Anybody familiar with Black Birch?

[Joe Fabbri]

Hi everyone,

Recently a Black Birch tree came down in my backyard. I originally thought it was a wild Cherry, but after looking at the flowers (or catkins, I think they're called) and smelling the wood, it seems it's a Black/cherry birch.

Anyway, I figured I'd give hand hewing a shot, to see if anything could be made from it. I was thinking about maybe getting some slabs for a traditional Roubo style bench. Well, I started to hew one side yesterday with a chainsaw and axe, and it seems like an extremely hard wood, and dense. Maybe it's because it came down in the winter, and it's on the dry side, I don't know.

My question is, does anyone have any experience with this wood? Is it valuable in anyway? In other words, should I have looked into getting it milled, rather than wasting some of it by hewing it? I haven't cut much yet, because I started on one log section (about 10' long) that was a little bowed. I only removed the bow out of one side so far.

I think it would make a good benchtop wood, given how tight and hard it seems. I just don't know if it's better to save for anything else.

Joe

[Izzy Camire]

Joe,
My property is covered with it. It grows like a weed. I turned some of it into lumber on the sawmill. It mills up decent.
I have used some of the lumber for a couple of projects and I have found it nice to work with. It has a nice grain and looks good.
It is also valuable as firewood. I was surprised by a chart I got from the forest products lab a couple of years ago that said the BTUs per cord given off exceeded red and white oak by a little.
All in all I am happy to have it on the property.
Izzy

[Jim Koepke]

Here is a BTU chart for anyone interested in which makes better fire wood:

http://chimneysweeponline.com/howood.htm

jtk

[Michael Ray Smith]

Thanks for the link, Jim. Someone recently told me that black walnut had almost no heating value. That didn't sound quite right to me, and the chart shows it's actually at the top of the middling range. Of course, shavings are about the only walnut my fireplace sees anyway anyway since I find a way to use every scrap of it that I can.

[Simon Frez-Albrecht]

I've only used it to make spoons, it doesn't grow too big around my immediate area. Working it green it seems to behave a lot like White Birch.

[David Weaver]

Thanks for the link, Jim. Someone recently told me that black walnut had almost no heating value. That didn't sound quite right to me, and the chart shows it's actually at the top of the middling range. Of course, shavings are about the only walnut my fireplace sees anyway anyway since I find a way to use every scrap of it that I can.

We loved to burn walnut when I was younger (and that was the sole heating source). Walnut, Oak, Locust and Cherry all burnt well without making too much ash.

I'm sure yellow and black birch as well as beech would also be good.

[Joe Fabbri]

Thanks for the replies, guys. I've heard the wood itself is also similar to cherry in that it also darkens with exposure, but it is quite a bit heavier than cherry is supposedly.

I guess if it makes a good burning wood, it must be pretty dense and hard, right? Does that necessarily that go hand-in-hand?

Anyway, I'd like at least to get a few slabs out of it, either by splitting it or cutting it with the chainsaw after hewing. Though it seems the hewing will be quite a project, haha, especially without a proper broad axe.

[Trevor Walsh]

I've got a billet right now that I'm going to make a molding plane out of, Joshua Clark has cut up a ton of BB for plane stock, from what he's told me it should work easily and have much of the properties we look for in planes. I'd quarter some of it, wax and set it aside, maybe saw the rest into lumber?

[David Weaver]

Trevor - can you take a picture of it? I got some a while ago green, and quartersawn, and it looks like cherry (maybe with more bold grain) but it doesn't have the density that I expected now that it's dry. Certainly doesn't look like the couple of older planes I have that are birch.

[Trevor Walsh]

David W,

I happen to have a cherry blank sitting around too...

As far as I can classify based on the beech Ive seen (a bit) and the Birch (this one piece) and cherry (also a bit, but a bit more than the beech). Are these things.

Cherry has womewhat wider and more irregular grain, it doesn't have "flecking" as I'd call it. It also leans towards the Brown-Red end of the "warm" wood colors.

Beech has more regular grain, finer in texture than cherry, it also has "flecking" most people would I think get what I mean by thinking of maple's tiny brown flecks that usually run perpendicular to the grain when QS (Medulary rays?) but beech (though it has medulary rays) has this flecking on radial and tangential surfaces.

Black Birch, it whiter than these, my piece has some streaks of yellowish/cream and brown which I suspect might be sap (the sawyer and Josh were purportedly removing bees in buckets during the milling of this stuff) It has a fine even grain like beech and the "curl/flecking" of maple though not that dark. The Early/latewood is similar in color, more so than beech.

I hope that has been somewhat helpful. In the attached photos the billet on the left is cherry, the center Black Birch and the right is Beech. Keep in mind that the beech has been sitting about 3 weeks since milling, the cherry about a year and the birch is just freshly planed, don't know if that means the birch is very light compared to what it might be but there you have it.

[David Weaver]

That's what I expected the birch that I got to look like. It doesn't, however, look like that. I was pretty sure what I was sold wasn't black birch, but it wasn't expensive enough to worry about, so I guess I'll just use it for jigging. I have more plane wood than I'll ever make planes, probably, anyway - at least moulding planes.

Thanks for going to the trouble to put those pictures up.

[Joe Fabbri]

Hi guys,

Well it's good to know this would make a good plane wood. I have quite a bit of it. The tree was probably 60 ft long, and about 2 feet wide at the base. The very bottom has some rot to it, but I can cut it out.

I'm almost done squaring one 10 ft section. The wood does vary from darker red to creamy white. But it seems nice and is hard.

I'm not sure if the pieces I have will be wide enough (once the slight bows are removed) to make a bench top from it. It would be fine for bench legs (6x6" easily if I wanted), though.

As far as the wood for planes, would it be okay to use wood from higher up in the tree, where the logs are only say 10-12 inches in diameter? Does it matter, or will this be less stable than wood cut from a larger diameter log?

Joe

[Joe Fabbri]

Trevor, when you say quarter it, should I literally split it with wedges into quarters? Without milling equipment, this would be easiest for me to do actually.

[Trevor Walsh]

Joe, Josh Clark (tool dealer extraordinaire) literally split some of his first blanks I believe there was an unrelated drying problem that caused mold and he had to ditch some of those. But you could do that. X-cut to plane sizes and split into blanks. Be sure to wax quickly so checking can't start (as in x-cut split and wax a part of the log in one day/sitting).

As far as where to cut blanks from, I think you would get better yield and better grain from lower sections, the upper parts will still give good leg stock (at3x5, I have 3x5 legs and they are big, 6x6 would be giant) about 2 foot of wide trunk would give maybe 30-40 blanks? Worth it I think.

[Joe Fabbri]

Hey Trevor,

I cut the upper sections of the tree into 3-4 foot lengths, going in between the limbs, with the intention of possibly making legs out of it. They're decently straight, but I'm not sure I want legs that thick, and I don't know how great it would be to leave the center of the tree in there. Do you think it matters much? I could perhaps get two leg widths from these upper sections, I don't know.

The 10 ft section I just hewed might also make good leg stock, maybe yielding 3- 1/2 or 3-3/4 by 5-6" after splitting in two. We'll see. I'm somewhat caught in between using this material for a bench or waiting on some white oak I might also be getting.

Now for plane blanks, how much larger should the cuts be made to allow for checking? Could I cut it just about 1' for typical 9.5" molding planes, is that sufficient?

[Trevor Walsh]

I've got a ton of pith in my bench, the wood was cheap around $50 for the whole roubo. We'll see what it does. I'm not overly worried though. As for the blanks. I'd think that an inch would be good provided they get waxed right away and are dried somewhat nicely. You might want to write Josh to ask him though. I'm sure he's got some insight about that.

[Joe Fabbri]

Yeah, the pith is probably okay if the wood is aged, as yours I think was, and it hasn't checked and twisted yet. But for this fresh wood, I still think I should try to cut around it. I'll see what I can do.

By the way, I sent you a PM, but I'm not sure if my mailbox is working right. Let me know if you received it, thanks.

[Trevor Walsh]

Got it and replied.

[Joshua Clark]

Trevor, when you say quarter it, should I literally split it with wedges into quarters? Without milling equipment, this would be easiest for me to do actually.

I'm a little late to the thread here. Black birch is nice wood but it's not terribly popular and you probably won't find it in a lumber yard. As far as it's properties go, it's harder and denser than almost any other domestic hardwood. It's a rather plain looking wood with almost pure white sapwood with little ray fleck. Unlike beech I don't think it will darken much with age. I've worked some of my billets and found that it works much like beech- easy to work with hand tools. It is a pioneer species that lives fast, dies young, and doesn't leave a pretty corpse. The older trees develop deep cankers that make it hard to cut decent boards. The heart can also be large and its color is distinctly red. On its own, the heart is beautiful but it contrasts too much with the sap so I try to cut 100% sap boards.

As far as processign goes, I've riven plane blanks from it and wound up with a lot of waste. Most of my firewood is black birch and I can testify first hand as to its unsuitability for splitting. It's awful stuff to split. It seems like at least 50% of the round I process require me to break out the wedges and sledge. It's much better to saw it if you can. If you are cutting plane blanks I'd recommend making them at least 2 inches longer than the finished length and sealing the ends with wax as soon as possible. They will need to air dry for at least a year or two. I'm going to experiment with a batch in a vacuum kiln. If it's like yellow birch it should survive it well.

I posted an entry to my blog a few months ago about the birch logs I had saws. I wrote about the process and included a few pictures. If you are interested you can find it here: http://hyperkitten.com/blog/?p=304

Hope this helps,

Josh

[Joe Fabbri]

Hi Josh,

Better late than never, thanks for chiming in. Hewing this stuff feels like hewing rock. I've really gotten a work out. I took a pretty sharp axe to it the first day, and I knew I was in for some trouble when the axe barely bit into it. I resorted to a chainsaw a few times to make score cuts, but unfortunately I find I cut too deeply with the chainsaw sometimes. And I think I'm driving my neighbors nuts, because it makes such a thud when I hit it.

Anyway, are you saying you prefer to use the birch sapwood for planes too, or just when you use the wood for other projects? I'd think for planes you'd want only the heartwood if possible, or is that not the case with this wood?

[Joshua Clark]

I do the same thing when splitting a tough piece of birch- I'll make an X with the saw to seat the wedges. Birch seemed to cut well on the sawmill and sure smelled great.

With birch you want to use the sapwood for planes if you can leave it wide enough. The heart wood is much darker in this stuff and doesn't blend well with the sap wood once it ages like the dark heartwood of beech. I don't think there is any physical difference other than the color between the sap and heart.

Picture of the difference between heart and sap (http://hyperkitten.com/pics/tools/tmp/birch.jpg) for anyone who hasn't seen black birch.

Josh

[Joe Fabbri]

220048220047

Here's two shots of the hewing. You can see some of the chainsaw lines on top in the first picture. After doing two sides with the chainsaw, I switched to the traditional way, as I felt I had more control over the depth of cut. It took longer, but with a better result I think. It also wasn't an ideal log, as it had a slight bow in two directions and there were a few limbs.

Joshua, I don't know how much sapwood I'll get from this log, especially after the hewing. I was planning on using this beam for bench legs (cutting it in half) anyway. The log in the background might have enough sapwood for some plane blanks.

Also, I'm curious if the sapwood is as hard as the heart wood. It seems when I hew it, the white chips and shaves off more easily. Maybe it just happened to be smoother grain at the time, I don't know.

[Trevor Walsh]

Josh, Good to see you chimed in and fixed my birch splitting misinformation there. The heart/sap difference is amazing. I've never seen that.