Thread: any suggestions on a milling process for a silky oak log.

Originally Posted by apricotripper

To get 55mm blanks what would you cut them out at to allow for shrinkage. 60mm ?

Jake

Shrinkage is low at 2% radial and 5% tangential assuming this is Grevillea Robusta. 60mm would be ample from the shrinkage aspect, but you may have to allow for cupping too. Others will have to advise on the sawing problems as I have not cut Silky Oak.

Regards
Paul

Jake
Silky oak is not my speciality, only milled a dozen or so, but I do cut a fair bit of chair material, so I think I know what your trying to achieve. In my experience, silky oak can be milled reasonably close to the heart and sapwood, however heartwood and knots do distort/collapse a fair bit. With the log only being 750mm dia., you can't mill 510mm dead quarter sawn boards, as you only have about 300mm of clean wood from centre to edge. You would probably be best to try and cut super clean, dead quarter sawn 270-300mm wide boards at 8mm thicker than your final thickness required, label the boards as they come off the saw and perfectly bookmatch them for your seats. This reduces the chance of distortion, and produces a nicely figured seat where the join is hard to see due to the bookmatching.

Use timber sealer on all ends (cover the last 4 inches on all sides to minimise end split) and knots.

Hope this helps,
Cheers
James

Thanks Paul .

Hope this helps,
Cheers
James

It does help.. I can picture that. Thanks James. I'll make sure their labeled.

wondering......ruffly, how much longer would milling a log quartersawn take over flat sawn ? Double the time ? I'm paying him per hour.

thanks
Jake

Jake

Milling time is hard to determine, too many variables, ie how clean is the log, how good is your miller and his mill, etc, etc.

How I justify the costs is "how much do I gain from spending the extra money milling it properly vs how much will timber (timber =money) I lose by rushing the job." The tree probably took 80 years to grow, so whats an extra hour in milling costs to get the best out if it? Not much in the big scheme of things.

Where you can save money is having the log fully prepped on skids ready for the miller to start. Things such as cleaning the log down of rocks and dirt, debarking, metal detecting for nails, having all limbs and knobs flush cut with the barrel is all time and money saved if the miller does not have to do it. This is generally where costs blow out because the miller is not milling.

I own my own mill and gear, but quite often use Krunchie and Tony to mill. To maximise their milling time, I aim to have all logs fully prepped ready to go, so they can concentrate on milling rather than other tasks.

Cheers
James

That is good advice

Originally Posted by tassietimbers

Jake
Milling time is hard to determine, too many variables, ie how clean is the log, how good is your miller and his mill, etc, etc.

How I justify the costs is "how much do I gain from spending the extra money milling it properly vs how much will timber (timber =money) I lose by rushing the job." The tree probably took 80 years to grow, so whats an extra hour in milling costs to get the best out if it? Not much in the big scheme of things.

Where you can save money is having the log fully prepped on skids ready for the miller to start. Things such as cleaning the log down of rocks and dirt, debarking, metal detecting for nails, having all limbs and knobs flush cut with the barrel is all time and money saved if the miller does not have to do it. This is generally where costs blow out because the miller is not milling.

I own my own mill and gear, but quite often use Krunchie and Tony to mill. To maximise their milling time, I aim to have all logs fully prepped ready to go, so they can concentrate on milling rather than other tasks.

Cheers
James

thanks James.

Also does your bandsaw mate have a lot of experience? don't give him such a log to 'try' on. and does the mill have enough throat capacity to quarter saw the log?

good point. but think hes being doing it enough to know what he's doing. The tree was most probably going to be wasted anyway, so will be happy if we can anything out of it. Hopefully won't cost too much though.