ucoulddoit

Almost 4 years since I used my Alaskan mill and a combination of withdrawal symptoms and being keen to use it again while I’m still fit and strong enough led to me spending yesterday milling an elm log on a local estate. A windblown dead elm, about 30 feet long and over 2 feet diameter which was quite ambitious for a mill with a max capacity of 20 inches! But, quite achievable for hobby milling to get timber for my own use. It had lost most of it’s bark, but seemed largely sound and the freshly cut ends looked fine with no obvious shakes, rot, etc. I was given the freedom to cut and take (buy) what I wanted, so chose a 10 foot length where the diameter was a shade under 2 feet. It was quite dry when cut which didn’t really give much idea of the colours, but a convenient shower at lunchtime let me see what I might achieve one day with oiled planks. Looks promising! After milling the first few planks, I trimmed one side using the Alaskan Mini Mill to reduce the width to 20 inches so that I could continue milling the planks. I find the mini mill really useful, but suspect it doesn’t get much use by others? A very satisfying days work and now stacked temporarily at the estate and will be moved soon to my drying shed at home. Planks are max 20 inches wide and were milled at 65mm thickness which should enable me to achieve a minimum of 50mm / 2 inches after planing to remove drying distortion. Or, I can resaw them after drying to get say two 25mm / 1 inch planks. Through the centre, an 80mm plank was milled, then an 80mm strip was cut out, centered on the pith, to remove it and reduce the chance of defects (splits) migrating out from the pith, leaving two decent sized 80mm thick quarter sawn planks. Always good to have some thicker stock, but they can also be re-sawn into thinner planks when dry, so plenty of flexibility for future projects which haven’t been designed yet. Would be good to have a bigger mill and get wider planks, but in reality, 10 foot long, 20 inch wide by 65mm thick freshly sawn planks are pretty hard to move on your own aged 65! So that’s the log that was milled. Also bought a slightly smaller beech log which the estate have agreed can be left lying in the woods where it will hopefully start spalting. Will check in a year or so, and guess it might take two years to reach the stage of being spalted but not rotted and useless. A bit of an experiment. Will be almost 70 years of age once all this is ready for furniture making ……. Andrew

Following on from my previous post, this thread re-kindled a long term interest in visual grading of timber, so I dug around a bit online to see what’s current. The following link should go to the Wood Campus website which has a factsheet including relevant publications, etc. for visual grading. Strength Grading (factsheet) - Wood Campus I’d wondered if the Eurocodes might have superceeded the standards I’m familiar with from the past, but I see BS 4978 2007 is still listed. So I’ll look after my well used, dog eared paper copy. Not sure if there will be a free pdf on line as I only had a cursory look. The factsheet includes a table showing the relationship between grade and strength. I think it’s worth noting that softwood visual grading using the British Standard will be either GS or SS. But in terms of strength, as an example, GS grade larch is stronger than GS grade spruce, i.e. timber species of the same grade are not interchangeable for strength. The table relates the grades for different species to C16, C24, etc. Re the original question on this thread, I found details of several courses for visual timber grading from a simple Google search. Typically circa £2k for a three day course and the qualification needs renewing annually, so a fair investment would be needed. My previous post mentioned it’s fairly easy to separate the good timber from the bad using self taught visual grading. For my own projects, I had an ample supply of logs and just used what was obviously ‘good’. But I guess in reality, for a business, it’s necessary to also look at the middle ground, not just the extremes of good and bad, otherwise a lot of timber might be rejected that could pass a rigorous visual assessment. And I guess that would go towards justifying the investment in training. Andrew

A few thoughts from a retired structural engineer with a fair bit of experience working on timber projects. Firstly, I’d say most visual grading is mostly done on large section timbers, not small stuff for studs, etc. Also, every milled piece of timber needs grading, it’s not possible to grade the timber in a log prior to milling. The grading process is relatively straightforward, looking at specific aspects of each milled piece of timber, such as timber species, knot sizes and positions, grain slope, growth ring spacing, etc. Soon becomes a matter of common sense really, to identify what’s good or bad. Can be self learnt using readily available publications, but not sure what is current as it’s 10 years or so since I did this. A trained / qualified grader will stamp each piece of timber. But if it’s for your own use, you have the option of deciding whether the stamps are necessary. I’ve no experience of self grading timbers for a project needing building standards approval, but have heard of it being done. I guess it needs prior discussion with the council engineers to convince them you know enough about visual grading to be ‘trusted’ to do it. There is also the issue of what happens when a property is sold on, if a surveyor for instance queries the origin or spec of the materials used. Might make it harder to sell or reduce the value? Re timber studs, your engineer’s spec almost certainly requires treated timber. Using a timber species with inherent natural rot resistance such as larch (heartwood) would be my starting point if looking into this. But maybe it’s possible to adequately treat other species on site? And no reason why the studs couldn’t be visually graded. Would be worthwhile checking with the design engineer if the sizes specified are based on strength, deflection, or the detailing necessary to incorporate insulation, air spaces, etc., i.e. the studs might be way ‘over engineered’ just to suit the detailing, in which case the strength grading would be less critical. But again, I’d research all theses issues and discuss all your detailed proposals with the council engineer before starting, so they are comfortable you can be ‘trusted’, rather than asking them how and what to do. Andrew

Off topic and no experience of deliveries to the islands, but a few years ago I found a bulk delivery from Inverness to our place on the Scotland west coast (mainland) was more expensive than having the delivery sent to London! Andrew

Very nice looking slab! Those sizes equate to about 4 cu feet, so at £250, that's about £60/cu feet which I'd say is a pretty good price for green timber, even for that quality. Including the work re-sawing to size and sealing the ends I'd say at £300 it's a fair price? Just hope the buyer can dry it without too much damage. I'd be thinking about putting 1/2 inch stickers between the treads with a similar sized sheet of ply top and bottom, with a couple of ratchet straps to hold the bundle together. Otherwise the surfaces will dry quickly causing surface checking which oak is very prone to do. Checking can occur very quickly, in warm sunny weather working outside it can be pretty much immediate. But, I guess it depends on what the buyer wants to achieve and there is certainly a current fashion for a rustic look. Andrew

Was just thinking it would be good to know the dimensions of that board and guessed it might be 4 or 5 cubic feet at most? So £250 for green timber doesn’t seem cheap to me. Maybe the board is bigger than it looks? Andrew

Good advice. Just a shame Steve doesn’t seem to keep an eye on Arbtalk anymore. Enjoyed re-reading all the other advice on this thread from 9 years ago …….. Andrew

I started with a 145 x 45 joist from a builders merchant but struggled to achieve a 90 degree cut as the joist was slightly cupped. After running it through the thicknesser it’s worked well, and since then I’ve stored it in the workshop, clamped to the underside of the roof trusses to keep it straight and dry. Andrew

Capital Steel Buildings sell kits for DIY small buildings (and large buildings) made from cold formed steel sections. No experience of dealing with them, but a colleague worked on the development of their automated design and costing software plus automated calculations for Building Standards approvals, and I recall they seemed a fairly progressive company, really pushing to create a quality product. Capital Steel Buildings | Leading Designer and Supplier of Cold Formed Steel Buildings Based in Scotland as well. But! Their buildings are designed for metal cladding and not sure how the thin cold formed steel sections would stand up to knocks and abuse in an ‘industrial’ environment? Not sure what you’re proposing to use it for? The sections might be as thin as 1 to 2mm and severe dents could significantly reduce the overall strength and stability. Whereas I guess timber wall studs might well stand up better to occasional impacts. Andrew

Here's a photo of the milling and drying books I've collected over the years including the two I mentioned before and the Malloff book Mark suggested. A lot of repetition, but each book has something unique, so they are all worthwhile having and I've learnt a lot from them over the years. With the exception of Malloff's book, all written for timber to be used by furniture makers, joinery work and wood working generally. But little or nothing really about timber for fencing, structural timber or grading timbers, nor for green oak framing timbers. They are very focused on producing high quality, defect free timber which I guess translates into high value? There are several publications on the ASHS website as well. Andrew

About 20 years ago I tried sourcing small to medium sized round timber for milling by advertising, phone calls, etc. but didn’t have much success at first. The small quantities meant I was probably regarded as a ‘time waster’ by busy people! But then I found a couple of businesses who cut and sold firewood and they had lots of timber waiting to be cut. One of them had literally hundreds of tons of round logs piled up and I was able to take my pick and they were able to lift what I bought into the tipper truck I hired, so it was easy to offload back at home or at a sawmill. Bought 2 to 3 tons the first visit for £100 and never looked back after that. Andrew

‘Fine Woodworking on Wood and How to Dry It’ 41 articles, under £6 on Amazon. Andrew

‘The Conversion and Seasoning of Wood’ was published about 30 years ago but only has one chapter about milling. I’d still recommend it though. Lots of info about other topics though, such as drying characteristics of different timbers, different methods of seasoning, etc. I’ve a book of articles from the Fine Woodworking magazine which again are a bit dated, but still some good stuff about how to select trees for milling, how to mill different species to get the best results, etc. Can’t remember the title, but I’ll look it up. Andrew

That's my thinking also. When I said to the stove installer I'd like to remove it before they start as I want it to be intact, he looked at me and laughed and reassured me they'd been doing it for 'decades' and if anyone could remove it in one piece, they could! So for once, I'll probably just take a back seat and leave this project to the experts. My wife likes to tease me that all my questions about 'details, etc.' probably just adds 10% to the cost! But it does help to get a good job done, instead of cutting a few corners. Andrew

Thanks for the further advice. Was looking into this as one of two options. Minimal expense using what’s there with a Hobbit stove, suitable for an existing Victorian cast iron insert with tiles (fitted 20 years ago). Or, remove the insert, open up the ingle and have a larger stove with a new flue liner. I’ve had someone out to look at it and despite the cost of option 2, that’s probably the way I’ll go. Should ‘see me out’ and hopefully I’ll not be changing this again within the next 20 years. Andrew