Problems milling sycamore

[Ilnumero]

Here is a picture of the problem; the board on the left is the top surface, not too bad, just a wee bit of marking. The right is the underside of the board as it comes off the mill, it is really stained from the sawdust. I don't know if this will plane out but it looks to be well into it.

[wills-mill]

I also think the staining is water+steel from the band. It's strange that it's just the underside of the board, perhaps your mill (like most) places the lube water onto the top of the band, so that face is much wetter.

 

A lot of small American sawyers swear by 'Pam' on their blades for whitewoods, it's one of those spray cooking oils. I would imagine that a bit of rapeseed in a hand squirter would be fine if you gave the blade a little squirt before each board. Minimal chance of mould when you look at consumption.

 

If anyone wanted to get clever, then you could try a Loobman full of bio chain oil. They were always a neat and cheap way to get oil on a bike chain.

 

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[Ilnumero]

It's lubed from the top so the water and wet sawdust is in contact with the underside of the board but its only there, at the end of the cut, for a couple of seconds, brushed off immediately, and it still leaves staining.

 

Anyway, as I said, the customer was happy (the pics are from a practice board) so I'm not going to worry too much now. I also milled some oak, which should stain, and it was fine with no marking at all.

[Mike Dempsey]

I have milled quite a lot of sycamore over the last few months with my alaskan mill. None of the boards have had black metal stains like oak planks get and none of them have had the stains like the above photos do. If sycamore has been down for a while before milling it can get stained like that and also a greyish hue and black dots. All the logs I planked were down a few months before I planked them and were ok. I put them straight into the kiln to dry them. I dont air dry them vertically as a lot of people suggest in order to keep them white. However some of them come out brown which suits me as the timber laser engraves better.

[skyhuck]

Were the trees winter felled???

[Ilnumero]

Yes, I think so, certainly no earlier than last autumn. The wood wasn't mine, belonged to a customer but I happened to know exactly where it came from, just around the corner from me.

 

A bit puzzling as the water/sawdust mix was only in contact with the wood for a moment. I have turned sycamore in the past, both green and seasoned and not seen this before.