My First Nails

[Cody Colston]

I've had my sawmill five or six years and have never sawed through a nail until yesterday. My neighbor had brought me a couple of Chinaberry logs after I had asked him to be on the lookout for some. He had cut the 9' x 18" log in two as he hauled it in his pick-up. On the first log, I sawed through a small finishing nail that didn't do much damage to the blade sharpness. On the second log, the last cut, I heard that "zing" and I had gone through two 12d nails. One of them was bent over and I sawed through the length of it. I'll have to put on a new band before sawing again.

I did get 150 bf from the logs so I guess it was worth a $22 band. No pics as it was late afternoon and I was too tired to go get the camera.

[Dennis Ford]

I have had mine only a couple of years and have cut a bunch of nails; guess that I need to be more careful about which trees I cut up.

[Todd Burch]

Wow. Lucky you!! Seems I hit them a lot. A guy brought me two logs - a walnut crotch and a red oak log. To cut on shares.

I hit a 5" J hook in the walnut while slabbing it. Cratered most of the teeth and even broke one off. A $120 chain. Not sure if it can be salvaged yet.

The start of the dig...
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Finally out. Took a 6' pry bar levering it out.
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The hole. He gets the slabs with the holes.
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In the red oak, while slabbing, I hit a cluster of 5 3" box nails, about 6" deep into the log.


Luckily (luckily?) I only hit two of the five nails. I cut the 2" slab off with a chainsaw, and then moved my chainsaw over 2" and cut to the same depth. I then started chiseling out wood.
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Most of the heads exposed. Sombody tells me the odds that I happened to be slabbing in the same plane as the nails were driven!!!
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3 of the nails came out in one piece. The other two came out in multiple pieces.
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After the 5 nails were out, I quit for the day. Next morning, I metal-detected again, and found more metal about 8-10" towards the butt end. I figured a sign was nailed up there a long time ago, and I had only dug out the top nails so far. I decided I would scrap the top 1/2 of the log. More firewood. There was no tell-tale blue stain on the butt end.

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I only got 4 slabs out of a 24" small end log. And even they are mediocre.

[John K Jordan]

I bought a metal detector after I hit a railroad spike years ago.

JKJ

[Jay Jolliffe]

I was chain sawing a log for firewood. It was about 16" across & I cut down the middle of a spike that was about 5" long that was in the center of the tree...

[Cody Colston]

The Chinaberry was the first yard-tree logs I've sawed. All the other logs I've had were forest-grown trees. I did saw thru a piece of fence wire in a Walnut once but I was half expecting it. I cut the tree from off a friend's fence line and wasn't sure if I had gotten above the wire or not. Turned out to be "not."

[Todd Burch]

What's that Chinaberry wood look like? I've heard it's a nice looking wood.

[Cody Colston]

It is pretty. It's fast growing so the growth rings are really wide but the color is nice. It's in the Mahogany family and thats somewhat apparent. The pic is from a narrow 5" wide board that came from the upper part of the tree.

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[James Gunning]

I was curious to see what it looked like as well. There are several large Chinaberry trees in my back yard and in surrounding neighbors yards. The largest has a trunk about 24" in diameter. Not going to cut them as they give shade and the birds we feed, use them everyday. I always thought it was kind of a "trash" tree, and not likely to be able to produce usable lumber.

[Cody Colston]

It is commercially harvested in it's native region of Asia, although somewhat under-utilized according to the Wood database. Supposedly it is easy to work and behaves when drying. I have a source for some more trees that I will probably cut in the next week or so. I normally don't cut down healthy trees for sawing but in the case of an invasive like Chinaberry, I'll make an exception.

[Danny Hamsley]

It is beautiful, coarse grained, ring porous, wood. Like Cody pointed out, it is in the mahogany family. Very beautiful. I have sawn and dried a bunch of it.