards on top with stickers that fall between the rows below, I'll add stickers for 1-4 layers below as well, depending on the distance to the existing row and board thickness, but not all the way to the bottom. This uses the stiffness of several boards to support the end of the short top boards. If you don't add stickers below, the top board will put pressure on the end sticker and bow the board below when you weight the stack if the top board is bowed up in the middle at all. It's easy enough to add stickers to a couple layers, but it becomes impractical to add them further down due to the weight of the stack. When in doubt, use a sticker.

 

[Lookin4lunkers]

Awesome thread, thank you for sharing

 

[Sawyer Rob]

In your pic here, with the shorter boards on top and the end stickers don't have them under all the way down...
Is this ok? Depending on the thickness of the boards I suppose? Have I been wasting stickers by lining them all the way down?

Thanks guys!

I got away with it "this time" because the lower boards were dryer and stiffer and able to take the load above. If the shorter boards add enough weight to cause bowing, then it should not be done...

In time, i'll pull those short boards off and add to the stack, so it's really not a problem...

Rob

 

[RedArrow]

Sounds good guys, thanks for the tips!

 

[Dave Boyt]

Metal in wood

I've tried some of the bi-metal blades (Norwood carries them for their mills), and they don't even slow down when they hit a nail. Only problem is that they are expensive, stiffer, and don't cut as smoothly as the regular steel blades. I just keep a couple for logs like your walnut. Of course, I don't know there's metal in it until I've hit it with a regular blade. I've got to get a metal detector one of these days. Unfortunately, a metal detector wouldn't have picked up the ceramic insulator I tried to cut in half a few months ago... but the bi-metal blade probably wouldn't have fared well, either.

 

[john taliaferro]

Thats some nice lumber and one mean tractor . Thanks for posting .

 

[Sawyer Rob]

Dave,

I've never tried those bands, the price has driven me off! lol I do use bi-metal bands on my band saw in my shop though, and they are GREAT!

John,

Did i mention that i LOVE my tractor! lol It's just so handy and will do so many different jobs!

Other tools for loading logs ect. around the mill, are just too specialized, a tractor is just plain a "do it all" and that allows you to make more money with it.

Thanks guys, glad you liked the pict. show!

Rob

 

[Can8ianTimber]

WOW. I am getting some serious tractor envy. I had a MF 1240 for a while and I liked it but it was too small for log yard support and too heavy for mowing my grass(I only have 5 acers). A guy I know has a bandmill with a seriously wide cut capacity and he cuts with a 4" band that has really soft teeth. He said that the harder the metal is the harder it is to get it really sharp. It makes sence. I heard the same thing from the salesmen at Carbide Chainsaw Chain -- Longest lasting carbide chainsaw chain! Rapco Industries when I was researching about carbide chainsaw chain for the CSM. They said it would go through anything but you could never get it as sharp as a regular chain.