Today's milling

[lux]

9 hours ago, doobin said:

Finally got this big bastard roughed down with the 881 and then squared off on the mill. I was just planning to have a cant for posts, etc but there turned out to be some nice figuring. 
 

Found a use for the top already- an order for stair treads. £250 for a 60mm slice off the top. That pays for dragging the backhoe to site to get it loaded!

 

need to get myself a front quick hitch for that backhoe, would make it so much more useful to me. 

Nice looking board, £250 is pretty cheap even if it is green. 

He won't get many treads from one board, hopefully he will be back for one or 2 more 😀

 

I think I used 3 boards from a similar size trunk I milled to make my stair treads. Milled at 75mm for a finished thickness of 50mm with an 8mm steel plate under each one. Single stringer so needed to be stiff and I put hidden cantilevers into the treads to put into the wall.  Think I air dried mine for 6 years in the barn. pick sticked and weighed down. PVA on the ends and still got some wicked movement in the boards

Oak can be a cruel old mistress at times ..........

[Squaredy]

10 minutes ago, lux said:

, £250 is pretty cheap

I would like to know what you class as expensive!

[lux]

1 minute ago, Squaredy said:

I would like to know what you class as expensive!

If you were buying that board at WL West or English Woodlands both near Doobin and myself, a board like that air dried for 2 years would be around £400 plus vat with that character in it. Maybe 250 is fair all round if he's got to kiln it or wait a fair while to use it. 

[lux]

6 minutes ago, Squaredy said:

I would like to know what you class as expensive!

Maybe there is a fair regional difference in pricing on boards. Last one I bought was 16ft long about 800 wide I think and 65mm thick.  that cost me about 375 inc vat at Wests if I remember correctly.  

[ucoulddoit]

3 minutes ago, lux said:

Maybe there is a fair regional difference in pricing on boards. Last one I bought was 16ft long about 800 wide I think and 65mm thick.  that cost me about 375 inc vat at Wests if I remember correctly.  

Was just thinking it would be good to know the dimensions of that board and guessed it might be 4 or 5 cubic feet at most? So £250 for green timber doesn’t seem cheap to me. Maybe the board is bigger than it looks?

 

Andrew

[lux]

29 minutes ago, ucoulddoit said:

Was just thinking it would be good to know the dimensions of that board and guessed it might be 4 or 5 cubic feet at most? So £250 for green timber doesn’t seem cheap to me. Maybe the board is bigger than it looks?

 

Andrew

Not just the size of the board.  Also the grade of it.  It’s certainly a nice board in his picture.  I suspect it will move a fair bit around some of those features and require some serious thicknessing to flatten out when dry but that’s another matter.  
I’m sure Doobin will share some dimensions.  Fair size stick on the trailer in his picture.  No chance you’d buy it at that price in the mills around our neck of the woods, albeit they don’t sell green boards as far as I know. 

[Squaredy]

2 hours ago, lux said:

If you were buying that board at WL West or English Woodlands both near Doobin and myself, a board like that air dried for 2 years would be around £400 plus vat with that character in it. Maybe 250 is fair all round if he's got to kiln it or wait a fair while to use it. 

Yes I understand, but freshly cut oak is of course worth a lot less than two years seasoned.  And of course anybody experienced in buying oak will know that they always look lovely straight off the saw, but when they are dry they are usually bendy, twisty the grain is no longer visible and there may be cracks and shakes.

 

 

[doobin]

1 hour ago, lux said:

Not just the size of the board.  Also the grade of it.  It’s certainly a nice board in his picture.  I suspect it will move a fair bit around some of those features and require some serious thicknessing to flatten out when dry but that’s another matter.  
I’m sure Doobin will share some dimensions.  Fair size stick on the trailer in his picture.  No chance you’d buy it at that price in the mills around our neck of the woods, albeit they don’t sell green boards as far as I know. 

It’s 550mmx3100mmx70mm Will be supplied to the customer as 8no rough cut oversized 250mmx750mm stair treads, ends sealed. He’s going to bolt them on the steelwork and bring them back once a bit drier after finishing the refurb to run through the thicknesser before final trimming and cutting. Total cost £300.  

Edited February 29, 2024 by doobin

[lux]

9 hours ago, Squaredy said:

Yes I understand, but freshly cut oak is of course worth a lot less than two years seasoned.  And of course anybody experienced in buying oak will know that they always look lovely straight off the saw, but when they are dry they are usually bendy, twisty the grain is no longer visible and there may be cracks and shakes.

 

 

I agree, that board is going to move a lot and it won't be uniform in its movement either because of the features in it. Its got great potential but there's a huge amount of work in that board to resemble anything vaguely finished. Green boards like that I just mill my own and dry them, I only buy dry timber so that's the only pricing I have to go by. My own milled boards I just keep for myself. They are bloody expensive now even when only air dried but sometimes I just dont have what I need milled or dried.  If they have been kilned or twice kilned to get the moisture right for furniture etc they cost an arm and a leg at our local mills

[lux]

8 hours ago, doobin said:

It’s 550mmx3100mmx70mm Will be supplied to the customer as 8no rough cut oversized 250mmx750mm stair treads, ends sealed. He’s going to bolt them on the steelwork and bring them back once a bit drier after finishing the refurb to run through the thicknesser before final trimming and cutting. Total cost £300.  

Are they going indoors ??? Bolting them when green won't stop them moving, they will snap and pull bolts or the treads will split. They will twist steel plate when they move as well.  its quite phenomenal what green oak will move as it settles. Budget for some thicknesses blades. my treads rinsed through the blades. He will be looking at reducing them in thickness by 20 to 30 percent to get them flat when dried. do it evenly from both sides so the amount of material removed from either side is the same , they will likely move again if not as the moisture will pull out of the board at an uneven rate on either side.   Like I said earlier, I started at 75mm to achieve a finish of 50mm when dried. that was only just possible on a couple of the treads by a whisker.. 

 

Here's the staircase we built in my (still ongoing) self build. The treads have stainless rods internally that cantilever into the wall. I milled that oak 6 years prior and during the thicknessing process it still 'released' and moved more.  The treads are 1000mm wide, I think the going was 285mm.