galootish lumber

[Cliff Rohrabacher]

Any o' yous galoots rive yer own lumber for stronger wood?

Do you do it green or dry?
How long a piece of wood can you hope to get?
I'd guess Oak would be among the better species.
I've managed to get straight grown Elm to rive off in very straight lengths up to 3'

What species do you like?

[Ken Werner]

Ash is good.

[Don C Peterson]

White Oak is what I use, it splits well, it's strong, and it bends well. The only thing I've riven stock for is for a chair, but it worked great. I got far better results with riven wood than milled wood when it comes time for steam bending.

http://www.sawmillcreek.org/showthread.php?t=90144

I didn't actually rive the wood for this project from the log, I have a source for air dried White Oak and I got some thick stock which I then split into the rough pieces.

[Michael Faurot]

Any o' yous galoots rive yer own lumber for stronger wood?


I've done it, but mostly because it was the most cost effective way for me to take advantage of some free wood. However, after splitting a log into quarters, I'll then quarter saw those pieces, so that does typically provide for more stable wood.



Do you do it green or dry?
I let my logs sit around for as long as I can fend off curiosity. :) Depending on what I've acquired, I may cut off a short section after a couple of months, just to see what I've got, but then leave the rest alone for a year or more.



How long a piece of wood can you hope to get?
I mostly work with small stuff, so I stick to 2-3' as that's about the most I can manage by myself.



What species do you like?So far, I've only worked with Ash and Sycamore. Both seem to give me a work out. I'd be curious to know, based on someone's experience, what's easy to split.

[James Mittlefehldt]

Any o' yous galoots rive yer own lumber for stronger wood?

Do you do it green or dry?
How long a piece of wood can you hope to get?
I'd guess Oak would be among the better species.
I've managed to get straight grown Elm to rive off in very straight lengths up to 3'

What species do you like?

I used to help my father in law with his firewood, he had a deal with the farmer across the road from him he would let him cut the dead wood for firewood. I am surprised you managed to get three foot sections of elm to split straight that stuff was nasty, the maul I used would bounce off.

The sweetest stuff we found was white ash, with frost in the wood it would almost fall apart when splitting.

[Circa Bellum]

I'm trying to learn to do it myself. I dragged some oak home from a storm downed tree and spent the first week or so trying to learn how to split it with my new wedges I bought at the borg. Finally bought an old, thinner, wedge at a flea market and got it started. After that, it went really well. Still having trouble figuring out how to use my froe effectively. I've been able to rive two boards out so far, each about 4"x1"x24". Since I don't have a scrub plane, I ran them through my table saw to even them up and then planed them with a number 5.

It's definitely something I'm interested in learning and would welcome any tips...

[Don C Peterson]

I have it on good authority that wood meant for splitting should be cut during the winter when the sap isn't flowing. If the wood is cut during the spring or summer it makes it much harder to split.

[John Timberlake]

I have done it a few times.

First time was almost 50 years ago splitting southern yellow pine into 4-1/2 foot stick about 1" square for hanging tobacco down in NC. Took most of June to make 1000 sticks.

Also did ash for making a pair of ladder back chairs using Roy Underhill's book as a guide.

Both of these split very nicely. The pine I used wedges and an ax. The ash i used wedges, ax and fro.