ucoulddoit

I used a MS391 for milling with a 20 inch bar in the small log mill which was fine but a bit slow and just for a few smallish logs, max size about 18 inches diameter. As others have said, milling can become addictive and my kit was quickly on the small side for what I then wanted to do. I bought parts from Rob D to convert the small log mill into an ‘Alaskan mill’ and changed to a 25 inch bar following advice from Alec, to get about 20inches width of cut. Stihl recommend a max bar length of 20 inches, but I was happy to try a longer bar as set up in the mill it can’t cut more than 20 inches. That worked fine for a while and was more accurate than using the small log mill at the limit of it’s capacity. Subsequently upgraded to an MS661 which is just so much better. But still happy to have progressed gradually to this point instead of investing a lot at the start when I really wasn’t sure if I’d have much milling to do. Andrew

Would be awkward to use plain resin as it would need a mould set up around the edge. You could thicken the resin to make a stiff paste but that would be pretty expensive using bronze as the filler. Alternatively, you could use talc which is really inexpensive to make a grey coloured filler and maybe just finish the exposed edges with a different coloured filler? But, I doubt it would stick to the wood sufficiently to take screws for the legs, so the screws would need to be long enough to get a grip in the wood, if it’s thick enough. I think it might be simpler to cut a recess and glue in a block of wood, then shape the edges. Or maybe flatten the surface and glue on a wedge shaped piece of wood. Andrew

I had another look at the Axminster site and they still sell a 100mm nylon wire brush for a drill, but much more expensive than the 75mm one from Toolstation. I can’t remember when I bought my B & D foam sander, but probably a few decades ago as well……. Andrew

That’s a shame as it’s a good attachment that has lasted well. Bought mine ages ago, so apologies for the dead end on this. Maybe someone else can let us know what they use. Anyone want to suggest something? I found it good because the soft foam was good for freehand shaping whereas other sanding drums I’ve looked at have a rubber core and are a bit too solid. Andrew

That's stretching my IT skills a bit, but here goes. Also struggled to find them on the Axminster site, but Toolstation have the nylon wire brush. Abracs Nylon Filament Wheel Brush 75mm WWW.TOOLSTATION.COM Non spark filament circular brush impregnated with abrasive grain. Ideal for deburring, surface treatment, stock removal... It's a Black and Decker sanding drum I use. Amazon site says it's unavailable, but this link will let you see what to search for. https://www.amazon.co.uk/BLACK-DECKER-DX32365-Cushion-Sander/dp/B0001IWH52 Andrew

That resin would be fine, but pretty sure there will be cheaper options. I buy the resin and bronze from Alscot in Glasgow and from memory I use their polyester casting resin rather than epoxy. Andrew

That’s the stuff. Doesn’t look very nice when mixed with the resin, but polishes up well. Looks nice elm and should look really good when fine sanded, filled and oiled. Andrew

I'd flatten and smooth the surface to 120 grit paper before filling the holes. Lots of options for filling the holes. I like using clear cast polyester resin with bronze powder which polishes to a shiny bronze/gold colour. Put a generous amount of hardener into the resin before mixing, then add the powder until it's a really thick consistency, a bit like car body filler. Once cured, continue sanding using steadily finer grits up to say 400. Others use coloured resin, or glue mixed with sawdust from the plank being filled. Some folk wouldn't fill them at all! Just a matter of personal opinion as to what's right. I knew a guy who finished all his stuff using a steel wire brush to roughen the surfaces whereas most people would expect a sanded finish. Who's to say what's right? How dry is the plank? If it drys and shrinks when brought into the house the resin might loosen, but again, that matters to some people, but not others. What to do with the edge of a plank? No right answer again, but the console table plank has a nice shape in my opinion, so I'd probably just use the nylon wire brush in a drill to remove any loose material. Then use the foam sanding drum to free hand shape the edge, rounding the top and bottom edges slightly and also removing any sharp or protruding bits, but I'd retain most of the knobbly bits. But, if I was making this for my sister who doesn't like natural edges, I'd cut them off and form a curved edge with rounded corners on top and bottom using a router. Andrew

If the planks have a natural edge which you want to retain, I've found a nylon wire brush and a soft foam sanding drum, both of which can be used in a hand held electric drill, works well for finishing an uneven surface. On a really rough/uneven edge such as a burr, the nylon wire brush can get right into the crevices and leaves a burnished finish which doesn't need sanding. Both are stocked by Axminster Tools and are in the photo below. Would be good to see some before and after pictures of the planks. Andrew

Managed to finish this in time for Christmas. The design is at odds with the intuition built up over a working life as a structural engineer so it's been a bit of an experiment and challenge for me, but quite happy with the final result. Would certainly look at the Nakashima designs again for inspiration whereas before I wasn't sure about using his ideas. Since starting the thread I googled minguren 2 and found auction results for his original tables at about £60k!!!! Good to have been able to make this using slabs of timber, worked almost entirely using hand held power tools. I only used the planer / thicknesser for the two small rails which could easily have been made with hand tools. Andrew

Hi Mark It's probably been 2 to 3 days so far for the base, but hard to judge as I rarely spend all day in the workshop with one thing and another. Also, working on a new (for me) design adds time, plus making jigs for the router for the first time used. For instance, photo below shows a leg to rail joint which is a mortice with curved corners which exactly matches the rail cross section, rather than a traditional mortice and tenon with shoulders. Probably widely used, but I first saw it in a video about Sam Maloof and used it before on a project with numerous joints. Was it worth the time making the jig for just 4 joints on this project? It does give the benefit of real accuracy and I've got it for the future, so long as I don't lose it like the one made before........! The top has needed a couple of days work in addition. Spent at least half a day just picking the bark off the natural edges and smoothing it off, just a wee bit. I don't often have a natural edge, but if I do, I prefer to really clean it up and retain the character of all the knobbly bits. But not everyone likes that style and it's certainly quicker to just round over the edges. Andrew

I’ve enjoyed seeing all the wonderful slabs posted on the forum by numerous millers over the years, but I’ve been curious about what they were subsequently used for. So I thought others might be interested to see what I make from the milled slabs from a large oak burr, about 70” long by 40” diameter weighing 1.4t and this thread will gradually record the projects as I make them. All for my own/family use and it will take a while to work my way through the slabs, so I hope you can be patient. The following link goes to a thread on the milling part of the forum about this oak burr I bought from another arbtalk member in 2013 which I then had milled, followed by drying at home. First project, still being worked on and hopefully finished by Christmas, is a small table, using the only piece with a natural edge on both sides for the top which is about 40” x 24” x 2” thick. At 22” high it’s higher than most ‘coffee tables’ but we wanted to be able to sit in a comfy chair or settee, watching telly, while eating our tea. Just what we used to tell our children they couldn’t do, but they have long since left home. I wanted a fairly quick project and took inspiration from George Nakashima’s designs which tend to have fairly simple supports, but quite stylish. First picture below is from ‘The soul of a tree’ about Nakashima, showing his Minguren 2 design. I adapted this to use two small slabs forming a T as sketched below. But soon realised neither of the selected pieces of timber was long enough for the spine support and the table, perhaps not surprisingly, lacked stability. Also, both slabs had quite wide sapwood on the outside and most visible edges. It seemed a shame to hide the best looking areas of burry heartwood underneath the top. Quite happy to incorporate the sapwood as the slabs were painted with borax soon after starting the air drying. They are now so dry I doubt anything would have survived and the finished furniture will be used indoors and completely coated with oil finishes. I also like the contrasting colours of heartwood and sapwood. Took a while to think through what options were possible, but I eventually settled on the revised design sketched below, which resolved my concerns but at the expense of more work. Before cutting the slabs, I wanted to check the design would have adequate stability, so I placed the top on blocks of wood on the floor corresponding to the proposed positions for the legs and it was fine. Both slabs were cut in two and flipped, so the sapwood is now in the middle under the table. The slab for the spine support is also lengthened by having two rails joining the two pieces cut from the selected slab. See pictures below. Still a fair amount of work to be done to get this finished by Christmas. Legs need the shaping finished, resin bronze filling, gluing together, sanding and oiling. Also need to finalise how to attach the top. Final photos below shows a trial with it all precariously balanced to check how it’s looking so far. A bit different to past projects I’ve done, but happy to keep going in this direction. Although I’ve been thinking about cutting a 13” diameter hole through the cross slabs and a 13” x 5” oval hole through the larger slab on the spine support. Just to make the base a bit less ‘solid’. Hopefully gluing up tomorrow but if you’ve an opinion about this design modification in the meantime, I’d be interested to hear. Andrew

Also used the planer thicknesser, 1/2" router and random orbit sander, so a fair bit of the credit goes to Sheppach, Dewalt and Metabo. Andrew

No problem. That's a nice slab of oak you have, quite thick from memory as I remember seeing a pic before. Thinking of starting a thread about using the burr oak I had milled as I'm part way through the first project. Andrew

Hi Muttley Glad you like it. Tried to take some more pics but it is so small, it's hard to get a view that shows much else. The picture below shows the chamfer on the front edge of the top. Quite subtle, but helps to give a bit of shape to the top. It's only a 20 degree chamfer and I guess making it steeper, in timber with a bit more colour, might make it more obvious with the light reflected differently from each face? Interesting bit of timber to use. It came from a tree in a work colleagues garden about 20 years ago which was being trimmed by a tree surgeon. In those days, I didn't have an Alaskan mill, just a small chainsaw with a 14" bar and freehand chainsawed the side off a 4 foot length with a good sized burr. Then took it (plus various other odds and ends) to a woodmiser to tidy up the freehand sawn face, and cut a 2" plank leaving the burr as a good sized lump. After drying outside for 2 or 3 years it's been in the roof of my workshop ever since, gathering dust and basically forgotten about. Delighted to see how it turned out and it's surprising how many of the 'odds and ends' from that period when I milled anything, are still worth hanging onto. Andrew

No progress photos unfortunately, partly because it was so quick to make. But here are a few thoughts about the background to the design and making of this small table. The following sketches show how the design evolved, and it’s not finished yet, although the first one has been made. I wonder if the legs might be better splayed out slightly by cutting the corner mitre joints at say 40 degrees instead of 45. The geometry of the tapered chamfers at the mitres needs fixing. And, I like the idea of a ‘nest of tables’ perhaps two identical smallish ones under a larger/longer one of similar design. And …….., lots of other ideas which could keep me busy for ages. I wanted a design that could be machine made, really quickly, possibly suitable for small batch production. I’d used mitre corner joints before for small tables and like look of ‘folding a plank’ so that the grain runs around the corner. So that was a starting point. The width would be 10” as that’s the width of my planer thicknesser and I wanted to avoid the time needed to edge joint planks. The height and length were to suit the plank length of about 4 feet and the positions of the corner joints to avoid larger defects in the plank. First sketch got me started and fulfilled the brief and dimensional constraints. Second sketch was trying to improve the appearance by adding chamfers and the third sketch is how it was made including tapered chamfers and curves on the edges of the top and legs. I cut a 250mm wide plank from the slab on the bandsaw, surfaced one face and an edge, then thicknessed it to about 45mm, trimmed it to width, and cut 20 degree chamfers on both sides of the plank. Then cut the plank into three pieces, cut the mitre joints on the bandsaw and cleaned them up with a hand plane. Drilled the dowel holes in the mitre joints. Cut the legs on the bandsaw to taper their thickness, then cut the curved edges on the top and legs using a router and curved mdf templates. And finally, sanding with a random obit sander and glued the mitre joints with polyurethane glue. Just a few hours work which I could reduce a fair bit if making several at once as the set up time for the machines would be spread over several tables. Final sanding, picking out bits of ingrown bark and filling with resin all took longer than the actual making! And then it was given several coats of tung oil. My wife thinks the curved edges and tapered chamfers make it look a bit more ‘classy’. That’s a matter of opinion I guess, but I agree with her and copied this idea from a DVD I watched about Tage Frid who used this technique on his designs. Final sketch shows the stages to cut the tapered chamfers, starting with a straight and square edge. Really quick to do with a router. Andrew

Thanks Andy. Finished it recently but wasn’t sure about putting up a picture. But fairly quiet on this part of the forum these days, so I thought why not. Didn’t take any other progress pics, but I’ll upload some sketches later. Andrew

Hope you weren’t expecting a massive piece of burry timber! I’ve been sorting through my stock of milled and dried timbers as I’m getting to an age where realistically, I just won’t be able to use all of it. Never used horse chestnut before and always assumed it would be pretty bland and uninteresting, so was thinking of putting this into the firewood pile. A casually applied rub with a rag and tung oil showed it’s worth keeping an open mind……! First piece of furniture I’ve made for over four years and also one of the smallest, but quickest, and my wife loves it as it meets her brief for ’somewhere to put my mug of coffee when lounging on the settee’. The tapered chamfers on the top didn’t quite work out as expected, but that will just need a bit more design development next time. Some folk thought it was marble! Now wondering about some of the other planks put into the firewood pile…….. Andrew

There are some good reclaimed materials available. I used reclaimed oak parquet from the Usher Hall, Edinburgh, for my workshop floor. Bonded onto the underlying concrete as I was looking for a wooden floor over the concrete, able to tolerate machines being moved about on small hard wheels. Took an age to scrape off the tar from the underside of the blocks and clean the tongues and grooves. But it worked out an economical solution and still looks spectacular 10 years on, as my wife likes to remind me when comparing it to the lino in the kitchen........ Andrew

Just a hunch as I've not seen this done. But I think I'd lay the oak at 90 degrees to the whitewood and secret nail through the tongues. Or, if the planks need to run parallel to the whitewood, I'd think about putting ply between the whitewood and oak and again secret nail through the tongues through the ply and into the whitewood below. Either way, as the oak will be fully supported it could be thinner, say 20mm? Andrew

When looking for floating flooring materials earlier this year our local supplier/fitter had solid T+G maple planks which from memory were about 20mm thick and between 125 to 150mm wide. But their advice was to screw plywood to the concrete sub floor and bond the planks to it, rather that use solid planks for a floating floor. Very nice but too expensive and so we went for a prime oak engineered board click system. Andrew

When I first started milling timber for my own use, I wasn’t sure if I’d have the patience to wait for it to dry properly. But it was surprising how quickly the volume of milled timber overtook the rate I was using it. So, it’s perhaps no surprise that despite this thread starting over 8 years ago, I’m just starting to use the timber! Anyway, I thought I’d bring the thread ‘back to life’, briefly, as others might be interested to see how the milled burr oak turned out. It was milled almost exactly 8 years ago, then air dried for between two to three years outside, undercover and away from sunlight. Followed by between 5 to 6 years in my timber store which has a dehumidifier running. Having now cut into a few pieces, the moisture content is about 10%, which will be fine for furniture making. The first two photos below are a smallish piece, 40” x 24” and 50mm thick. The straightedge confirmed there is virtually no drying distortion which I’m amazed at and also very pleased. There are the usual small surface checks which are inevitable with burrs, but otherwise this and the other planks are more or less flawless. This piece will be a coffee table for my wife, to be finished by Christmas. As it is so flat, I’ll just sand it smooth and the slight surface undulations should complement the natural edge for an overall natural appearance. The other photos are two larger slabs, 6’ by 28” at the widest point which are destined to be the top of a desk for my son. They too have minimal distortion and I should be able to get a 30mm thick, 60” by 30”, perfectly flat top out of the 40mm thick slabs. A bit nerve racking building up to ripping these slabs into three smaller pieces. It’s taken a couple of days with paper patterns, chalk, and some re-design to get to the stage of cutting them into smaller pieces earlier today, which will be flattened with a router in a few weeks. Final photo shows how the three pieces will go together but obviously needing a lot of work on them first. My sons response to sending this picture to him was ‘looks awesome dad!’ which made me smile. Been a worthwhile investment financially, for enjoyment and learning a bit more about drying timber. And the best pairs of slabs are still stacked up waiting for future projects. Andrew

Two pictures of the bowl made by Steve using the wood sample I sent to him. Very pleased with it and glad I asked him if he would be able to make it for me. Andrew

Cheers Steve and really looking forwards to seeing the bowl you make with the 12" x 12" x 1 3/4" sample. Andrew

Hi Steve. Thanks for looking into this and I'll send a sample. It's good looking timber regardless of whether it's a genuine mahogany or a related species and I'm looking forwards to using it, hopefully over the next couple of years or so. Andrew