Lumber Milling Advice

[Jerry Bruette]

Need some advice on milling some oak logs that I have. I have seven oak logs that are each nine feet long, the largest being just under 24" under the bark and the smallest about 12" under the bark.

Would it make any sense to have the bigger ones quarter sawn? Or would I be losing too much wood?

Never had any logs this big to saw so I never thought about quarter sawing.

TIA

Jerry

[Tom Sontag]

You can quartersaw a log several different ways. Even if you just cut a log through and through (slabbing without any log rotation) the middle few boards will be quartered. So I would make an effort isolate as much quartersawn material in this way as you can; they really are not large enough to yield any width trying to make the entire log into quartersawn boards.

Woodmizer shows their owners a way to quartersaw that yields a fair amount of riftsawn too, and since I much prefer rift and quartered boards to plain sawn I would consider that method as well.

The first method above will yield the widest quartersawn boards. So, yes, by all means do more than just making lumber out of logs. But do not expect much over 8-9" wide.

[Ken Platt]

Quarter sawing will take longer (which usually means costing more if you are paying for the milling) in addition to ending up with narrower pieces. So it really depends on what you like. I don't care for the look of plainsawn oak, especially red, so when I had some oak milled I had a lot of it done in quartersawn.

I'd say it also depends on what you will be using the wood for. If you have a need for wood for, say, shop cabinets, you might not care especially what it looks like. The smaller red oak logs I did as Tom suggested, just straight slabbing, and use the flatsawn red oak for utility type stuff, backs, and so forth. The nice middle quartered pieces will become furniture, so it all gets used.

Ken

[Michael Conner]

If you have someone with a swing-blade mill nearby, it is not really much trouble at all to cut quartersawn. I would saw the larger log to get as much QS as possible and plain saw the smaller log. A swing-blade mill should be able to yield at least half of the total yield as true QS.

[Steve Nouis]

When I QS on my bandsaw no lumber is lost and you you end up with a little flat sawn and the rest QS and rift. Start by opening up a 6" face on all 4 sides, then slab off 6 to 10" , a couple inches above the center, take that off the mill ,then take 3 or 4 boards off the center untill your a couple inches below the center (these will be nice QS on the outside of these boards, sometimes I cut the center out depending in size) Then stand up the remaining slab on the mill and put the 1st slab back on right beside it and saw through and though. You'll be getting rift off the top and bottom with QS from the middle. This method doesn't take much more time, no lumber waste and you end up with just as much QS as any method unless you cut at angles where you lose a lot of lumber. Logs should be at least 20". Steve

[Scott T Smith]

Jerry, re the decision about quartersawing your oak, here is how I'd look at it.

1- what width boards do you usually like to work with? For most people, they choose boards that match up to the width of their jointer.

Let's say that you have an 8" jointer. When milling quartersawn oak, you need to discard the pith wood as it is very unstable. Typically you can count on removing the equivalent of a 4 by 4 from the center of a 20" log.

On your 24" log (presuming that this is the dimension of the small end of the log), you should be able to end up with 8" - 10" wide boards by quartersawing.

On your small log (12" diameter), presuming that you lose a 2 x 2 from the middle, you will end up with some 4" - 5" wide boards. These would be suitable for small drawer sides, should you need to build any drawers. If not, it may be more worthwhile to flat saw that particular log.

[Steve Nouis]

I wouldn't even think of QS a 12" log, just saw through and through and take a little QS from the edge of the center boards, even a 20" log gets you around 6" QS boards. Steve

[Danny Hamsley]

I agree with Steve's advice on how to saw the logs. I commonly saw larger logs that way, and the rift red oak is nice.