milling large oak need advice.

[kinderscout]

Milling large oak 22ft long 56 wide.we kept hitting hard spots in the timber witch bent the bar stopping me milling.

[Rob D]

I know there are hard spots etc in wood - but really one of the advantages of the chainsaw mill is that it will chew through them.

 

 

Take your saw out the mill - dismantle the bar and chain - dress the bar rails, clean the groove, reassemble, sharpen the chain and get all the teeth equal in length and then check the depth guages.

 

 

Do all the other maintenace as well such as clean air filter etc... Take your time over it and be thorough. See if that works.

 

 

[kinderscout]

Cheer rob, it is going to be a long night.need to use it in the morning 😢

[kinderscout]

Cheer rob, it is going to be a long night.need to use it in the morning 😢

[billpierce]

Hold on four weeks and send it up to me and I'll mill it on the new bandsaw!

 

that'll be fairly big then?

[kinderscout]

Yes its big 56 dia 25ft long.turned it on its side now so it reducing the slabbing size to 42. First time doing a large oak and the inexperience is showing.

Would it fit in your new mill big J . We are reducing the length to 16ft Saturday as the the farmer would like to sow a crop.

[se7enthdevil]

why was it not quartered, it would have been easier to manage and would have made some cracking quartersawn boards at 25"+ wide.

[kinderscout]

Am I right in saying that you want as little as possible sapwood in the end product ie beams.

[kinderscout]

I am just stepping up to the big log,a bit out my depth. This log was fire wood last week I have two more days to cut it up.before winter wheat is sown.need to get to see someone do quarter sawn.

[agg221]

Really nice stick that!

 

Do you have the standard 13" uprights on the mill or the extended (26") ones? Also, what is the biggest/heaviest bit you can lift out of there?

 

If the farmer is amenable and has a set of forks, I would get the log shunted round out of the way to buy you a little more time for milling it. I presume you have some moving gear as you have already rolled it? If you have the extended uprights I would be inclined to split the log dead up the middle as it loses you very little material and halves the weight to move around. Otherwise I would just skim the top and then take it out in slabs as big as you can. If you have the mini-mill you could then square these up if you are planning on beams.

 

Beams are often made box-heart for strength, so it's really oversize for this. It's also tricky as without the appropriate calculation tables you can't get the dimensions correct for the span, so you could for example make a 30' x 1' square, only to find it needs to be 18" square, so unless you have a buyer or want them for yourself it's a risk.

 

If you split it in half you could then quarter it with a mini-mill (if you have one) - I have run a 3' bar on mine on the 066 and it worked fine - or roll the half up on edge and use the Alaskan again the other way - going much quicker as it is then only just over 2' wide. The quarters may then be moveable to somewhere out of the way for either quartersawing yourself or taking off to a bandsaw mill?

 

Alec