Thread: Is paperbark ok to slab?

any wood is good wood.

Hi Rob, Paperbark is a very pretty timber, almost identical to look at as jarrah however, logs are usually full of water shakes and it moves like Beonce when it dries so if you can get good slabs from it your doin better than me

and normally you don't get ya hands on one big enough to cut slabs from - especially in my neck of the woods.

Very likely to split

I presume that you are talking about the big paper barks. ive herd them called salt water paper barks

I helped a mate mill some a few years ago and yes it did move like Beonce. I heard that Forest Products Commision tried to dry some in there fancy kilns with little sucess, wiggle wiggle bounce bounce groove...

It looked sensation straight of the saw kind of like the darkest chocalate jarrah you have ever seen, and i seem to semember that it had a silver fleckiness??

quater saw it mate like to see it split then.

Originally Posted by weisyboy

quater saw it mate like to see it split then.

Hate to say it Carl but it will, the hardest part is to keep it straight. You can dump tonnes of concrete on top of it and under its own stresses it moves like mad inbetween the sticks

I cut one (saltwater paperbark) up recently and the timber was dark at felling but faded to a light pinky brown with silver flecks as Miltzy said. It looked and looks very attractive but mine is still seasoning .

If you cut it down, seal it straight away. Stripping the bark (and you'll be amazed at how wet the inner layers of bark are) is a real pain in the nether regions.

I'd be tempted to mill it ASAP after felling as mine developed cracks remarkably quickly. Nifty's comment about the shakes was also true for me and it made the log like a Forrest Gump box of chocolates every time I made a cut. The bark is also deceptive as I found holes in the sapwood where the bark grew in an inch and sometimes more from the surface of the rest of the sapwood in a way that I associate more with burls than trunks.

All this aside, I want some more .

i have found that wrapping in plastic helps to reduce the moisture loss. I have found the wrapping they use on freight pellets very good. just strip the timber out, and wrap it up. after a few months start tearing holes in the plastic letting the moisture out. especially going into sping and summer.

Thanks for all the advise.
Here is a photo of the tree in question. It is just over 1m wide at the base and about 0.8m wide at the first branch, about 4m long.
So ill probably slab it and see what happens. If it cracks and bows while drying hopefully i can salvage something useful from it.
So next question is how thick should i slab it?

Thanks

Rob Duca

Duca seeing it is on such a lean there will be a lot of tension wood. So they will either spring or bow or both depending on which way you cut it. I did see a slab of melaleuca at working with wood I asked them why it hadn't cracked. One replied "it was twice as wide". So maybe some quarter sawn bits will survive. Good luck it is nice wood.

That's a paperbark

It isn't a saltwater paperbark.

The tree I Know as Paperbark is Melalueca Quinqinerva (Spelling?) And it certainly doesn't look like that.

There ara others of the species that have a slightly papery bark and leaves a little like those on your specimen. Well from what I can see anyway.

A picture of the foliage and fruit or seed pods, or "nuts would be handy. The Mellaluecas Have seed nuts very similar to those on Bottlebrush trees (Calistemon species.)