Chainsaw Sawyering

[Joe A Faulkner]

I have a couple of old soft maple trees on my property, and last month one of them dropped a rather large branch. Fortunately it is far enough from the house to have not done any damage. July is not my favorite time of year for chainsaw work, but I've slowly been turning this thing into camp fire wood. There was one large fork in the branch that called out for me to try my hand at some chainsaw sawyering, so I cut out a few slabs, and took one to the bench for a little clean up just to see the potential. The wood is dripping wet, so I will need to let it dry for a bit. I will be interested to see how it looks once dried. The pieces aren't terribly big - 12" wide, 18" long. I might make a slab end table - not sure. Suggestions welcome.

[Gordon Eyre]

Hope it will dry well without splitting. Seal the end grain on this nice slab.

[Val Kosmider]

Hope it will dry well without splitting. Seal the end grain on this nice slab.Yup. Will be interesting to see the 'after'; picture a year or two from now when it dries. Chances are it will split, check cup or twist....or maybe some of all of the above. I notice you have 'cleaned it up' quite a bit....not sure I would devote any more effort to it until it has a chance to dry. 12 months per inch....more or less.

[Kelly Colin Mark]

I mill about one 8' x 30" x 2" slab per year (LOL) out of a big log that our local hydro company felled.

Then I started thinking - what am I going to do with 2" slabs ? They're too wide (and big, and long, and heavy) to resaw with any equipment I'm every likely to see, and at 2" will take longer to dry than if it was milled closer to the desired end thickness. Thinner (and thus more) slabs will waste more of the log, but not nearly as much as if I end up having to plane the slabs down to final thickness anyways. Dilemmas, dilemmas.

But the sight of a big beautiful slab milled by nothing but sweat, the sweet smell of two-stroke oil and the roar of a big chainsaw is one of the more unique pleasures I've had with wood.

[Ole Anderson]

Wood from a branch that is not growing vertical is called reaction wood as the bottom of the branch is under compression while the top portion is under tension. As stated it is likely to warp significantly as you work it. Makes decent firewood though. If you want to start slabbing wood for a shop project, start with a vertical trunk.