Thread: This could be my next milling job.

Interesting. I'll be watching

Looks like a beast Bob .

So how do you intend milling it, into slabs or blocks for turning etc?

Originally Posted by dai sensei

Looks like a beast Bob .

So how do you intend milling it, into slabs or blocks for turning etc?

With nearly 1.5 cubes of timber I think there's enough there for a bit of everything.

A possible plan is as follows.
The tree lopper has some HD Al scaffolding which I was thinking of setting up over the burl.
Then I would straddle the scaffold with my Unistrut log rails and suspend the the CSM from these and take a ~16" deep cut through the burl.
Then turn the burl upside down and do the same on the other side.
This would give us a good look at the condition new the middle and a 12" thick slab in the middle that is about 1.1 m wide and 1.7 m long that we can turn into table type slabs.
The rest can be done just using the log rails. Maybe a mix of thin and thick slabs.

Half ya luck Bob...make sure to post pics for us

Good luck!

I Forgot to mention the burl was on a tree that was on a large pile of cleared trees scheduled to be burned when the tree lopper saw it and rescued it.

Bob

Nice find and really good that you have rescued it from the CO2 fate.

I have had nothing to do with cutting burls with a bandsaw, but was warned that you are now crosscutting and not ripping. The bandsaw may protest a little.

Also if the burl won't sit easily across the rails you can make up a dummy set of bearers to sit on top. Think noughts and crosses .

Regards
Paul

Originally Posted by Bushmiller

Bob
Nice find and really good that you have rescued it from the CO2 fate.
I have had nothing to do with cutting burls with a bandsaw, but was warned that you are now crosscutting and not ripping. The bandsaw may protest a little.
Also if the burl won't sit easily across the rails you can make up a dummy set of bearers to sit on top. Think noughts and crosses .
Regards
Paul

Thanks Paul. At 1.1m wide its too wide for the Bandsaw (889 mm wide cut) and the last thing I want to be doing is repeated rotating the burl so I plan to break it up using the CSM with the 1.5m Bar.

I'm thinking 16 - 18' thick slabs so that large whole slabs, or blocks can be the cut from that using my rail mill.

Bob

That may well be the best way. I thought you might have trimmed it up a little until if fit on the mill, but you would lose the natural edge doing that. As you said there will be a whole range of pieces somewhere in there.

I had a further thought that even though the bulbous section of the burl will not go through at the blade you might be able to take a piece of two off the top providing the shuttle will pass along your rails. With your access to lifting gear that is an option. It would be too much fiddling without the gear. You might be able to cut something up to 700 wide and 300 deep that way. I am guessing at how much the band wheels will reduce the width of cut at that depth.

Regards
Paul

I don't want to be trying to balance what is basically a ball on the Bandsaw mill rails or hack pieces off to fit under the BS until we can see what we are dealing with.

The Tree Lopper today was talking about laying in a flat crushed rock pad so that we have a reasonable surface to put the burl on and then set up some HD scaffolding to straddle the burl.
Between two pairs of scaffolding legs I can clamp my Unistrut mill rails about 600 mm apart and hang the CSM on there and take 1.5m wide by as much as 500 mm deep cuts. I knew there was a reason for making it be able to cut so deep!

This was a 400 mm deep cut with the 42" bar

2ndcut.jpg

Waiting and watching. Going to be interesting!!!

this will be interesting, I will put the kettle on and await the pictures.