Wood Gloat: a third of a log = 22 blanks!

[Josh Holden]

Found a huge Ash trunk -- 4+ foot in diameter. Wasted a tank of gas in my 16" chain saw stabbing at it with nothing to show for it. Then found a disc someone with a much bigger saw had cut off, about 16" thick by about 5 feet across.

The tree services usually split most of the 2' and smaller trunks into firewood for sale, so the town ends up mostly with these huge ones. I have to admit, I get frustrated when I come across these giant logs, free for the taking, and can't even start to process them. (SWMBO draws the line at buying a sawmill, and the portable ones cant handle a 4' tree anyway.)

But this is a gloat, so onto the happy pictures

This picture is the top 1/3 of the disc, with my saw for scale:

P1030666.JPG

And after an afternoon of processing:

P1030679.JPGP1030680.jpg

These will be the first blanks I feed to the new 3520B... (one has already been turned, but since there's no pic yet, I can still use future tense )

With a log this big, near the bark the "rings" look like straight lines. I had some minor panics when band-sawing, 'cause it looked like I had the grain in the wrong orientation on all the bowls until I figured it out.

Josh

[charlie knighton]

nice gloat,

you may want some endgrain and some sidegrain blanks just to have something different with the same wood, also you might use different finishes

hope to see your photos

[Steve Schlumpf]

Josh - congrats on all the wood! Looking forward to seeing what you turn out of it! I would be going nuts with trees that size! We don't get a lot of large trees up here - to cool of a growing season. Glad to see that the wood won't go to waste!

[Bernie Weishapl]

Congrats on a nice wood haul. Lots of turning there.

[scott schmidt grasshopper]

hey nice gloat. here is a thought or two .
one if you got a 20 inch lathe shouldnt you have at least a 20 inch saw?
second, ( and this one wont cost you as much )use your saw to cut blocks in stages to get your wood out. as follows,
1 deside how big you want your blanks in diameter ( lets say 19 inches) take mr 16 inch saw and start to cut off a block 19 inches or a little more off the end of the log. you dont have to go all the way into the log ( 16 inches worth) but do go down at least 12 or so . ok so now you have part of the log sheared/slabbed 12 in. deep . take your saw and make a u shaped gouge in the shape of your bowl outline . go in about 2 inches
so now you have a U on the end of the log. take a splitting maul and 3 wedges and drive them into the u shape.drive each wedge a little at a time until you have a good crack where you want the block to come out. this should pop out a bowl blank, takes alittle more time but hey you didnt want to buy the biggy saw,
ok so .. you have next cut 200 more "pie peices" all the way around the log end as far as you can with it laying down. next. take another crosscut 19 inches farther up the log. this time you get 11 in deep . after you take this layer off. you can go back and again cut 12 more inches off the end of the log getting to the juicey center heartwood ( with all the color) . this is how I use my 24 in. to cut 5 footers,, get the idea? just like hollowing in steps . take the log apart in 12 in. ( or whatever depth you want your bowl blanks) steps heading towards the center. ps anything over 16 inches in length is hell to split at first until you get one of the "pie peices" out of the whole. it is amazing what wedges can do we split 8 ft rails of red cedar with 2 wedges and a maul. ( very straight grained)