milling apple

[davetaz]

I have a piece of apple just over 7ft long and 13" down to 8" diameter.

Has anybody milled any apple? if so is it useful for anything in particular?

We have a logosol M7 to mill it on

[Lazurus]

I find the fruit woods are very prone to splitting, even when sealed and stored correctly......

 

Either that or I am no good at it. lol.

[Squaredy]

Apple is a very dense fine grained timber, a bit plain maybe.  One option is to simply split the log down the middle and let it season as two pieces and then woodturners will be able to buy half round pieces about a foot long which will be a nice bowl size and shape.  Splitting it down the middle should minimise other splitting, especially if you don't cut it to short pieces.  Might even be worth selling green - a lot of wood turners turn unseasoned woods.

[ucoulddoit]

In my experience apple tends to distort appreciably when drying which I believe is due to the radial and tangential shrinkage rates being quite different. This can increase the tendency for thick pieces to split. The first photo below is a stack of 3 inch thick planks, max 20 inches wide which have dried well apart from the significant cupping and no splits of any consequence. This was one of three similar sized large apple trees which I used to experiment with different methods of conversion. The other two were cut into smaller sections and there is much less distortion, no splits and there will be less wastage. Incidently I make furniture rather than using my timber for turning.

 

The next photo shows how I 'milled' a very short length from an apple tree about a foot diameter. I thought I was going to collect a nice long trunk but arrived to find a pile of logs .....! The timber dried fine with virtualy no wasteage. Third photo is a short bit of burr apple with massive distortion, but will be good for small stuff.

 

Last two pictures are a plum tree, max 15 inches diameter which like apple has  reputation for distortion and splits.  It was milled in a similar way to the small apple log by using an alaskan mill to split the trunk in half followed by sawing into planks on a bandsaw. Touchwood it is air drying fine with no obvious defects appearing and looks really nice.

 

The previous post suggested just splitting the log lengthwise. That might work fine, but you could also cut the log into two lengths, halve one of them and quarter the other. I've a suspicion halving it may lead to splits which is less likely if quartered, although the quarter pieces will obviously be smaller.

 

Andrew

[Lazurus]

Never thought about using Duct Tape to stop warping, does it really help?

[ucoulddoit]

2 hours ago, Lazurus said:

Never thought about using Duct Tape to stop warping, does it really help?

It was just to hold the bundle together and probably too stretchy to have any real benefit. I've seen people using a banding machine to hold a boule of milled planks together. But although the bands start off tight, as the timbers shrink the tension in the bands goes. No substitute to lots of weight on top is my view to minimise distortion. I often use concrete breeze blocks or ratchet straps which can be periodically tightened.

 

Raises the question, would those wide apple planks have stayed flat with lots of weight on top? The stresses created might then have split the planks in half? So maybe it's a case of accepting either splits or distortion and accepting that big bits of Apple will inevitably create more waste? I'm happy to accept the waste in those wide planks as I'll still be able to get some thinner, 20inch wide planks of Apple which I doubt I'd be able to get anywhere?

 

Andrew

[Lazurus]

Phew, thought I had missed a trick there

[Mike Dempsey]

I always use ratchet straps with stainless steel fittings when drying timber in the kiln. I open up the kiln after about 4 weeks and retighten them if necessary. My wide boards always stay pretty flat and I don't get a lot of splitting in them.

 

Mike