Help me carve this one up

This is a red oak that is 47" on the big end, 37" on the small end and 10'-6" long. I was thinking of quarter sawing the half below the hart crack and flat sawing the other half. However I am concerned about the trajectory of the hart crack(winds to the right) vs the twist that is evident going the opposite direction (winds to the left). The protruding slats indicate the hart crack on both ends. The long slat indicates the majority of the bark inclusion that runs the length of the log 80 percent of which follows the wind of the rest of the log. But then shifts to the right and ends up lining up with the hart crack on the small end. You can barley see the bark inclusion on the small end but it does seem to follow the hart crack. However as you can see that is contrary to the twist of the outside of the log. Do I follow the hart crack for the plane of the saw or do I split the difference between that and the twist on the outside face of the log? I hope that makes sense.

James

If it were mine, I would split it according to the large heart crack. If the grain spirals as much as the outside suggests, any lumber will twist as it dries, so I would cut thick pieces hoping to end up with stock for table legs and expect to burn a lot of waste.

I decided to try and split this open. Something told me the hart crack on the small end not following the swirl was wrong. This took about an hour and showed that the true hart crack went with the swirl. I will set the plane of the blade parallel to the first piece of 2x that is level in the last photo. It is sort of an average of the riven surface.

James

big log, James!
Looking good -Pat

Hi Pat,

This one is a tad bigger than the one you and I quartered a few years back.



I decided if I was going to quarter saw. Then I should do it with the better of the two halves. Instead of my original plan to use the half with the bark inclusions showing on the end. I used my 038 with a 20" bar to quarter the half. Then milled the quarters on my band mill.

I got some nice boards with a very calm clear linear aesthetic with lots of minor ray fleck. My experience has been that the red oak needs dye to really pop the ray fleck. In fact out in the sun wetting the boards almost made it hard to see them. It showed way more when the boards started to dry.

The boards are all 2 3/4" thick with the intent to resaw as fit for the end use. My hope is the best ray fleck is still to be revealed as my aim was to get the medullary rays centered in the boards. The photo shows one quarter. These average from 12" to 15" with one board being 17"x5/4".

James

what a treat to watch. That is a beautiful log. Can't wait to see the remaining boards. Thanks for posting.

I guess it was apiece of cake doing that with all the help I see you had.:)

Tim

I quartered about 5/8ths of the log and the balance was flat sawn. Very consistent QS boards ranging from 12" to 17" wide with a few narrower boards between. I was very pleased.

The 12/4" slabs are very clear almost to a fault. I think rotating one of the slabs below and joining them would make a nice conference table.

James