Big white oak in East Tennessee

[Gary Hoemann]

I have been offered a white oak tree that was recently felled in a storm. This is on the farm, not a city tree. It came down with a huge root ball attached. The tree splits into three branches at 32 ft. At three feet from what was ground level, the circumference is a little over 9 ft. At 15 foot from ground it measures almost 8 ft. and at 32 feet it measures a little over 6 ft. I haven't seen it and don't know if it is solid. Does anyone have an estimate of the board feet in the tree and does anyone in East Tennessee know who could mill this? Is there a portable mill that will handle a tree this size?

[Rick de Roque]

If it is solid it should be a good tree to have a sawmill cut up. It's 34" diameter at 3' and 30" diameter at 15'. It will be heavy so you will need a tractor to lift it up or have the sawmill come to you. At 4 logs 8' long should yield about 700 BF.

Rick

[Frank Drew]

Gary,

If the tree is sound you might have some terrific boards waiting for you there, but there's nothing easy about sawing and carefully storing wood yourself.

As Rick suggests, the log should be cut to lengths before being sawn into lumber: 8', 10', whatever you can handle and eventually stack and sticker. It would help immeasurably to end coat the logs with a green wood sealer ASAP after cutting into lengths, particularly now that it's the middle of the summer.

[Matt Campbell]

Where in east TN? I know some fellas.

[george wilson]

I gave a large 34" poplar tree at least 15' long to my work mate,Jon. They pulled it right up onto a flat bed trailor with ramps. They rolled it over 2 ropes,and rolled it up the ramps with a medium sized SUV,on damp ground. I was surprised that the SUV didn't slip on the damp pine needles in my yard. Of course,oak is heavier,but a larger truck might pull it onto a low trailer.

[Richard M. Wolfe]

I used a log volume calculator that's listed on Woodweb. I plugged in an average diameter of 30 inches and a log length of 30 ft. There are three different scales that can be used; two of them gave about 1200 bd ft and the third slightly more. This is the total volume. Realistically it will be several hundred feet less. One of the first logs I had cut was about three feet across the butt with about a two foot top and was 22 ft long - I paid for about 750 board ft from it. In the process of squaring boards, cutting cracks out etc a good bit is lost.

The good thing about the dimensions you gave is that the log is less than three ft across which means that most bandmills like a Woodmizer can handle it. You can contact Woodmizer and see if they have information on a mill in your area. And if you go to the Woodweb site you can find a link to the calculator I used in the left hand column and also in that column is a listing for sawmills given by state. Good luck with the project and hope the log is solid!