Sorry I forgot to ask about it today. I think he's gonna be back Monday and Tuesday evening. We cut up three logs today - maple, cherry, and ash; 263.8 board feet total. Beating the Doyle scale estimate by about 1/3. I didn't get any decent videos cause I was scrambling a bit to get adjusted to the work flow. I'll try to get some next time. He's got a pretty clever dust collection setup - he hangs a 5 gallon bucket on the dust chute which tags along for the ride. We'll use some for the compost bin and the rest will end up as fill for the trails.
Looking GREAT man! You may want to put some stickers in the bottom long rows under where the shorter rows end to support the longer boards and keep them from bending. How much circulation you getting there? You might want to put a fan on the pile for the first week or so if it is not getting adequate ventilation. Judgment call. I can't wait to keep watching that pile grow. That is some tasty lumber for sure. It's awesome to live vicariously while my foot is healing and I'm stuck inside. Keep up the good work and pictures. BTW, I'm no expert on these things and I sure don't want to sound like I'm nit picking. Just trying to help a brother out. Feel free to ignore me.
Great Shawn! I see you decided to put the lumber on the trailer then move it to where you want it stacked. Good call. Good call with mike bayerl to advising on those extra stickers. That I would do for sure. It may not be needed but if it is needed but not done you might break a leg kicking yourself. Time to get Amie behind that camera! Or your Dad or sister.
Oh not at all Mike, I do appreciate the input. I usually do add the extra stickers in a mixed length stack. Unfortunately this is a "temporary" stack anyhow. Theres a 14' cherry on deck that's actually going on the bottom of this stack. Not totally wasted work as I catalogued them all and marked the book matched pieces for sequence and orientation.
BTW, nice cherry you got there. I can't see any sap streaks and just a couple knots. Most of the cherry around here has sap streaking so it's not really considered for commercial logging. Of course you are up in God's country for cherry, i.e. N.W. PA up into W. NY. Best cherry wood on the planet there.
Pure white Ash! It's like maple I wish it would stay white!!! For the dimesnonal stuff are you going to saw for shrinkage? When I do more valuable wood like cherry or hard maple I run the calcuator and look for grain orientation tangenialy and radially. I don't think it's worth it for pine?
I agree with you on the ash, and this is the whitest stuff I've come across. But the heartwood is my favorite part in the red maple. I'm not sure what your saying with the tangential vs radial. We didn't check for a widest chord or anything to maximize yield, but the cherry seemed pretty perfectly round. I asked him to try to optimize for the widest boards possible. So basically he took a skim cut and then a live edge board from each side, till it was basically square, then the rest was just flat sawn. For the pine, I'll probably have him go for full dimension I.E. 2"x4" if I want a 2x4. If I read the national grading rules correctly, I actually need to surface the lumber to make no 2 grade.
Cool project. Just a question on drying this stuff...can you avoid getting checking/cracks in the wood as it dries?
There's a lot of things you can do to try to prevent it. Seal the ends of the logs with paint or AnchorSeal, or slice them right away after cutting to length. Sticker and stack it level soon after and keep the outermost stickers very close to the ends of the boards. Nice clear, straight logs will have less of an issue than ones containing knots or other "features". Any board containing the pith of the log will surely crack no matter what you do.
