Today's milling

[Mr. Ed]

Baby's first hardwood: a 2 metre length of hedgerow oak. I tried to clean the bark as much as I could, but obviously not enough. Stair treads for our rebuild, here we come. (I hope).

[Khriss]

Nicely done and no fencing wire 🙂 K

[AJStrees]

What use do you have in mind for the alder, if you don't mind my asking? I have a couple of fair-sized ones in my inbox.

To be fair, I felled it as it was hanging out along a path, so decided it would be nice to try milling it. So long story short. No plan yet.

And you?

[Mr. Ed]

No plans, but I'm very interested because oddly we have a very healthy 1 acre plantation of it - only ten years old but going like a train. It was planted quite widely here in Ireland recently (as well as thriving on river banks and hedgerows and so on). It seems that its principal virtue is that it's easy to work and fairly light in weight. It's neither strong nor durable, which is why it typically has such a bad reputation. 

 

I'd love to find a use for it in our house restoration we're having a go at - it seems like joinery is the best hope - it's too soft to use as floorboards. Come to think of it our architect has just specified vertical tongue and groove (very tight so you can hardly see the lines) for the interior walls instead of plasterboard, and it might work very well for that if we could get enough of it together. 

 

Because there's quite a lot of it in a similar stage as ours, there is some work going on to try and find markets for it here - 

 

Exploitation of small diameter alder - Teagasc | Agriculture and Food Development Authority

WWW.TEAGASC.IE

 

[Mr. Ed]

32 minutes ago, Khriss said:

Nicely done and no fencing wire 🙂 K

Thank you Khriss - I think I've got to go back in fiddle with my wheels, for the blade seems to have developed an upward slop - as it comes out of the wood I can no longer just wheel it back, but have to raise the head - that only mean that the blade is cutting at an angle I think. I've got one more similar to do, which will probably give me just not quite enough for the staircase. Ha!

 

[Mr. Ed]

3 hours ago, AJStrees said:

To be fair, I felled it as it was hanging out along a path, so decided it would be nice to try milling it. So long story short. No plan yet.

And you?

 

Interestingly, though it's soft, it's a little less soft than pine, which of course is used for floorboards all the time - here's a picture of a very sexy alder floor

 

[AJStrees]

 
Interestingly, though it's soft, it's a little less soft than pine, which of course is used for floorboards all the time - here's a picture of a very sexy alder floor
 

That’s very nice indeed. Well I’ve got bits and bobs around. Maybe one day some alder floor boards.

[Mr. Ed]

apparently one of the reasons woodworkers like it is that it stains very well - so that floor is faked up a bit to look

likesomething more expensive, but hey!

[Paul in the woods]

3 hours ago, Mr. Ed said:

Because there's quite a lot of it in a similar stage as ours, there is some work going on to try and find markets for it here - 

 

Exploitation of small diameter alder - Teagasc | Agriculture and Food Development Authority

WWW.TEAGASC.IE

 

That's interesting, I've got a few acres of alder about the same size as the logs in your link. I've milled a little and it seems fairly stable.

 

I'm planning on using some for floor boards and some for shelving. Offcuts are nice to cook over.

[Mr. Ed]

what diamter Paul?