Advice on milling a log from a mostly dead blackwood

This blackwood fell over on our block recently. 75cm DBH which is a reasonable sized log. But the tree was mostly dead.

I've just bought a Logosol chainsaw mill to use with a Stihl 660. Given the tree was mostly dead, is there likely to be any usable timber in the butt log? I guess I won't know how much rot etc is present until I cut it open.

Is there anything I should keep in mind when slicing up a mostly dead tree?

I cut off some of the live branches which showed nice colour. Sections of these branches might make good spoon woodcarving blanks, at least :)

MAI

Certainly pay to dock the Butt log,as there seems to be some problems there..it will mill up a little bit firmer than the 'green' stuff,but nothing to worry about,as Blackwood normally slices up well..MM:2tsup:

Cut the rootball of it and see what the log is like, usually find some good stuff in there but going by the bark, it might be riddled with borers or grubs, but if you don't mind that, it should yield some nice pieces.

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Originally Posted by DJ's Timber

Cut the rootball of it and see what the log is like, usually find some good stuff in there but going by the bark, it might be riddled with borers or grubs, but if you don't mind that, it should yield some nice pieces.

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Is it likely there will be anything in the rootball of interest to woodturners? The tree has put a lot of hard work into growing all that biomass over probably the last 50 years or so. It would be nice to see as much as possible used.

I took off one of the large limbs (probably a bit over 30cm diameter at the trunk) which was completely rotten at the end. I started cutting it up for firewood. The first round showed rot in the heartwood, borer etc. The 2nd round had quite a bit of borer but no apparent rot in the heartwood. The 3rd round heartwood was fine and just a small borer trace. So I thought there might be some useful wood in the rest of the limb. I took the remaining length (several metres) off at the trunk. Sound wood, no borer with attractive colour in the heartwood! Interesting piece of applied wood science

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Originally Posted by MAI

Is it likely there will be anything in the rootball of interest to woodturners? The tree has put a lot of hard work into growing all that biomass over probably the last 50 years or so. It would be nice to see as much as possible used.

I took off one of the large limbs (probably a bit over 30cm diameter at the trunk) which was completely rotten at the end. I started cutting it up for firewood. The first round showed rot in the heartwood, borer etc. The 2nd round had quite a bit of borer but no apparent rot in the heartwood. The 3rd round heartwood was fine and just a small borer trace. So I thought there might be some useful wood in the rest of the limb. I took the remaining length (several metres) off at the trunk. Sound wood, no borer with attractive colour in the heartwood! Interesting piece of applied wood science

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Generally not a good sign when the butts of Blackwoods have rot etc,i would be very surprised if any good wood is recovered from the butt of the tree that you have shown :C..MM:2tsup:

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Originally Posted by MAPLEMAN

Generally not a good sign when the butts of Blackwoods have rot etc,i would be very surprised if any good wood is recovered from the butt of the tree that you have shown :C..MM:2tsup:

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Thanks for that. Another one went over in the winds earlier in the week. Don't think that one was quite as big but I think it was in better shape.

Woz Gunna suggest you cut off the rootball and mail it to a bloke in Cedarton!!:D:p