Thread: Someone to saw river gum slabs - Brisbane

Do you want them re-sawn into thinner slabs, as you originally wanted, or into planks?

Thinner slabs wont be easy, it will move around and need good fixings, planks or boards 50mm thick would be easy for a Lucas or even a decent electric hand saw (with good blade and guide) - ie you will end up with 150x50 boards from the 150 thick slab.

Thanks for your comments. I had hoped to get at least a couple of wider slabs - about 50 thick - out of them but as my acquisition of the timber was really just to save it from being chipped and wasted I guess I will have to accept whatever I can get at this point. I have a 9.25 inch electric saw and my bench saw will cut 100 mm deep but the slabs are too heavy to handle onto a bench and/or turn over to cut from both sides. I was hoping someone on the forum might do this, or get a woodies rate for it rather than full commercial but I know there was a commercial oprator at Mooloola with a big horizontal bandsaw so if there is no one closer perhaps I will have to see if I can get them to him if if he is still doing it. Otherwise one of the recyclers like The Big Red Shed may be prepared to help.

You could try Trevor ("TGCreations" on the Forum). He has a horizontal bandsaw on a trailer for slabbing timber.

Thanks to all for your responses. As it turns out the E. teretecornis slab split through the middle of the tree, i.e. widest slab split from both ends, to about 400 mm in, despite end sealing. That made it easier to choose what to do. I found a local place, Darra Joinery (no financial connections, unfortunately) that can saw up to 400 wide. They are ripping the biggest slab down the middle and then re-sawing the slab to about 50mm boards. The narrower sections will be re-sawn about 400 wide and 55 thick with some smaller boards to come from the edge slabs. The timber is clearly very susceptible to end grain cracks so I'll reseal all the ends before I sticker it under cover. I'll just have to wait a few years for it to dry before I see what I do with whatever survives without cracks. At least some of that beautiful tree will be saved and used, instead of chipped. Looks like I'll have to buy a moisture meter some day.