I recently aquired a lot of red oak which was cleared in my neighborhood. Unfortunately I did not get to the felled trees quickly enough and they were out in the sun for some time, without the ends being sealed. They are now in timber form and a few of them have splits extending up into the timber 12 inches or so. In particular the timbers which I had sawn up for summer beams are the ones which are split. I am wondering how wise it would be to use the already end split timbers for this load bearing beam. gpalmer