milling oak

[carpenter1]

i am new to this, never milled anything

 

i have just felled an oak, not big,

 

dia of 18'', length 6' dead stright.

 

do i seanson it first?

or mill and season after,

 

advice needed thanks

 

i also have some sweet chestnut, beech, ash, are they worth milling?

[carpenter1]

hows it best to store them?

inside barn or out side on a pallet and cover with a sheet of tin?

[muttley9050]

Outside in wind but not sun, covering with tin is good. Sweet chesnut is awesome for garden furniture.

[carpenter1]

have you got a few pics of what sweet chestnut, ash beech and oak could turn out to be like.

i under stand every tree is different, and how and where it was grown

[muttley9050]

The two book matched boards above are oak.

[Rhob the Log]

Sweet chestnut has lovely coffee-coloured grain alternating with a light yellow. As it dries down it can go quite orangey too. Can be very striking but when milling it misbehaves a lot. It has a helical growth structure so there's a lot of tension in the wood, often causing it to bend away from the mill as soon as it's cut. They will dry flat provided you put a lot of weight on top of your stack and cross your fingers. Here's a pic. Enjoy milling!

[Dorset Treeman]

Hi, where do you get the stickers from and does it matter what species they are made from in relation to the species you are milling?

 

Also, somebody told me to paint the end of any logs in the round as soon as they are cut with any paint you have lying around, so that it is harder for fungus to get in. Is there any truth in this?

[Gerbutt]

Inside a barn, provided there is good air flow. Stack off the ground, with an air gap between the stack and the walls. You are far better stacking in large stacks than small - the more weight you have the flatter it will stay.

 

This is what an example of how I construct my stacks:

 

 

Jonathan

 

Some of the stuff you've milled in your pics looks amazing Jonathan👍

[openspaceman]

 

I cut my own stickers, usually from spruce or poplar.

 

I was told use softwood stickers for hardwoods but cannot remember the reason given.

 

One reason for not leaving oak in the round in the south is because borers can migrate from sapwood into the heartwood.

 

Traditionally oak was selectively felled in late winter to early spring (if tan bark harvested), left in the round over summer until horses available after the corn harvest and extracted in late autumn depending on ground conditions. One of the forestry books suggested delay extraction till Novmeber so the hooves would bury acorns.

[agg221]

Disposable pallets are a good source of stickers on the more 'domestic' scale. The slats can be cut out down the line of the crosswise brace, giving a series of lengths of about 15", each of which can be ripped down to about a 1" width. A pallet yields about 50 stickers. Just be careful not to mix up the thicknesses (or chuck the lot through a thicknesser to standardise).

 

I'm slightly more optimistic than Jonathan on the milling season - I'll start at the end of September, so actually next weekend, and don't anticipate any problems with overly rapid drying. Even if we do get a few warmer days, they will be shorter and the humidity is up. I have to stretch the season a bit due to available daylight hours. I'll leave the oak for a bit though as it surface checks particularly badly, and start with some elm and hopefully plum.

 

Alec