Milling a biggish Oak log

 As my wife will confirm bigger is usually best …

… unless it’s too big to handle in which case it if  you don’t have the gear to quarter it or lift it to transport it to a big saw mill you may as I have in the past er passed on it!

Anyway, the one I’m going to talk about today was too heavy at about 2 tons for my tractor and little sawmill so ended up at my mate Ant’s yard. Getting it on the sawmill with his 1970s road digger and good quality lifting strops was the easy bit. Another tip is to pick a beautiful Spring day – makes a lot of difference to the energy and enjoyment levels.

At 32″ diameter it was about 3″ too  …

… wide for the bandsaw throat to cut so we knew there would be some fettling ie trimming one side. We had a look to see if it could sit better and decided that Ant had it in the premier position first time and that the best and in fact only solution was to chainsaw a slab off the side facing in the picture.

This is a lot harder than it looks, it’s very easy to catch a bit of the metal so I delegated it to Ant and poured a cup of tea and took a picture … well  I’m older than him and I’m paying – albeit mate’s rates!

Tiring and time consuming though it was …

… it was exactly the right thing to do and once done it was just a question of reading the log and getting the best sized planks and as many book matched pairs as possible. I sell more 1.25″/30mm planks than anything so apart from a couple of pairs of 40mm that’s what we did.

We, well to be fair Ant gave a bit of thought to off loading the sawn planks the most efficient way so the trailer was positioned on the other side and I was able to lift and stack on my own.

As soon as the log reduces in size it …

… becomes obvious with experience to work out how to get the best quarter sawn boards without the aggro of true quartering which isn’t worth the waste and effort. Despite having many more years practice Ant is a much better sawyer than me and pays attention to the quality of the cut by placing a spirit level in several places during each cut. As it happened one resharpened blade did the whole log.

We’re about 60% through it on the above image …

… I ended up with about 12 pairs of book matched boards and a number of singles that I know will fly out the door when fully seasoned in about 18 months – especially with my prices! They are now neatly stacked by my bottom gate in my premier drying slot so you can have a sniff of them when you visit.

regards

Paul Goulden April 2023