White Oak

[bruegf]

We recently had a massive oak tree fall down in our backyard.  Fortunately the only damage it did was to a couple of smaller trees.  The tree was 40+ inches at the base and broke off about 20' up.  It had been hit by lightning over 20 yrs ago and the carpenter ants had hollowed it out at the point where the main limbs branched out from the trunk.

I ended up with a straight log that was almost 12' long, 40" at one end and 32" at the other end.  Just had it milled into lumber today by a guy with portable saw mill.  Had some damage from the ants in it, but not all that bad.  Ended up with a little over 500 bd ft of very nice white oak and 3 or 4 years worth of fire wood.

Now all I have to do is sticker it, wait a few years for it to finish air drying and then decide what to build out of it.

Fred

 

[tjbier]

Congrats on the white oak!  Doesn't it feel good know in you "harvested" the lumber?
I have been cutting firewood for my inlaws and got into my other hobby of chainsaws [smile] and found a few local guys with mills and even 1 guy with a kiln [wink]
So now I have a ~700 bd ft of soft maple and walnut to use on our house that we are building. Just feels better than buying it, and much much cheaper.

 

[bruegf]

I just couldn't quite get myself to cut and split it into firewood even though I don't have any specific use in mind.  The tree must have been well over 100 yrs old, so it feels better doing something more constructive with it. 

There's a guy about 45 miles from me that has a dehumidifier based kiln, so if I decide to do something with it before it fully air dries I take some it to him and speed up the drying a bit.

Fred

 

[peter halle]

Fred,

Sorry for the loss of the tree.  But if you have to lose one - great usage.  That was one huge white oak!

I am extremely patient  [big grin] yet I can't wait to so what you do with some of that.

Peter

 

[tjbier]

Before
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After! lots of wide planks that I will mill once I get power over at our new place, to feed my hobby I bought a used Woodmaster 718 with the trim/rip saw kit so I can mill quite a bit on my own.
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[nickao]

From tree to final project on site has always been one thing I aspire to make happen, nice! I have the land with trees(Red Oak, White Oak and Walnut) and the shop. All I have left is to make a kiln and get the big saw.

 

[bruegf]

Peter,

The good news is I have 2 more that size in the back yard and one more in the front yard. so I still have plenty of leaves to rake.   That's why you were feeling sad for me isn't - afraid I wouldn't have enough leaves to play with this fall  Not to worry, plenty of leaves left.  

No idea at all what I'm going to do with it.  Most of my furniture is cherry, and I'm planning to start work on a new kitchen out of cherry in a couple months, so I've never really considered doing much with oak until now.   Good news is that since air drying will take a while, I'll have 2-3 years to think about it.  Probably should do something together with all that teak I still have in my basement!  Wonder how oak and teak would look together?

tjbier ,

Those are some nice looking boards.  Wish mine were that wide.   The sawyer's mill wasn't really quite big enough for a tree this size so he ended up cutting a few planks and then rotating a bit, and repeating.   Plus there was some ant damage, but I did get some 10" boards, plus a lot of 5" boards, quite a few of which were quarter sawn.  Probably not that bad of a thing anyway since I only have a 6" jointer and it will give me an excuse to use my Domino if I want to glue boards together to get some wider pieces

Fred

 

[nydesign]

Fred that's great you were able to turn the tree into lumber.

I was never a big fan of oak till I used white oak on my last project, now I really like it.
I used some that was rift cut, but at the lumber yard the rift, and non-rift white oak looked equally good I thought.

With the 500 bd ft you could make a great dining table.

cheers,

- J