Scott T Smith
02-04-2015, 9:35 PM
Well, it's been an interesting few months. I have not been on SMC since last fall because last October my wife became ill to the point where she could not keep any food down for 10 days and had to be fed via IV. Then, as she was starting to recover I became very ill, to the point where I was housebound for almost a month. All in all my wood business was severely impacted for over three months.
Fortunately our health has rebounded and we're digging back out. I've been meaning to post a sequel to my "uncommon project" thread, in this instance instead of milling a 43' long beam we were slabbing a 72" diameter log, and I thought that my fellow SMC members may enjoy the journey.
It started when a fellow sawyer called me and told me that he was passing along a slabbing opportunity for a 203" circumference black walnut that was practically in my back yard.
Talk about heart palpation's!!!!!!
After speaking with the owner's rep, turns out that the tree was black oak..... :mad: and it was larger than 203" :D
The tree was located at Meredith College in Raleigh and was dying, and the college administration did not want to see the wood go to waste. Unfortunately there was no way to get a crane, or even a trailer for that matter into the inner courtyard where the tree was located. Fortunately my skid steer and backhoe could be threaded through one entryway; otherwise it would have been very difficult for me to tackle this project. The college hired a tree service company to remove the canopy and drop the log for us.
Normally I prefer to bring large logs to the mill, as it is easier having all of the support equipment available. In this instance it wasn't an option so we loaded up the slabber and took it to the log.
After mobilizing the equipment we trimmed the 32' log into a couple of 13'7" ones. Both logs were over 75" at their widest points so we had to do a little trimming in order to get them within my 72" max cut.
306141
We used the skid steer to roll them apart and set up the slabber and commenced milling. Due to the height of the log, we slabbed 20" off in the first pass and set it aside for later re-slabbing. Talk about a dancing skid steer! We had to sling it in order to get the CG a few feet behind the back of the forks.
306142
After taking a 7-1/2" and a few 4-1/2" slabs off of the log we placed the 20" slab back on and milled it into 4-1/2" ones. After that we started on the second log and then placed the bottom portion of the first log onto it for finishing. I designed my slabber primarily for quartering 40" logs, or cutting larger ones into thirds for subsequent reprocessing on our band mill, so there are a few idiosyncrasies that we have to work around when slabbing.
306143
Many of the slabs had some really nice color and spalting:
306144
Getting the slabs out of the courtyard was a challenge (the smallest ones weighed 2,200 lbs and the largest ones over 4000 lbs). First we tried wheeling them out like a wheelbarrow with a hand truck under one end and the skid steer under the other. We trashed the hand truck after three slabs... Next we tried tag teaming with the skid steer on one end and the backhoe on the other. This worked, but was challenging to keep in sync between the two machines. Eventually we used a 20' nylon sling to sling them to the backhoe forks, brought them through the narrow entryway and then set them on the skid steer forks for further transport to the trailer.
306145
Here is the final result; I think that it was worthwhile. They have been treated with Timbor and placed in the air drying barn. Looks like it will be a few years before I can recover the investment, but I hope that these will turn out to be something special.
306146
Fortunately our health has rebounded and we're digging back out. I've been meaning to post a sequel to my "uncommon project" thread, in this instance instead of milling a 43' long beam we were slabbing a 72" diameter log, and I thought that my fellow SMC members may enjoy the journey.
It started when a fellow sawyer called me and told me that he was passing along a slabbing opportunity for a 203" circumference black walnut that was practically in my back yard.
Talk about heart palpation's!!!!!!
After speaking with the owner's rep, turns out that the tree was black oak..... :mad: and it was larger than 203" :D
The tree was located at Meredith College in Raleigh and was dying, and the college administration did not want to see the wood go to waste. Unfortunately there was no way to get a crane, or even a trailer for that matter into the inner courtyard where the tree was located. Fortunately my skid steer and backhoe could be threaded through one entryway; otherwise it would have been very difficult for me to tackle this project. The college hired a tree service company to remove the canopy and drop the log for us.
Normally I prefer to bring large logs to the mill, as it is easier having all of the support equipment available. In this instance it wasn't an option so we loaded up the slabber and took it to the log.
After mobilizing the equipment we trimmed the 32' log into a couple of 13'7" ones. Both logs were over 75" at their widest points so we had to do a little trimming in order to get them within my 72" max cut.
306141
We used the skid steer to roll them apart and set up the slabber and commenced milling. Due to the height of the log, we slabbed 20" off in the first pass and set it aside for later re-slabbing. Talk about a dancing skid steer! We had to sling it in order to get the CG a few feet behind the back of the forks.
306142
After taking a 7-1/2" and a few 4-1/2" slabs off of the log we placed the 20" slab back on and milled it into 4-1/2" ones. After that we started on the second log and then placed the bottom portion of the first log onto it for finishing. I designed my slabber primarily for quartering 40" logs, or cutting larger ones into thirds for subsequent reprocessing on our band mill, so there are a few idiosyncrasies that we have to work around when slabbing.
306143
Many of the slabs had some really nice color and spalting:
306144
Getting the slabs out of the courtyard was a challenge (the smallest ones weighed 2,200 lbs and the largest ones over 4000 lbs). First we tried wheeling them out like a wheelbarrow with a hand truck under one end and the skid steer under the other. We trashed the hand truck after three slabs... Next we tried tag teaming with the skid steer on one end and the backhoe on the other. This worked, but was challenging to keep in sync between the two machines. Eventually we used a 20' nylon sling to sling them to the backhoe forks, brought them through the narrow entryway and then set them on the skid steer forks for further transport to the trailer.
306145
Here is the final result; I think that it was worthwhile. They have been treated with Timbor and placed in the air drying barn. Looks like it will be a few years before I can recover the investment, but I hope that these will turn out to be something special.
306146