Anybody familiar with Black Birch?

[Trevor Walsh]

I've got a ton of pith in my bench, the wood was cheap around $50 for the whole roubo. We'll see what it does. I'm not overly worried though. As for the blanks. I'd think that an inch would be good provided they get waxed right away and are dried somewhat nicely. You might want to write Josh to ask him though. I'm sure he's got some insight about that.

[Joe Fabbri]

Yeah, the pith is probably okay if the wood is aged, as yours I think was, and it hasn't checked and twisted yet. But for this fresh wood, I still think I should try to cut around it. I'll see what I can do.

By the way, I sent you a PM, but I'm not sure if my mailbox is working right. Let me know if you received it, thanks.

[Trevor Walsh]

Got it and replied.

[Joshua Clark]

Trevor, when you say quarter it, should I literally split it with wedges into quarters? Without milling equipment, this would be easiest for me to do actually.

I'm a little late to the thread here. Black birch is nice wood but it's not terribly popular and you probably won't find it in a lumber yard. As far as it's properties go, it's harder and denser than almost any other domestic hardwood. It's a rather plain looking wood with almost pure white sapwood with little ray fleck. Unlike beech I don't think it will darken much with age. I've worked some of my billets and found that it works much like beech- easy to work with hand tools. It is a pioneer species that lives fast, dies young, and doesn't leave a pretty corpse. The older trees develop deep cankers that make it hard to cut decent boards. The heart can also be large and its color is distinctly red. On its own, the heart is beautiful but it contrasts too much with the sap so I try to cut 100% sap boards.

As far as processign goes, I've riven plane blanks from it and wound up with a lot of waste. Most of my firewood is black birch and I can testify first hand as to its unsuitability for splitting. It's awful stuff to split. It seems like at least 50% of the round I process require me to break out the wedges and sledge. It's much better to saw it if you can. If you are cutting plane blanks I'd recommend making them at least 2 inches longer than the finished length and sealing the ends with wax as soon as possible. They will need to air dry for at least a year or two. I'm going to experiment with a batch in a vacuum kiln. If it's like yellow birch it should survive it well.

I posted an entry to my blog a few months ago about the birch logs I had saws. I wrote about the process and included a few pictures. If you are interested you can find it here: http://hyperkitten.com/blog/?p=304

Hope this helps,

Josh

[Joe Fabbri]

Hi Josh,

Better late than never, thanks for chiming in. Hewing this stuff feels like hewing rock. I've really gotten a work out. I took a pretty sharp axe to it the first day, and I knew I was in for some trouble when the axe barely bit into it. I resorted to a chainsaw a few times to make score cuts, but unfortunately I find I cut too deeply with the chainsaw sometimes. And I think I'm driving my neighbors nuts, because it makes such a thud when I hit it.

Anyway, are you saying you prefer to use the birch sapwood for planes too, or just when you use the wood for other projects? I'd think for planes you'd want only the heartwood if possible, or is that not the case with this wood?

[Joshua Clark]

I do the same thing when splitting a tough piece of birch- I'll make an X with the saw to seat the wedges. Birch seemed to cut well on the sawmill and sure smelled great.

With birch you want to use the sapwood for planes if you can leave it wide enough. The heart wood is much darker in this stuff and doesn't blend well with the sap wood once it ages like the dark heartwood of beech. I don't think there is any physical difference other than the color between the sap and heart.

Picture of the difference between heart and sap for anyone who hasn't seen black birch.

Josh

[Joe Fabbri]

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Here's two shots of the hewing. You can see some of the chainsaw lines on top in the first picture. After doing two sides with the chainsaw, I switched to the traditional way, as I felt I had more control over the depth of cut. It took longer, but with a better result I think. It also wasn't an ideal log, as it had a slight bow in two directions and there were a few limbs.

Joshua, I don't know how much sapwood I'll get from this log, especially after the hewing. I was planning on using this beam for bench legs (cutting it in half) anyway. The log in the background might have enough sapwood for some plane blanks.

Also, I'm curious if the sapwood is as hard as the heart wood. It seems when I hew it, the white chips and shaves off more easily. Maybe it just happened to be smoother grain at the time, I don't know.

[Trevor Walsh]

Josh, Good to see you chimed in and fixed my birch splitting misinformation there. The heart/sap difference is amazing. I've never seen that.