Nice insight, Mark.

Ash's flexibility would certainly help there. Same reason I wouldn't want a white oak canoe paddle (regardless of the added weight).

How many chops would it take for that kind of stress test? I love to split wood. That sort of completion might be fun over a weekend.


Looks like we're hearing more negative comments on ash for timber joinery...

Hi All,

Lets not have too much of a downer on ash. It is very strong and was the main timber used for wagon and even car chasis production until fairly recently. If kept dry it will last but like elm it is prone to bug attack all the way through. Though strong, ash is very springy and that is the main reason that it is not widely used in construction. The floor planks used to form the framing floors in The Weald and Downland Grid Shell building are all ash. Ash floors are good at preventing "tired leg" syndrome much bemoaned off by housewives who stand for long periods on a hard floor by a kitchen sink or table. I have found that many people believe that the only timber used in timber framed buildings is oak when infact many other timbers are regularly employed as well including elm, chestnut, hazel, alder, beech, poplar, birch, cherry, etc.

The reasons for large checks appearing is most probably due to boxed heart conversion. If a timber is halved or quartered then the timber is able to freely relax upon its self as it dries. When one runs a hand over most old tie beam faces the shrink back inverted "vee" profile on the halved face is easily detectable.

UK ash (Fraxinus excelsior) is not the same as the various other American ashes. I gathered some American white ash seed one spring morning on the common at Royalston, Mass. just as the snow had melted and I now have a number of those trees growing in my woodland. If nothing else, I have noted that the leaves turn a beautiful shade of crimson / purple in autumn.

Regards

Ken Hume

I worked in a canoe livery at one point, the nearby river had a couple of class 3's so I spent the slow periods rebuilding boats. I was out of ash at one point and had some red oak so I rerailed a boat in oak. It lasted one weekend and the client insisted (more than most) that he had barely smacked the rocks. Looking at the damage I agreed.

I had done some checking a month or two ago while sawing some ash. If you design for deflection, as Ken noted, that's its "weakest" property. For other properties I've compared it to our northern red oak.

I had a email conversation with a client a month or 2 ago while I was sawing some ash, this is an excerpt;

looked in my old Forest Products Labs "Wood Handbook" at the average clear wood strength numbers. When I think of splitting I think of shear or tension perp.

Tension perp in dry white ash is better than northern red oak, it is stronger in horizontal shear, higher bending MOR, slightly lower MOE, impact is identical, higher in work to max load. Ash also has greater side hardness and compression parallell to and perp to grain. I think those must be the key.

I think my anecdotes are wrong, it probably doesn't split easier, it simply will not crush out of the way if presented with an ill fitting tenon or too much glue in a mortise but it is in most characterisitics somewhat stronger than good red oak although a little less stiff. In the furniture presses we had basically unstoppable assembly power so when we split it we though of it as easy to split, it probably just couldnt absorb bad workmanship as readily as the other woods we used.

Which led me to look at maple, since they've had problems with the new maple ball bats breaking. It is anywhere from a bit to alot inferior to white ash for a ball bat. Makes me wonder who thought of using it. Hickory or locust would kick its butt.

Of course the biggest concern at the moment is how soon the slabwood will be dry enough to throw in the stove.
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I raised a hot blister on my circular blade while sawing that ash and had to go visit the sawdoc. He asked what I had been sawing, thought I had been in some yellow pine. I said ash and he said "of course, you got gummed up" he said the bigger mills keep a few poplar logs around and run one through occasionally to clean the blade back up. It isn't a pitch but it does gum it up.

For many woods this is the NDS supplement containing wood design values, no ash as I'm sure you've found;
http://www.awc.org/pdf/2005-NDS-Supplement.pdf

Tangential shrinkage is what causes most of what has been described. The high point of Ken's description is the quarter sawn section, radial shrinkage is half of tangential. As the face moves further from that area the grain orientation fades to closer to tangential and the wood receeds more and more, leaving the inverted V face.