Thread: tree felling

The oak or elm is definetly worth a go, not so sure about the willow but then they do make cricket bats out of it. It may be worth a go simply to have as structural stuff that you can use later for things. You can try Graham Hargens on 62924995 or 0417 419147 after 7pm tues-sat or all day today. He has a lucas mill and slabber, alternatives are in the yellow pages under sawmills there are several. I have no connection with any of them but I have seen Graham cut up stuff for the Woodcraft guild and he seems to do a good job.

Trav,

I picked up some willow branches on the ANU campus a few years ago which I cut into small boards. It was very light in colour and pretty bland to look at. It split like mad but then I didn't take any great care over the drying as it was just a look-see.

John

Hi Trav

You dont say how big the trees are... that will be a major in working out the economics. Most guys doing portable sawing have a minimum charge, if you have 4 or 5 big logs thats going to take 1/2 a day to mill, no worries. If it's a couple of 12" dia poles then it's going to be expensive for the amount of wood recovered. More time travelling and setting up than actually sawing

Get your eye-ometer out and estimate how many logs / what diameter you have there. You want to be able to saw out nice straight logs at least 3m long and estimate the diameter at the small end.

Like PAH says, a big Oak or Elm is probably worth sawing up. The willow is sorta soft and stringy. You can use it as a secondry wood instead of pine or poplar. If you have a good log and a sawmill on site it's worth sawing, but I wouldn't go out of my way for it.

If the tree isn't big or straight enough to make milling to worthwhile think about a bit of creative freehand chainsaw work. You can carve out some coffee table tops and turning blanks with a chainsaw. I'm demolishing an ugly walnut tree for a friend at the moment. It has no trunk to speak of, just a collection of knots and branches, but hopefully I'll get some 1m square slabs that are 2 or 3" thick.
I've attached a couple of pics of the smaller stuff I've sawed out so far, they are very 'rough sawn' but once dry I'll surface them up with a router on rails jig I've built and see how they look then.

Cheers

Ian

PS.. watch for nails in them trees too.. speaking from experience. At least I've getting better at chainsaw sharpening

The elm-ish one is a pretty big tree. Two distinct trunks - total height would be 15m or so with trunk diameter about 60cm near the bottom of each trunk. I could probably get 10m of useable timber from each trunk assuming the timber is sound.

I'll give one of the sawmillers a call to see what they cost.

Trav

mmmm maybe Im just gettin scrooge like in me old age... but!... why not cut as much if it as you can saving as much again... the willow could possibly be used if nothing else as veneer if youve the bandsaw to do the job and then as inserts use it alongside some high figured timber to bring out that timbers colors highlights etc?

A fair while back I had several Tuart trees milled and after several years air drying I began using it... the only thing it worked well for was internal structural timbers in carcases for cupboards and such but I used one peice as a top for a coffee table and with a combination of Jarrah for legs and Sheoak for the rails the Tuart actually looks pretty good and the other timbers are highlighted by it and they compliment it... I also made a microwave table for the cupboard top using tuart as a highlighter for other timbers sheoak jarrah and banksia and as an insert between the higher figured woods it was excellent... bland wood Tuart really but then as inserts to highlight its a ripsnorter

what Im saying is perhaps the willow could be used the same way? Worth thinking about