Oak - Milling Lengths and thicknesses?

[TonyIOM]

Hi

I live on the Isle of Man and have a 10.5m Oak trunk, 34" tapering to 24" plus some large beech and a large burry elm.

 

The Government sawmill can process the the oak in 5m sections at £300/hr (they normally process 10 trunks an hour into boards and beams so it seems reasonable (I keep telling myself)!

I bought an MS660 and a 36" Alaskan from Rob last week to mill the beech and elm. However I'm unsure what is the most popular length and thickness of planks or beams to mill.

 

I want to make some table tops, benches or mantle pieces from the timber. Can anyone suggest appropriate dimensions?

 

Cheers

Tony

[delabodge]

Hi tony, one point to remember from the start is how you are going to be moving them around once milled? if you have a fork lift/telehandler you can obviously move larger pieces especially for beams,

I`d suggest you mill some 2" boards, this will cover the tables(I`m presuming outside tables) and the benches. although I like to have some 8x2`s too so I can cut the back legs for the benches from these,giving you the taper of the back leg, but guess it depends on the style of bench your making.

I find the mantle piece enquiries vary tremendously, from 6x4,8x4.6x2,,depends what sort of property there going in, old houses usually like the edges to be full of drawknifed edges, new houses usually clean lines.

also dont make the mistake of cutting the boards too long as they`ll be heavy and you`ll probably end up cutting them up at some point anyway.

look forward to seeing the progress:thumbup:

[TonyIOM]

Thanks for your helpful reply and I'm pleased to say the Chief Forester in the IOM Government said my oak trunk was the best oak he had seen in 25 years.

 

Taking on board your advice re weight and handling I sent the oak in 3 sections; 3.7m, 3.1m and 2.5m. The forestry guy suggested they mill at least one large 12" plus beam for inglenook fireplaces as such sections are very rare to find and they are often requested - some good news to mitigate the 'issues' we had today;

The Unimog burst a hydraulic hose at 10.30, at 11.30 the trailer hit a submerged stump and pulled the tyre off the rim, Fixed by 2pm only for the trailer now carrying the biggest butt to jacknife and tip over and then the Unimog buried itself up to its hubs in sticky mud whilst carrying around 2 tons of burry elm.

 

Hoping tomorrow is a better day - will get some pictures up soon.

 

Cheers

[delabodge]

yipes what a day! and people question the end price of milled timber!? look forward to some pics,,,

[wills-mill]

When we visited the Isle of Man a couple of years back I idly wondered whether there was a need for a mobile mill

 

The mill at St Johns looks pretty brisk but doesn't seem to cater much (at all?) for Manx grown hardwood. Is there anyone processing interesting bits for chunky joinery and suchlike?

 

Will

[TonyIOM]

Hi Will

I'm not a tree surgeon and the last time I climbed a tree I was 10, otherwise I may have considered a mobile band mill!

The St Johns mill is a huge Stenner mill capable of taking logs up to 5 m long and about 1.2m wide although they only process spruce. larch and other coniferous material. The chief sawmill manager showed me round yesterday and invited me in to watch my oak logs being processed from the overhead control room. At £300/hr I have to be careful with my cutting list!

There's one or two tree guys milling wood but for their own use at present - most tree operations here are fairly small and the IOM Government has just given a long term contract to a UK company with a Kobelco tree muncher/mulcher to flatten all the larch here.

I've made 3 chunky mantlepieces using a Logosol timberjig and have some interesting burr elm to do with the Alaskan (when it stops raining)! Will get pictures up soon. I did manage to get this chunky bit of beech out - perhaps a tree house base for someone with no trees

 

Cheers

Tony