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Can anyone advise???
I am about to drop and mill 3 eucalypts (pretty sure they are redgums) and was wandering about the best time periods between felling and milling. I have recently been advised that the best way is ti mill straight away but would have thought that to leave for a short time ( perhaps a month ) would reduce the effect of movement in the milled wood.
Any help appreciated.
My experience is Redgum seems to move irrespective of when I mill it.
what are u sining to mill it?
it will be easiest to mill straight up and will move no matter how long u leave it.
Roman, welcome to the forum:D
To answer your question, just drop 'em and slice 'em :D As an example take a look at this thread; I started milling these early Feb, about half way through a couple of weeks ago. I'm still getting some boards moving, I reckon some species are sometimes better left for a while, some species are sometimes better milled straight away. I haven't found a hard an fast rule with any species yet.
Just when I think I have a species sorted out, I come across a bunch of logs which behave totally different:(
I figure logs 'are like a box of chocolates....'
lol; nice one Sigidi , but my mrs is much more interested in a box of chocs than a pile of logs.
So it basically makes no diff when i mill it, that make the process a bit easier to organise since i will be using one bloke to fell them and another to mill them it means i can do it at they're convenience, which helps.
These trees are within 10 metres of my house and probably 50-60 feet tall and on just over an acre so we are going to use a cherrypicker to get them down in bits since i dont have the room to drop them in a oner.
Once i talk him into it i'll be usuing a mates lucas mill to slice them up and was wandering if this wood will be usable for furniture making porposes in a year or twos time. If i cut 100mm posts and some , say 35mm planks and sticker and stack them properly, are they going to move too much to be of use in 2 years.
I should point out that i have only been in Oz for less then a year and a half and am still unfamiliar with these woods, hence all the questions. If it aint scottish oak or elm then i'm pretty clueless but this forum and your help should change that pretty quickly so thanks for the advise everyone.
roman, if they are redgum drop and chop and hope for the best. they're nothing like elm. get your mate to cut it oversize to what you want. stick it out properly in a shed or a tarp over it for the first year. cross your fingers and put a lot of weight on it. I don't mean to put a downer on the timber but it's just a bugger to dry but doing something with it is better than putting it to firewood!
With being new this Roman - if you are looking to slice up 4x4's do it from the largest log you get out of all the tree's; at least 600mm in diameter, any smaller and they will pull like hell, right from the log and only get worse as they dry:( As a recent example, I just cut some 4x4's for our front deck (up to 3.5m long - nothing really big) but I got 12 I'm happy to use from 23:( all from 600mm redgum logs. Any smaller and you won't get any good ones - I hate 4x4's!!!
Also as others have said, cut things over size or cut 'em as large as the lucas will go and then 'clean' then up later. Make sure when you stack them you do a bit of a search here on the forum about drying/stacking timber - you'll see how to do it the best way to give you the best timber later.
Good luck with it and post pics:2tsup:
Ok guys, thanks for all the help. I will try to let you know how it goes in a month or 2
Thanks again