sawyer question?

[larry merlau]

what amount of good qtr sawn, could one expect to get out of a 30"small end by 10' white oak. am looking for good rays and as much width as i can get. feel free to (pm) if not wanting to post reply.

[Scott Banbury]

what amount of good qtr sawn, could one expect to get out of a 30"small end by 10' white oak. am looking for good rays and as much width as i can get. feel free to (pm) if not wanting to post reply.

350 bdft of rift and quarter--200 bft or so will show some fleck. The widest boards will have the most fleck and be around 10" wide.

[lou sansone]

350 bdft of rift and quarter--200 bft or so will show some fleck. The widest boards will have the most fleck and be around 10" wide.

scott

what scale are you using ?
international gives 410 for rift and that is with a 1/4 kerf. larry ... are you going to be having this milled on a band mill or circular mill? you will get quite a bit more with the small kerf of a band mill
lou

[Ian Abraham]

Although the scales say there will be 400+ bdft in a log like that, that is of ALL grades. You could cut 30" wide boards from the centre of the log, but to get top grade Qsawn boards you will have to rip off the sap and take out the heart section. So thats where Scott's good 10" boards come from. You can increase the amount of figured boards by doing some trick cutting, but thats again going to decrease the total bdft yeild.

Of course the amount of each grade depends on what the inside of the log is like. You can never really be sure untill you cut into it :) But Scott saws a lot of oak logs so I think he would have a fair idea what to expect.

Cheers

Ian

[Neil Lamens]

Hi All:

I'm not familiar with how a "sawyer" figures the yield out.

When Lou asks "what scale???" what is meant by that???

I'd really appreciate an explanation on how a sawyer calculates tentative yeilds........THANKS!!!!

Neil

[larry merlau]

lou it is a bandsaw rig,,

and the scale's they use are either doyle or scribner which can be found in a calculator on a link threw wood web
www.woodweb.com/cgi-bin/calculators/calc.pl?calculator=log_volume

ian how do they do those trick cuts you mentioned? the guy is easy to work with and i could suggest doing them if i knew how to go about it.

[Scott Banbury]

Larry PM'd me for more info but I thought everyone here might benefit from further discussion.

I have a pictorial on my website that shows how I quartersaw the large oaks that we typically saw here in Memphis. I have a pictorial on my website that shows how we do it on a log over 32" at http://www.scottbanbury.com/sawingmethods.html

For logs under 32" we split (quarter) the logs on the mill after slabbing the log down to a 28" by 28" square--28" is our maximum width between guides, your sawyers mill may be different.

The slabbing is done with the log toed up so that the pith is perfectly centered. This is the key to getting good fleck--all rays point to the pith and you'll split many more along the entire length of the board if the pith runs perfectly parallel to the blade.

If your sawyer is not familiar my approach, print out this diagram for him http://www.scottbanbury.com/qsawmethod3.pdf (http://www.scottbanbury.com/qsawmethod3.pdf)

I like my method because it results in the widest bookmatches possible while removing all juvenile wood as well as most of the sapwood thus avoiding drying problems. If you leave sapwood on the side of a QS board, it will crook. If you leave juvenile wood on the edge of your board (first 8-10 rings around the pith), the edge will dry wavy, taking good heartwood with it.

The reason that the yield is lower than scale is that quartersawing is very wasteful but the point of it is not to maximize the quantity of wood but rather the quality in terms of stability and appearance. Besides, I heat my home with wood and the wasted "corners" of the quarters makes perfect firewood.

Here's how I look at at a quarter when determining yield. This is a quarter from a hypothetical 32" diameter (at the small end), 10' long log.

http://www.scottbanbury.com/quarteryieldweb.jpg

[Timo Christ]

Thanks for all this good info, Scott! Liked your website alot as well. :)
Timo

[Scott Banbury]

Thank you, Timo . . . "if you're ever in Memphis . . . "

[Neil Lamens]

Hi Scott:

Thank you very much. Great explanation and your web site "gets 'er done".

Neil

[lou sansone]

hi scott

thanks for the great info.. I really like the pdf down load files .. very usefull information.
lou