My neighbor had a massive ash fall down last spring. No EAB damage - just ants. I saved the log and its been sitting in my pile since last summer. I finally decided how I wanted to mill it. I'm just going to cut out the 2 clear sections and leave the rest for firewood. I got about a 4' piece out of the top section and worked on that this weekend I made 2 live edge slabs 2" thick from the top and bottom slabs, and 2 4" thick slabs out of the center. I resawed those into 8 4x4 on my vertical bandsaw. I'm very happy with the way the 4x4s turned out. 4 of them contain sapwood, but have nice vertical grain. Of the center cut ones, 3 of them have face grain on all 4 sides, the other has it on 3.
Nice work there Shawn. do you have plans for those 4 X 4s? Just wondering why didn't you make some four quarter boards out of it?
Thanks! I'm really just kind of hoarding at this point. The dream is to eventually produce some fine furniture from all of it. I sort of consider all of this to be part of my self-teaching apprenticeship. I just tried to saw it for what I thought were the best quality pieces I could. So, I was thinking the center cuts could yield some really great material for leg stock, and I made those into 4x4s. After planning those out, I saw that I could yield 2 more 2" mostly heart slabs from the outer parts, and I figured the flat sawn grain orientation could make for some nice tops.
I still can, but they'll have to be 4" wide. Lately I like to saw the heart out 2 ways. A lot of the boxed heart pine I made earlier this summer is cracked badly. To me, ash is all about the straight grain, so I wanted to go for the 4 side face grain from the center cuts.
4 inches is just about perfect for laminating and making wider boards, less chance of cupping, alternating bark side up, bark side down will also help when edg gluing
That tractor makes your ash look big!!!! When I saw the shorter slabs, I was thinking "baseball" bats!!!! Nice work!!
Day 1 of my wood hoarding vacation - finishing up the hard maple. Part of the reason for working on the ash now was because I also needed the 36" mill, and I could use the same setups to work both logs at the same time. There were 3 4" thick, 5'10"L slabs that got similar treatment as the ash. Except with these I tried to leave as much wood as possible. I ended up with 4 6", 1 7", and 1 8". Hard Maple Total yield 3 live edge 8/4 7'3"L 19"Wavg 1 live edge 12/4 7'3"L 18" W 1 live edge 8/4 5'10"L 14"W 4 live edge 8/4 5'L 12"avg W 6 16/4 5'10"L 6"-8" W 4 24/4 8'3"L 6"W 3/4 cord firewood
Shawn Curry, how much surfacing will need to be done on your custom cut lumber? Do you employ a thickness planer, or a jointer/planer?
Man I am not one that regrets much in life,nor wanting or jealousy,BUT! you guys shure make me wish my back surgery wood have made me into a young man again.No hard feelings towards anyone cept myself for "breaking" my back all those years in the name of giving a honest days work for what was so often was a less then adiquit paycheck. Sometimes I think the youngsters these days that won't get off the couch N get a job are smarter then I ever was.THAT STUFF LOOKS GREAT MR. CURRY! Good for you,and God bless.Please work safe N stay well everyone,and Happy holidays to one and all.
My cuts have improving with practice, but it will still need some surfacing and squaring. Currently I have a DeWalt 13" thickness planer, and I use my router station for edge jointing. I have a solid carbide spiral bit and a shim for my out feed fence that I made from some laminate leftovers. That setup lets me joint pieces up to 2" thick. But a jointer is the next thing on the list, if I can manage to stop buying chainsaws. But for the wide slabs, I won't be able to justify the $40-50 thousand dollar machines capable of handling a 24" wide, 250lb slab. So ill be going old school on those and learning to work them with hand planes. I'm hoping to get a set of old Stanley's for Christmas. Here's some rough cut maple fresh off the band saw. It won't take much.
Going old school, eh? That's cool. Band saw is really doing well by you... Say, does the local high school have a Vocational dept or Ag shop that would have the big wood working equipment? The local one here used to offer shop time on Thursday nights to residents, don't know if they still do. Either way, your lumber is looking great!
Nice wood. I always appreciate when a log gets turned into lumber instead just fire wood. A load I bought for the cottage has a whole lot of birds eye maple and judging by the splits, I would say it came from an 18" to 24" log. That single log was probably worth as much as the whole load of fire wood. On another point, some custom millwork and cabinet places have a time saver machine that will do all 4 sides and sand the surface too. Usually it's pretty inexpensive to do a few boards.
