hello,
And the ones I made most recently were from lilac wood which you know can begin to check right away so I'm letting them dry out slowly in a cool place and then once they are dry will put them to good use although I still mostly rely on the nice forged iron wedges with the twisted shank, real beauties that have sure gotten my ass out of a bind or two, you know, mostly with knurly twisted knots in the way or a crotch there or maybe when a split begins to run astray. Also handy when the froe just doesn't have the meat to get the job done like with those chestnut billets when making shingles - oh boy....

Greetings,

Don Wagstaff

I addressed the wedge issue on that thread, so won't do so here again.. But thanks for coming on board with your thoughts.

I made some drawings, but I need to be getting to bed here soon so I am not going to scan and post them now. They detail just how it is that you can chap smaller timbers out of a large log, if you were really good I suppose you could apply this technique to chopping out lumber as well (which I understand people did in fact do) By doing this, you have surprisingly little waste coming out of your logs.

Pretty much what you do is chop out roughly rectangular timbers by causing 2 splits to go into the log at a right angle to each other. The trick here is the control the direction of the split by cutting a well devised wedge out of the log, and then causing the split to go precisely the right depth. These timbers are a little bit bigger than the finished product, so you must hew them down to the final size.

When you do this, each log will yield several timbers and there is some odd shaped waste material that is perfect for making brace stock and boards or other such.

Another method is to split out what I might call 'quartered timbers' I invented this method when making bowstaves out of oversized trees as a method of yielding the most useable wood out of a single tree. I am sure I am not the first person to ever do this, but I came up with the idea without learning it from anyone else.

You start out by quartering the log, or otherwise sectioning it out into fractional sized pieces.

The next step is to take the quarters and split them in halves or even thirds between growth rings, so that one half contains the heart section and the other contains the sapwood.

Then oftentimes the outer split section can be spit into 2 sections as well.

It is advisable to split off the innermost wedge of the portion of the quartered log heartward, so that this wood can be used for other things.

You now have 3 rough timbers that can be hewn to size.

This of course can be modified to yield blanks of different sizes.

I came up with this method with bowstaves, allowing me to cut 3 blanks from a single wedge of wood where using other methods I would have got 1.

The first method allows you to get more useable wood out of s single timber (less waste) but the second method is far easier and faster, and is more likely to yield the desired results. So the method used is determined by what you have more of, time of material...

DLB

With this method

The verdict is in....

As stated earlier, there are 9 of these trees. I have calculated that it will take 3 or 4 of them (depending on the quality of the inner heartwood) to build the parts of the structure that need to be of oak. These leaves 5 or 6 whole trees for other purposes. The roof structure will not be made of oak.

With this in mind, the building will have an oak shake roof and riven oak siding, which will leave a significant amount of timber for other uses.

HI DL, since you asked earlier about other conversion methods, the following article covers radial riven shingles common to pre Civil War buildings in the Mid-Atlantic.

http://www.apti.org/publications/Past-Bulletin-Articles/Houston-Fugelso-39-1.pdf

Roger, thanks a lot for this. This is very helpful, since I will be making shingles like this for the building. The sidelap shingles are what the Swiss would have used, and this is exactly what I needed in order to recreate the unique look of this process.

Interestingly enough, if you study the modern roofing tiles prevalent in in Bernese houses, you will find that the appearance of the clay tiles is made to approximate that of the sidelap shingles.

Today I cut down 2 of the trees, one of them was the one I expected to be in the worst of shape, and the other was one I expected to be in pretty good shape.

Here is the first one I cut down, it was rotted out in the heart, much more at the bottom than higher up. I cut 1 length of log out of it, and 2 3 to 3-1/2 foot sections to use for siding or shingles. I also cut 2 cookies to use for certain miscellaneous uses, as I do from time to time.
It had a tremendous amount of root flare, so I cut all along the base before I felled it.


And here is the second.

this one was quite a bit larger than the first, and the heartwood is in excellent shape. The pitch is rotted at the very bottom, but I do not think it is higher up at all.
The log on this tree is over 25 feet before the first knot, and probably 35 feet or more to the first branch. The grain is straight as an arrow.
The tree had quite a bit of forward lean to it, and so was a potentially very dangerous tree. I used a split level plunge cut, and cut until the outer strap which was all rotted sapwood snapped and let the tree fall. went down with no issue, no barber chair, no stump pull, etc.
What I was more worried about is that the long forward curvature of the log might cause it to shatter when it hit the ground, but it landed with no incident and the massive log rests quite firmly with no cracks.

I couldn't be more pleased with the color and character of the wood out of these two trees. I certainly want to have as much of his beautiful wood showing as I can.

DLB

I have been reviewing my resources and planning out how I will utilize them, it is important for me to catalog every tree I cut down in order to get the best use of my available materials.

Trees like the second one are the ideal for cutting out multiple building timbers with my system. The very small degree of rot in the pith makes them ineligible for slabs, and the slight curvature along the length means it is not suitable for shingles and not ideal for siding. Out of this log, my first priority will be to cut out the long timbers needed to make the joists.

The first log has a very rich color to the wood, and my priority for it will be to cut out blanks for the exterior trim, since in these pieces appearance is a top priority.

I am excited to see what the other trees will yield, and hope that I can get at least one good slab log.

DLB

Nice, now lets see them on the mill

well folks, I gave in to the pressures all around me...

I got a new crosscut felling saw, and plan to put it to use on at least a few of these trees (with help, of course)

But I may well still use the chainsaw for cutting the face notch... we'll see once