ucoulddoit

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

Thanks for all the encouraging comments. Andrew

More or less finished this dining table so here are a few photos. It’s a fairly simple trestle type table design. It’s just over 1.7m long, and comfortably suitable for 6 people for day to day use, two each side and one at each end. But it can accommodate an extra person at each side if needed, making 8 in total. Here is the finished table. Not the best picture as the lighting doesn’t really bring out the glow of the burr oak. But you’ll get the idea. Had our evening meal using it today with children plus grand children and it was good to be able to just enjoy it with good company. Making a dining table was the prime reason I bought the burr oak butt about 11 years ago. And the day dream of making a burr oak dining table pre-dates that by a few years, after seeing a gorgeous, much larger, single plank burry oak table at an exhibition. So it’s taken about 15 years to get here! When I bought the oak butt I was aware the slabs for the top would only just be long enough for this type of trestle design. Another 3 to 6 inches would have been preferable and I’d been hoping to find a burr oak log suitable for milling long, wide, table sized slabs. After several years of casual searching, when I saw this burr oak butt for sale close to home, which promised pretty stunning timber, I decided to compromise on the length and it’s turned out fine. I guess I could have bought a large wide slab from a sawmill, possibly dry and ready for use. But I was keen to start with a whole log, get it milled, dry the wood, then take my pick of the best slabs for projects needing large flawless areas of burry timber. I wanted to use it as a learning process with a longer term view of one day making use of these skills for a business. It’s worked out much more economical working that way, as I’ll be using all the milled timber (eventually!). But I did have quite a bit of previous experience of this whole process so that reduced the risk of ending up with a pile of (very expensive) firewood. The last post discussed the design of the table top, so here are a few notes about the trestle supports. The following picture is a similar table made from two book matched planks of burry elm about 8 years ago which was used as the starting point for the design of this burr oak table. It had an ‘inside out theme’ of natural edges along the centre of the table top, trestles and rail, with formed, smooth edges on the outsides. It’s been well admired over the years, but ever since finishing it, I’ve felt the design of the trestle supports could be improved. They are good and strong, simple to make and the table is very stable. But I’ve always been uneasy about the aesthetics, although my wife thinks they look fine. Picture below shows one of the trestles. My main issues are that I dislike the way the top rail spans the full width, so the end grain is visible at the top of the curved sides. Also, there is a noticeable colour variation between the four pieces of wood. So I spent a while thinking about how to improve the design of the trestles for the burr oak table and started with a few sketches, see below. Followed by a photo of the final result which bears a close resemblance to the elm trestles! So it turned into a case of incremental improvement instead of starting from scratch. I’m much happier with the revised design. The colours of the four pieces of wood match nicely, the curved uprights are book matched (as was done on the elm table). And the top rail is fitted between the curved uprights and set back a bit. I feel setting it back a bit really helps the visual impression of the curved pieces going all the way up to the underside of the table top. I suppose no one will see that unless they crawl underneath the table. But at least I know that effort has gone into improving the design, still using a similar amount of material and no more difficult to make. Instead of small wood ‘buttons’ to attach the top, it is fixed to the trestle with four, 5mm thick stainless steel plates. These are screwed into the end grain of the uprights with slotted holes for the fixings into the top which may expand and contract over time. The trestles are made from two slabs of the burr oak which were a book matched pair, but not as good as the other five pairs as there are shakes and splits. See photos below. I felt they weren’t suitable for use as large slabs of timber and cutting them into smaller pieces was the best way to use them. But I guess they could have been used in a design with plenty of coloured resin to fill the defects? Never made anything like that though. I’m intending to use parts of these two slabs including the natural edges for a future project, so I cut off these curved sections first. Then used templates for the trestle parts to mark them out avoiding the worst of the splits and shakes. The following photos show one of the mdf templates being made. A thin flexible strip of wood was used to create a pleasing curve to draw round with a pencil. Then the waste wood was removed on the bandsaw, sawing to within about 3mm of the pencil line. Then a Fisch Flexi Curve ( available from Axminster tools, quite pricey, but well used over the years ) was attached to the mdf with screws so that it exactly followed the curve. Then the remaining waste mdf was removed using a bearing guided router cutter following the Flexi Curve which was then unscrewed leaving the completed template immediately ready for use. A bit of a faff, but for repeated identical shaping, it’s good to use the router and a template which creates a more or less finished and accurate shape and surface very quickly. For the rail between the trestles I’d put an offcut to one side for this. But was subsequently concerned that although it was the right size, it was too plain and not a good match to the timbers in the trestles. As it was the last component for the table, I decided to choose another piece from the pile of burr oak. This time considering the colour, burr, grain, etc. instead of just finding a bit of wood the right size and minimising waste. It seemed a shame to cut a good looking medium sized slab into smaller pieces. But I’d decided it wasn’t worth compromising at this stage and glad I made that decision. Sketch below shows the overall sizes of the oak table and the starting point was the size of the available slabs for the top. After making the elm table previously, with hindsight I realised the space between the trestles needs to accommodate two chairs pushed under the table. I hadn’t thought about that, and was lucky there was just enough space. But I’ve seen a finished table where this wasn’t allowed for and the chairs wouldn’t fit under the top when not being used. So that’s a pitfall with this design to be wary of. Some chairs are wider than others, so the dimensions on the sketch won’t necessarily work. I chose chairs for this table before finalising the trestle design.The table top cantilevers 330mm beyond the trestles at each end which I reckon is the minimum needed to sit at the end and also to be able to push a chair most of the way in when not in use. My plan now is to start using the table and do a bit more finishing / oiling on the top after it’s acclimatised for a few months. It’s in a room with lots of windows which gets pretty warm on occasions, so I envisage a wee bit of movement in the burry wood, despite being dried down to 10% moisture content and stored in a low humidity environment for several years before starting. How do I feel it’s turned out after taking 15 years to get here? Well, if I’d pursued my daydream all those years ago of setting up as a furniture designer / maker, I’d be happy now to replicate this design, having reached the end of a trial and error process to find a solution that I’m comfortable with. That doesn’t mean the design would appeal to everyone, and it could be further refined. I guess some folk would be more enthused by a unique / arty design. But that type of work is just way beyond me and I suspect many others also? So instead of trying (and failing) to copy ‘arty’ designs created by others. Over the years I’ve progressively focused more and more on bringing together my inherent interests of geometry, engineering details, precision and proportion, then applied incremental improvement on successive projects. I’ve found that works for me and I’ve had enough positive comments over the years to confirm the designs also appeal to a fair proportion of other people. So perhaps I could have made a go of setting up in business? But retired now and very unlikely that I’ll pursue the day dream of setting up in business. Happy to carry on as a hobby woodworker making stuff for the family and so I thought I’d share all these thoughts as maybe there are others who can make use of them. I’ve used about half the planks from this burr oak butt over the past 18 months making the three projects discussed so far on this thread. Planning to make a dresser for my daughter next, with the design developed from two past projects in elm which are shown in the following two photos. Lots of natural edges! First one is shelves made about 20 years ago for my son from a single small log bought from a firewood merchant, which he used for his TV and Hi-Fi when a teenager. Second picture is a cupboard / shelves, made for myself, which fits into a wall alcove in our bedroom. Both pieces are favourites of mine, and my daughter, so looking forwards to the challenge of re-working the designs to bring them together into a single piece. The dresser is a project for next year though, as I’m taking a break from woodworking to work on a small building project. So the lack of posts over the coming months on this thread doesn’t mean I’ve given up! Andrew

Thanks Dan

We've an open fireplace with a 7 inch twin wall stainless steel flexible liner which was installed about 20 years ago. Now looking at changing this to a wood burning stove and the spec is a 6 in twin wall liner. Just wondered if that's a minimum size and would the existing 7 inch liner be OK with a suitable transition piece at the bottom? Andrew

I’ve heard about this technique, but never tried it. Have you any before and after photos? Also wondered if the sawcuts need to be filled, or maybe thin strips of wood glued in? Just re-read your post after posting the above and realise you’re cutting the grooves in the green timber? Not heard of that before, only ‘kerfing’ in dried timber. Some pics would be good. Andrew

Just to add to my earlier post, a couple of photos taken in the woodstore this morning. First one is a smallish 'boatskin' larch, chainsaw milled in the wood behind our house a few years ago for furniture making. The 4 inch plank through the centre is split into two along the pith. Second picture is a slab of burr oak, showing the splits and defects around the pith and juvenile wood that was largely removed, to minimise the risk of these extending into the slab during drying which would spoil an otherwise superb lump of wood. Andrew

Another approach, which I often use for hardwoods for furniture making, is to have a 3 or 4 inch board with the pith in the centre of the depth. Then split this board lengthwise along the pith. Or sometimes cut out a 2 or 3 inch strip along the pith to remove all the juvenile wood most likely to be defective or from which splits can extend further into the planks when drying. The two halves will be quarter sawn, and for furniture making, I find it’s useful to have some thicker stuff. Andrew

I’m sure I’m not the only person who has noticed the succession of posts over recent months that defy belief and they are all first posts and never heard from again ………….

I guess the value of ‘logs’ is often over estimated by folk who are more used to seeing the price of dried planks. As an example of the difference in values, the picture below is one of three apple logs I bought from a tree surgeon a few years ago for £20 each. They were 22 inches diameter by 4 feet long. Biggest apple trees I’d ever seen. About 10 cubic feet per log which equates to £2 per cu ft for green round timber. What would 30ish cubic feet of this size and quality of milled apple slabs be worth now that it’s dry? Well into 4 figures I’d guess, if you could find a buyer. But this is for my own use. Interestingly, the tree surgeon / firewood merchant was clearing an entire orchard of several hundred trees, and he was paying the orchard owner to do this………! Is apple firewood valuable? He was selling off the last of the butts to woodworkers as he’d already got the quantity of firewood needed to make it a profitable contract. Andrew

I suspect ‘deals’ like that don’t happen very often, but I’ve done it and no regrets. The householder had trimmed all the branches from two cherry trees using a handsaw and cleared it all away. Must have taken them quite a while to do it. But they couldn’t tackle the two trunks which were about 16 inches diameter by 4 1/2 feet long, so a reasonable size for a hobby woodworker. Took me maybe 20 minutes to cut them at ground level with a small chainsaw and load them into the back of an estate car to get them home. My avatar is a hall table made using one of these trees. Andrew

Pretty sure the timing of felling a sycamore tree affects the likelihood of staining and mould after milling. Mid winter when the sap is at its lowest is best, as it’s the sap which leads to the defects. Not sure if it’s also best to mill it soon after, also in the winter? Anyone know? Andrew

I’m planning to mill a shortish length of oak in a neighbours garden in a few weeks, max 40 inches diameter but my longest bar is 28 inches and my Alaskan will only go to just over 20 inches. So I’ve a similar problem. And it’s halfway up a hillside next to a ravine, so not viable to extract it in one piece. Will probably halve it by freehand sawing and splitting with wedges, then mill each half with the Alaskan into thick slabs which can be re-sawn on a bandsaw after drying to get pairs of book matched planks for table tops if that’s what I decide to use it for. Will be interested to see how you get on with this. I’ve had a couple of sycamore trees milled on a bandsaw and found the planks were very stable and stayed flat. But on one of them, the planks were left stacked overnight without stickers as we finished milling late in the afternoon, and in the morning they were already looking mouldy and pretty rubbish! Managed to salvage them by coating them with borax and end rearing for a few weeks to dry the faces before being stacked with stickers. Andrew

Glad someone else asked.

In my last post on this thread I said I’d add some pictures of the process of making the dining table top and notes about the design process. So here they are and it’s quite a long post (again!). The two book matched planks I’d selected for the top had an ideal shape for a dining table. But It was a dilemma whether or not to retain the natural edges on the planks. Photo below is the pair of planks just after milling. My wife wanted ‘smooth’ edges on the table, whereas I was leaning towards keeping at least some of the natural edges. The solution turned out to be a compromise! In terms of design, about 10 years ago I made the mistake of thinking I didn’t need to do any design for a smaller table with book matched planks as these were natural edged planks! It had a quirky shape, but once the initial novelty passed I realised it wasn’t a success and after several years I was ready to chuck it away. I did manage to rescue it by re-shaping the top, removing the natural edges and from that experience learnt that not all natural edges are desirable. So for the current project, I started by experimenting with different ways of putting the two book matched planks together as shown in the following photos. Lots of options! After sketching and thinking about various options, I concluded that an overall simple shape would be best, as the burr oak is quite dramatic and I wanted the timber itself to be the main visual element of the design. So, I opted to have curved edges on the table top, with the curve similar to the natural edges on the planks. The planks were wider at one end than the other. As I wanted a degree of symmetry, I decided the table top should be the same width at both ends. That was achieved by ripping the planks lengthwise to remove a tapered piece from both planks, while maintaining a good match for the grain either side of the joint. I’d been conscious from the start that the slab edges were not a ‘smooth’ shape from end to end. Near the middle, they bulged outwards a couple of inches over about a foot or so. I was pretty certain that I’d remove these bulges and possibly all the natural edges. But decided to proceed in stages, and left them on while the planks were flattened and thicknessed. The following photos show checking the flatness of the planks using straight edges. They had stayed remarkably flat during drying apart from the last 6 to 8 inches at each end where both planks had deflected about 5mm. Should have had stickers at the ends of the planks! As advised several times by others on the forum and I wish I’d seen their advice before I milled this timber. The dried planks were just over 50mm thickness and I reckoned they would be down to 40mm once flattened. Maybe even 35mm, to reduce the weight a bit more. Each of the sawn planks weighed 35kg, so it looked like the finished table top might weigh about 50kg! I wasn’t looking forwards to working alone on that, struggling to move it about without damaging it. But overall, still easier starting with a pair of book matched planks instead of a thicker, single wide slab. Next stage was to flatten the top of both planks using a router. I removed the minimum necessary to create a flat face with the aim of minimising any change to the grain match either side of the joint. Both planks were then machined to a constant thickness by flattening the underside using the router. I find using a router on burry timbers like these virtually eliminates tearout which is almost inevitable if a planer / thicknesser is used instead. On previous projects I’d then used a hand held belt sander and random orbit sander to remove marks left by the router cutter. But that was quite time consuming. Also, I wanted this table top to be as flat as possible, so both planks were run through a 900mm wide belt sander several times which worked a treat. I was aiming to reduce the thickness from just over 40mm down to 35mm. Not sure what grit size belt was fitted, but each pass on the sander removed 0.25mm or less and as the machining / router cutter marks were removed by the time it was 40mm thick and the finish was really good, we stopped at that point. If reducing the thickness more had been necessary, the belt could have been changed to a coarser grit at the very start to remove more on each pass. The company who did this for me were impressed by the two book matched planks after sanding. They were obviously ‘valuable’ and it was increasingly clear it would be a shame to waste their potential with a poor design. Once back home, I set to finalising the shape of the table top including the decision about whether or not to keep the natural edges. I first removed the two ‘bulges’ which really improved the overall shape. Thinking about what to do next, I realised that removing the natural edges from end to end and having a smooth curve would reduce the table width by about 4 inches from 40 to 36 inches. I wasn’t keen on that. So, it was time for my wife to have a look at the two planks laid together. She liked the overall shape, the mix of natural and formed edges and the roughly symmetrical shape so we agreed that would be the final solution. Progressing gradually in stages, we’d achieved a good compromise instead of sticking with the first idea we each started with! So both the ‘client’ and maker were happy which is a good way of getting future commissions (she has a long list for me to work away at!). The edges of the planks for the butt joint were trimmed straight and square using a kitchen worktop cutter in a router running along an aluminium straightedge. Then a groove was cut in the side of each plank for the 6mm thick plywood spline. Once glued together, final shaping of the edges was done with a drum sander and nylon wire brush in a drill. I find the nylon wire brush gives a ‘burnished’ appearance on the burry edges which I like. As an aside, talking about finishing processes, about 25 years ago I attended a woodworking night class at a local technical college so that I had access to a large bandsaw and planer / thicknesser. One of the other students made nice stuff, but I was quite taken aback when instead of using abrasive paper for the final finishing, he used a hand held steel wire brush to roughen all the surfaces! Truth is I thought he was nuts. But 25 years on I’m now much more aware of the multitude of design options in all walks of life and look back on his work with a degree of admiration. He was relaxed about doing his own thing, experimenting, instead of following fashion or a text book. That approach is what now keeps me interested in making stuff, after over half a century of woodworking, although I’m not ready to copy his finishing method with a wire brush! Wide chamfers were cut on the underside so the edges reduce from 40mm thickness in the middle to 20mm at the corners. Just to make it appear a bit lighter and improve the overall appearance. I couldn’t draw a line on the natural edges for the chamfers, so made shallow saw cuts, increasingly deep towards the corners, as a guide for planing the varying depth chamfers. Then sanding, filling with bronze resin, more sanding, more filling and eventually the first coat of oil was applied and it all suddenly seemed worthwhile. Quite a long post as I mentioned at the start which I suppose highlights the amount of thinking and making that goes into a table top like this. A friend who has commissioned several pieces of furniture from other makers took one look at the oiled top and said she thought the finished table would fetch £10K and she would be happy to buy it for that! But it’s not for sale, so I won’t know if she is pulling my leg or would follow it through. Quite a thought though…….. The final weight for the 40mm thick top is 45kg. I’m sure 35mm thickness would have been adequate which would have reduced the weight to just under 40kg. Might still seem a bit ‘over engineered’? Possibly is, but the top has quite large spans and cantilevered edges, so it needs to be thicker than a traditional design with rails on four sides supporting the top. Also, the burry timber may not be as strong in places as straight grained planks. In terms of milling, these two planks were sawn at just over 50mm and I was fortunate they stayed really flat when drying and was able to keep them as single wide planks, 40mm finished thickness. If they had cupped appreciably, I would need to have split them in half and then jointed them back together. I’ve done that before, so that I could use my 10 inch planer thicknesser instead of using the router, for a table top which has four planks, cut from two wide book matched planks. But, although the additional two joints are virtually invisible, I feel there is something more desirable about two wide, matched planks and a single joint on the centreline. And I can see why a single very wide slab with no joints might be even more desirable. Recently I was looking back over the first few pages on the milling forum and came across advice to mill burr oak at 65mm thickness, then re-saw it after drying in order to reduce the distortion which can be quite significant when drying burrs. I guess after drying, it might just be possible to get two 25mm flat finished planks from a 65mm slab? Currently working on the frame to support the top and will post pictures and notes in due course. Andrew