This log was from a tree that was already down when I bought my property. It was one of the first trees I cut up for firewood, but the trunk was too big to handle for my 18" Echo at the time. So there was a little over 5' of that left. It's one of the biggest pieces I've got, and I needed my new 36" milling setup to handle it. All of the slabs are about 25" wide. My first 2 squaring cuts were about 6" thick at the butt of the log. I still plan to saw a couple of 1-1/2" slabs from those. I took 2 2" slabs, and then 2 4-1/4" slabs, the first right through the heart. Brought the rest up to the house, and then took 2 more 2" slabs from the remainder.
Yeah - I'm thinking a table top or two from the 2" slabs, and some leg stock from the center-cut 4" ones.
There was a good amount of meat left in the slabs produced from my first 2 squaring cuts. So I worked on those tonight: I took another 1-1/2" slab from each of them.
They look pretty. Just trying to imagine how nice those would look with a 400 grit sanding and a few coats of hand rubbed varnish.
I finished sawing up the 4" slabs over the weekend. These were the center cut pieces, and I wanted to saw them again, 90 degrees to the heart. I stood them both on edge on my milling stumps, and set up the length guide again to remove the bark edge. Sawed through the heart, and the smaller pieces ended up at 7-1/4. So now they're basically quarter sawn with face grain on 4 sides. Maple reveals a lot of "ray flecking" when sawn this way - my camera really can't do it any justice.
