WickedWoodsNW

This is a branch from an Oregon white oak tree that an arborist had to remove for new construction. We were able to haul the entire tree back to our log yard in order to salvage the wood. Milled into 12/4 or 3 inch thick lumber, we will use most of it for our furniture company. It will mainly be used for leg stock but have the option of resawing after it is out of the kiln as well. We mainly salvage in Oregon but do head up to Washington from time to time. Working with developers and arborists, we try to keep as many trees out of the landfill as possible. This one was going to head to the dump before the arborist called me.

We have a claro walnut, black walnut, and a white oak that we mill at the same time. Smaller logs, but impressive for a sawmill with three hardwoods to cut through at once. We also talk about our Woodmizer LX250 sawmill being all electric and how I really think its a solid route to go if you have the 3 phase power. All of the logs got milled into 8/4 or 2 inch thick live edge slabs. These were too small to turn into dimensional lumber. We typically firewood or give away logs under 16 inches but ended up loading two that were right around 12 inches across. Third was larger, which had some nice curl.

Milling a base section of a nicely spalted silver maple log. It was roughly 30 inches at the small end while the large end was 40 inches. Just over 40 inches in length. All milled into 8/4 or 2 inch thick live edge slabs. We ended up getting 10 nice slabs from this smaller log. We will air dry these until next year then they will be ready for the kiln. This size of log at this length is perfect for making round tables and small coffee tables out of. Our furniture company tries to keep prefinished and finished round tables in stock.

This is an incredible english walnut that we milled. It was getting pretty close to maxing our LX250 at 50 inches across at the widest. It was just under seven feet in length as well. These were all milled into 12/4 or 3 inch thick live edge slabs. Beeswing figure throughout the sap wood on these slabs which I have only ran into with bastogne and english walnut logs. It does occur in black and claro as well, it is very rare and especially beautiful when finished. Bark inclusion heading down the center of most of the slabs, as well as some 3/16 inch steel which we hit a dozen times as we got through the log. These will see atleast three years of air drying before they hit the kiln.

We had a local arborist drop more redwood sequoia logs off a few weeks ago and this was the last log. The other two were solid all of the way through the sap wood while this one had no viable sapwood left. From time to time, we have logs dropped off that just go straight to firewood. We do try to salvage as many as possible. We were able to still salvage quite a bit from this log. Live edge milling was the plan until we had to square it off into a cant to get rid of all of the soft sap wood. We then decided to mill it into bookmatched slabs. They were all 8/4 or 2 inches thick and around 5 ft in length. The log was 46 inches at one end and 36 at the other. Butt ends of sequoia logs have some incredible taper to them. We ended up with slabs that were around 19 inches wide which makes the bookmatches right around 36 inches wide finished. These only need 6 months of air drying before they go into the kiln.

We are milling up a Douglas fir log into full size dimensional lumber as you would see in an old house. These will be 2x4 inches actual and will be used as cross supports. Running across our 8x8 beams, they will become our wooden skids that we dry our lumber on. The log was around 19 inches on both ends and right over 8 ft in length. Since we build our bunks at 49 inch widths, we will get two pieces exactly out of each of the studs that we milled.

This shows us processing a 15 ft long black walnut log on our WoodMizer LX-250 Sawmill. This is longer than what we use for our furniture company and retail sales so it was cut in half. The log had zero taper to it in the entire length. No major visible knots or defects on this log from the outside and nothing major was hiding inside. Milled the entire log into 8/4 or two inch thick slabs. We ended up with some live edge slabs to be edged later or end up as epoxy projects! No nails or rocks in this log, which was a yard tree from Salem, Oregon which needed to be taken down due to crown death. We will dry these slabs for a minimum of two years before we kiln dry them.