beaming oak with heart on face

[Aunt Maud]

Plus, halving the log keeps the slab small. I hate waste, unless it's going on the wood burner.

[wills-mill]

It's the most durable part of the tree, apart from the pith of course, and traditionally the heart is placed to the outside on a timber framed building as its the face less likely to split and doesn't have any sapwood on the edges. If you box the heart you'll get splits on each face when it dries, but you know that already.

 

Funny lot modern framers.

 

The spec 'no heart on face' is presumably asking for the pith to remain boxed within a beam and not displayed on the surface of a face. If there are going to be any loose sections 'shelling' or shaking out of a beam, then the pith/ dead heart is the place it's going to happen.

[Aunt Maud]

You could also take a board out of the middle, which will give you some nice quarter sawn stuff and then mill your beams, they won't split if you take the pith out and present a nice solid face to the weather on the frame and stops your mortices filling with water.

 

Or mill parallel to the bark and take a tapered waste containing the pith out of the centre.

 

Old fashioned milling, but easy enough with a chainsaw mill and very economical on timber.