Wood Gloat Plus Needed Advice

[Drew Pavlak]

Hello all,

The last 5 weeks have been rather good to me for logs. My dad, brother and I talked to a local farmer in the area and he let us take a good sized Black Walnut from a wooded lot that had falled in a wind storm a couple of years ago. The tree was still alive, but layed over on it's side. Then power company came through and clear cut some stuff down the road as well. Needless to say we have some logs to saw up into lumber.

A friend of my Uncle has a Norwood Lumbermate 2000 that needed some work, so my dad is working on that and then we get to use it to saw up the logs for free, maybe the price of a couple of blades. Here are the pics of the logs we have currently.

For the oak logs what would be the best use of the lumber? I am getting mixed responses when reading on the internet. Some swear by QS, others just flat sawn, because you get some QS and some FS and some RS. Seeing how I will be doing the sawing myself the only thing I will be out is time. Should I QS the whole thing?

For the walnut I have heard just Flat Saw it. I am fine with that. The next questions I would have would be on Dimensions and from what part of the log. If you want som 8/4 lumber, should it come from the middle of the log as you are sawing it or doesn't it matter.

I realize I got pretty lucky here and I would like to make the most of the lumber. Any advice anyone would like to offer would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks
Drew.

PS. The two models in the pics are my daughters Live(6) and Sam(3). Livi is about 45 inches tall.

[Mike Cruz]

WOW, that sure is some purdy walnut! And those models are pretty cute, too... ;)

Congrats on both of those gloats. :)

[Thomas Bennett]

Your larger logs are beautiful. If you have never sawn lumber from a log beofre you will be much better off by taking your logs to a sawmill. They should charge you somewhere from 20-40 cents a board foot. I know that is a wide range but I've found you et what you pay for.
You have the trailer to transport the logs. Your sawyer will advise you about the best yield concerning QS and flat sawn. If you have your lumber processed correctly you have a nice investment for those kids. Don't expect much from the smaller logs. They will bow and not have much lumber. Have you scaled the logs yet? Good luck and proceed carefully.

[Drew Pavlak]

What do you mean by scaled? As for taking it to get sawed, the people I have talked to won't come on site to do it and they said that it would take anywhere from 3 to 6 months before they could get to it. They have so much work right now they are turning away small orders. I don't really have a good method to transport them very far, those logs were all really close to my fathers house.

I think I will have to take my chances and saw it up myself.

Thanks though.

[Prashun Patel]

Sorry, no advice to offer. Please post pix when you get it cut. I'd love to see how you made best use of that gorgeous walnut.

[Van Huskey]

Sorry, I can't offer advice either but I do wanna say that is one fine looking walnut!