I am a sawyer with 14,000+ bdft (novice numbers I know) behind the band. As a novice mistake, we cut a nice cherry and walnut log in slabs right through the center and one of them split as we were admiring it over a beer with a raucous CCCRRRAAACCCKKK! We learned this lesson the hard way and even sawed on the bias for even more stability. We currently run an all-manual Woodland Mills HM130MAX, and we love it, but cannot wait to upgrade to a full hydraulic mill. Dig the channel sir!
Yep, it happens. I put forward tips and knowledge that we use ourselves, and it is all "real" information, not second hand or hearsay stuff. This is what we do and use everyday.
Thank you for this video. This 82 year old dog learned a couple new tricks from it. The one that matters the most is that I run a manual saw and am on the log clamp side of the log. This means I cannot see the backstops and have had to stop and look to make sure I am clearing them. You made me think, I will now make sure the log clamps are higher than the backstops as I can see them before the blade hits. I have seen a lot of videos put out by people and you are one of the very few I actually enjoy watching and trust to be good information.
Thanks, you are right, many of the best tricks are the the easy ones, and getting into the habit of setting your clamps and heights so to never hit them is easy and after awhile, you won't even think about it. I'm glad you found something useful for your own sawing in my videos, that's why I make them.
I gotta say I only have half the saw Robert has, the (Lt35 hydraulic) and this is by far the best channel, with the best teacher to learn on. I don't waste my time watching the spandex crew.
I wasn't in your trade, but what and the way you teach in so many of your videos is invaluable to those who WANT to learn your trade. The bottom line is I wish I had something like your videos to help me along in the early years of my trade which was supermarket refrigeration. I spent many hours teaching my trade to others later in my career and one thing you learn early is that there are those yearning to learn more and most of the others just learn enough not to get fired. Stay safe.
The Professor is the single best RUclips course on wood milling. His videos provide a free professional course on the only way to correctly mill raw lumber. In his videos he explains how he built his business to be the leader of this industry beginning with cutting chain saw slabs.
Love your videos Robert! I never knew how much I didn't know. As a woodworker, I bought a mill to get the most interesting wood and grain patterns. What I ended up with is a bunch of wavy, split boards and occasionally I got lucky. With your guidance, I'm looking forward to a entirely new paradigm! Work smarter, not harder! Thank you Master Yoda!
Woodmizer called me today to let me know my LT35 was ready for pickup, while I was watching this video! I'm telling ya, they ought to be contracting with you to make instructional videos for new sawyers like me! I love Bob Ross and Ricky Bobby!
Now we TALKING my language! One of the best movies made! WM knows me and also know I will say what I think, and they are too nervous to ever sponsor me because I might say something truthful but critical of their sawmills! Anyway, I don't want their money, and don't want to sell my soul to them, I want folks like you to have a good and fun time running a sawmill!
@@Plankmills I put a deposit on the mill in February of 2023. Turns out my mill wasn't ready, someone else's mill was ready and they couldn't accept it so I moved up the list. I was expecting mine to be ready this summer.
@@HobbyHardwoodAlabamaThis is spoken like a True Prodigy & GOOD for you in keeping that state of mind frame because it is TRUE & NOT Fake!! Truly admire this to the bone man..
There ya go making sense again. Keep them coming. Love your videos! Those boards that you cut the other day with the pith cracks would make good live edge shelves if you cut off the pith section.
Yes, that's what I'm going to have to do, I just hate re handling hunks of wood, I could spend the time making new product, not cleaning up old pieces.
I just discovered your channel and love what you are doing. I've been wanting to do somewhat the same with the mechanical aspects of a Baker sawmill. I've been running a Baker 3650E for a little over 9 years. I'm amazed at the people that buy these mills to make a living with nothing more than a dream. I have a lot of people that come through looking to set up their own but don't understand the simple things like how to set their saw guides. I ran a fairly good size circle mill for several years before making the switch to bands and had to totally relearn everything from the ground up. I actually now specialize in mostly low grade lumber such as pallet lumber and dunnage but run around 35 to 40,000 board feet per week. I actually run my mill backwards of the way they are supposed to be set up because it increases my production significantly. I was impressed to see some of the modifications that you have made to your mill that I had made to mine when I started with it new. Thank you for the education.
I appreciate it. I have some Baker equipment, they build good commercial quality stuff, I like them. Thanks for commenting and I really like it when and experienced sawyer chimes in!
I was glad to hear you emphasize that you have to watch your clamps and backstops. I’ve cut into them many times, once twice in an hour. Good to hear I’m not the only one
Thanks for the knowledge! I did not know any of that. I am a DIY hobbyist but love milling and woodworking and I have witnessed the things you have described. It will be a work to roll the logs I mill but it will be worth it! Thanks again!
Really appreciate the videos, gonna be very helpful if I can even remember a fraction of the info in just one of your videos once I get our little mill restored. Mostly gonna use it for lumber around the farm, but really want to see if we can read the timber like you and make some nicer quality graded stuff once or twice for the extremely rare household projects.
LT35 hyd, 200 hrs so far on it. Southern Virginia. I saw white/red oak, red cedar, all kinds of pine. Old friends, complete with cut lists😂 are resurfacing. Your tutorials are helpful to me, so thank you, Sir.
One of your best videos sir!! I happen to have a different brand of mill (starts with a T) and am in process of adding a couple things to make my saw-life a bit easier. Adding laser to back side to shine on log stops along with a camera that views that line. Also adding second camera above blade looking down so I can see when blade has exited log . Lasers and cameras have gotten pretty cheap so I think this will be a worthwhile little project. 🤞
Very cool video! Something I was surprised to learn was having the center of your slab log and turning it upright… you prefer that to flipping it up, cutting the pith out, then putting it back down to keep the quartersawn boards?
Quartersawn boards have a nice, but very distinctive look, so when sawing face sawn slabs, it's a good idea to also get face sawn "filler boards" from the same log. This way, if the slabs are not wide enough for the customer, they can rip them in two pieces down the center, and insert the "filler boards" from the same logs and glue up all the pieces and the grain matches well because its for the same log an also has the same grain orientation. Good question!
Thank you so much for your help. Your videos are so well done. I will mainly be a hobby guy doing things for friends and family. My woodworking club has 3 high schools that we help do flat work as well as some woodturning so I want to do it right for them. Seems impossible to get good wood from the big stores
I'm a novice and I can say that there is no better knowledge that one coming from old people, yong guys just don't listen, thank you for sharing your knowledge
I have been watching Bob Ross to relax for years. I haven't tried painting, but I do have a sawmill. I use it sporadically as my old arthritic body allows. I have a 20 inch poplar I haven't gotten on the mill yet but have seen a video that says sometimes you get "rainbows" when you open it up. Ever heard of that?
Not a sawyer myself but I always learn interesting stuff. Keep producing I love to watch folks who are detailed. Too bad you are so far away from me, have you considered opening an outlet in northern Illinois or southern Wisconsin? Probably not. Thanks again. By the way I cannot go to the local lumber yards or hardwood suppliers without looking at the end grain to see how the wood was processed; my adult children are amazed at my knowledge - Thanks Bob.
We have been asked to open franchises across the country, but I'm not interested. If I told you the amounts of money we have turned down, from companies you've probably heard of, to buy us out and use our name, you wouldn't believe me. I just tell them I will never work for them to screw the public, I work for folks like yourself and woodworkers who appreciate an honest guy who's not bought and sold and who does what he does because he enjoys it. We do what we do and enjoy doing it, and try to show other people how to do it, also. Thanks for watching!
Hey Robert...I was sent a link to this with a question, "...is he (Robert) correct...?" My response is, "...it depends..." For the most part, there is little to debate here at all (well done!!!) from a production "slab" perspective if cutting for the average "slab hobbyist" or even most modern "wood machinists" that couldn't tell the top of the tree from the root just by looking at the grain pattern of a slab if their lives depended on it...LMAO!!!...and thus, you are spot on with your advice and guidance. A great source for those doing "average work" with most of them later on slathering all kinds of industrial plastic finishes and fillers all over their slabs...and also only working with the wood “kiln cooked” rather than green or air dried only… From the perspective of traditional (mostly green) woodworking and perhaps the perspective of the father (grandfather?) of what started the entire "slab craze," (George Nakashima)...NO, I don't agree with most of what you have shared in the video, or I would say, "It depends." I'm old enough and have been doing this long enough now (40 plus years) including running most of the types of sawmills out there to state that from a position of knowledge, not "armchair opinion" Your advice in this video is very specific to a market and not (overall) good or even proper advice to what a bolt like that can yield or how to properly mill it for the best slabs possible...but again...it all depends on the goal for the project and how you would take slabs out of it…or in your case, the market your selling too... Overall, depending on the goal for a given bolt section. That reactionary wood in the pith will also yield some of the most interesting grain, and the "pith check" is a huge part of the character a professional (from the traditional perspective) is looking for, so it is not “garbage” at all and quite valuable. However, that is a level of skill and knowledge the average "slab woodworker" (aka who you make money from!!!) is not going to have. Thus, generically I think this is a great video and great advice to others hobbyist sawyers selling generic slabs to the hobby market and looking for the best yield from a bolt section of a log. Thanks for the detailed perspectives on the best yield for the average sawyer and hobbyist market they cater to...
I hear what you are saying, and I agree that slabs cut through the pith have a certain market value to certain woodworkers, but you are describing slabs from premium and valuable species, such as walnut that can be made into a resin table and furniture that actual has some value, and be a work of art, not a low value species such as this. Also, I am not incorrect in that I am basing my opinions on millions of dollars of lumber and slabs sold, including walnut to people all over the country, some of which build slabs tables and furniture in the near $100K range. But these customers are very few and far between and if I based my business on them showing up and buying cracked wood, I would starve. In summary, a cracked slab of any species will have a lower sell rate than the same piece not split. Especially low value logs, such as a popular log, and nobody pays for a pith check or split poplar slab. I have had customers ask me to stop cleaning up the high value walnut slabs, because as they say " how can I put a bowtie into something that instal split" and we do sell some of them (walnut) with heart checks you could drive a truck through, but those buyers are rare and even then, very selective about the cracks they will buy. However, most of the professional furniture makers and private homeowners do not want to mess with them. We empirically test it every time we sell slabs, I will include a few pith crack or defective slabs in the pallet and when the pallet is sold out, ALL the clean slabs are gone and the only ones left are a percentage of the cracked ones are so when it is all said and done, the only slabs left on the pallet are cracked and I am forced to put a new pallet of not cracked slabs down. In addition, and I have tested this several times through the years, I will accumulate a pallet of cracked slabs (because everybody tells me how much they are worth) and they sell only slowly, and as soon as I get tired of looking at them I will edge them out and clean them up and the clean boards will sell immediately. Once again, profit and sale are hard to argue with. I would say the "sell ratio" of clean to pith cracked live edge is about 10:1 in walnut, and less than 50:1 in a low value species such as poplar and oak. So I know for certain, when this pallet of poplar is put on the showroom floor, when it is sold to the bottom, the only slabs left will be those cracked ones on the bottom and I will be forced to edge them out to sell them. Remember we get customers from all over the country and if I thought I was missing out on money, I would change strategies. Either way, for a monetary standpoint, it is a waste of time and money for me to purposely saw cracked live edge. I do highly respect your opinion and thank you for the insight. Robert
@@HobbyHardwoodAlabama Hey Robert...Thank you for such a great response!!! As per my own and a following conversation about this video with others, I would love to see you do a video addressing some of this topic. Someone like you that fully understands wood and both sides of this topic could do a very informative video on the differences between production milling and modern drying of lumber, as compared to the traditional aspects of the craft and what those differences are. Thanks again for a great channel!!! Jay
So Robert, I know from watching your videos that you've said the stress is different in every log. But in general, what happens to the stress of the 8" "filler" boards you mention compared to the "flat" wider slabs you cut from the left and right (orientation of the log in the beginning of the video)? Do the filler boards remain flat like the slabs? or do they cup more than the slabs as they they go through the air & kiln-drying process? It is my understanding that every board sawn in a flatsawn pattern cups to some extent. Do the filler boards cup more than the wider slabs? If so, and there is stress in the log (evidenced by the horizontal crack of the log orientation in the beginning of the video), and you take 9/4 or 11/4 thick slabs, or in this case 10/4 with your AccuSet from the left and right (log orientation at the beginning of the video) perpendicular to the direction of the pith crack, do you need to cut the filler boards thicker than the wider slabs to compensate in the long-run for not only the cupping, but also the greater risk of bowing for the length of the board (due to those initially drying stresses that produced the initial pith cracks)? The end goal is ending up with the same thickness boards (both filler and wide slabs) when you want to make your flat final product (furniture/table). To me its easier/cheaper to plane out an 8" board a greater amount to final thickness, than plane a wider slab to a thinner thickness to match the final filler board thickness (in the hypothetical case you are using filler boards to widen your 28" slab to i.e. a 40 or 48" table width). It was interesting notice via your camera angle at 17:05 to notice the stress fluctuation of the gap behind the blade as you proceeded through the filler boards can at "Ricky Bobby speed." I have yet to have minimal sawdust left on the board using my LT-30 G24 that you achieve with your LT-70 D55, but at least its something to aim for.
Yes, there is a greater chance the 8" boards will bow, but, there are a couple things that will limit that and my concern on these slabs. The wood is poplar, which is generally pretty mold mannered as a whole, and the pith cracks is actually fairly small and not propagating through the end of the log, indicating that although there is some stress, there is not a whole lot in this particular log. Also, I know for certain that the slabs will crack and devalue, however, there is a chance the 8" boards will stay straight enough to not be defective, especially since I can stack a few thousand pounds of weight on them to force them flat when they dry. So It''s a case of knowing they will be devalued by sawing through the pith, or taking a chance they will not be devalued by avoiding the pith but sawing in a bow plane of stress, knowing that I still have some techniques in reserve to try to limit the bow. Worst case, they will bow like crazy, and I can cut them in half and so reduce the bow by 4X and sell them as table leg stock or some other product. Either way I will sell them and make money.
Thanks Professor Milton. Its good to know you have plenty of techniques in reserve to make use of whatever you saw. Thanks for giving us a glimpse in your videos of some of your techniques and some of the theory/why's of what you do. I appreciate the videos and insight you share. Thanks for spending the time to put the videos together.
Thanks for another great video! What is the average length of logs that you saw? We are still primarily milling for customers, so the lengths vary. We advise them to keep the lengths more manageable because they don't have heavy equipment to move the lumber around at home, but it often does not register. We would like to start selling lumber, and it is so much easier to manage 9 foot lengths than 14 foot lengths. Also, we can fit more board feet into our kilns with 9 foot lengths than 14 foot lengths. What is a good length for lumber with your customer base?
You are 100% correct, I can't tell you how many times I have had a customer tell me they "needed" 16 foot long boards, only to carry them to their truck and saw them in half with a circular saw. 90% of high grade furniture lumber is sold as 10 foot and under.
Both, always air dry for at least 6 weeks to relieve stress and lock in the color, then kiln dry and sterilize. I will not sell a board that has not been sterilized and that can only be done in a kiln.
Great advice as usual-thanks! Any advice on differences in drying when sapwood is present in the slab? Call me crazy but I'm still cogitating on a circular sawmill for dimensional hardwood lumber.
Yes, sapwood will always pull, you always have to be aware of that and make the initial cuts accordingly. I like circular mills, very fast, just I can not get insurance for one or I'd have one myself. Every time I talked to an insurance company, they had visions of Dudly DoWright getting split in half on one and it was a no go.
A very nice and informative class. I'm trying to learn because I have my first sawmill coming this fall. Was the last dog board tapered, meaning since you leveled the log first, you sawed on that plane and put the taper in the dog board or am I looking at this totally wrong?
Good observation! I did level the bark (parrall bark sawing technique) on the top side because that was the highest grade side I wanted to saw, but when I turned that face to the bed, the cant would not be tapered anymore.
Thanks, that's what I thought. I didn't pay as much attention as I should have when you turned the cant and the taper was an after thought. Thanks again.
I'm accumulating fallen locust to build a waterwheel. The center of the tree isn't rot resistant. How do I know how close to the center I can use? It's all the same color. Also, I've read that the base of a tree is more prone to rotting. Is that true? Thank you!!
The center is juvenile wood and if sheared closely on its endgrain, using a very share knife or blade, the differences in cellular structure will be apparent.
No, they were 2 - 3/8" The Accuset calculates in the thickness o the band and adjusts the drop so that the boards will come out to the dimension I desire.
Why not keep saw the wide boards and then saw the pith out of them. I would think they would be wider than the 8’’ boards and possibly more stable as they are still 90 degrees to the stress crack in the pith. By going to the 8’ boards would they not cup up or down? Also I’m wondering if those wider boards would be worth more than two of the 8’’ boards?
I've tried that, the problem is the double handling of very wide and heavy boards to rip the center out is a total pain in the rear. Also, like in the board in the video, if there are cracks in the slabs, they have a tendency to propagate, so can crack into clean wood and damage more. Basically, it comes down to either take the center out as a strategy to get clean slabs, or leave them in there, and sell the slabs as epoxy fills, which we also do. However, the percentage of customers who want to do full epoxy in the cracks is about 10:1, so clean slabs sell much better than cracked ones and even though the full wide will have more "virtual bdft" we price and sell on non defective "no cracks" so we would deduct the cracked pith from the price of the slab, anyway, unless it is very minor. I just can't bring myself to have people pay for cracked wood, even if it is in a cracked live edge slab. You are correct, the 8 inches are cut opposite the stress, but with the way we dry and do the secondary processing, they will be straight when we sell them. It's a case of fix the sawing stress with machines after the drying.
It doesn't matter as long as they are not colored dark wood like walnut, or wood that holds lots of moisture, like poplar or basswood. So most stickers are made of oak or other clean hardwood. The main thing is that they need to be at least air dried to prevent the chances of sticker stain. More importantly, they all need to be the same thickness and placed relatively close together, 16" is good, 2' is maximum. Good stickers make good lumber, bad stickers ruin it.
Does that method of cutting out the juvenile wood apply to species like mesquite or juniper that we have in AZ? I’m new and trying to figure things out.
@@HobbyHardwoodAlabama I'm sorry i meant how did you make the what looks like diagonal grooves on the stickers? And i guess that aids drying or maybe resists staining? That poplar is gorgeous!
You are correct it is useful for dimensional lumber in softwoods where it doesn't split so much, but it's only real hardwood commercial use is in railroad crossties, which are always center cut along the pith. Walk a hundred miles of railroad track and every single crosstie will have mega cracks in them. So they are good for crossties, but not for high grade lumber. The issue with using them for posts is that they will split enough where a high percentage will be completely not useful for dimensional load bearing uses, and will never pass building codes if used for commercial purposes. Certainly they can be sold to a specific market, but not as commercial dimensional lumber, not for furniture, and only crossties and pallet wood, which are very low value products. Or firewood.
Yes, there is a greater chance the 8" boards will bow, but, there are a couple things that will limit that and reduces my concern on them. The wood is poplar, which is generally pretty mild mannered as a whole, and the pith crack is actually fairly small and not propagating through the end of the log, indicating that although there is some stress, there is not a whole lot in this particular log. Also, I know for certain that the slabs will crack and devalue, however, there is a chance the 8" boards will stay straight enough to not be defective, especially since I can stack a few thousand pounds of weight on them to force them flat when they dry. So It''s a case of knowing they will be devalued by sawing through the pith, or taking a chance they will not be devalued by avoiding the pith but sawing in a bow plane of stress, knowing that I still have some techniques in reserve to try to limit the bow. Worst case, they will bow like crazy, and I can cut them in half and so reduce the bow by 4X and sell them as table leg stock or some other product. Either way I will sell them and make money.
Time to call you out! Just for fun research how to make a basket. From cutting down a tree ,pound out the weavers ,thin them down ,then weave you a basket, then put handles on it.
@@HobbyHardwoodAlabama every episode is on RUclips. If you need to relax before bed, just watch one of his videos, they call it ASMR if you haven’t heard of it helps reduce your heart rhythm.
I was going to bring some wood to you to sell but decided to mill it myself with an Alaskan chainsaw mill. Would you ever let me come and pick your brain? I live in Taft TN
I have lost count of how many times customers have said to me...."but but but it has to be a single solid slab piece at 5ft wide..." It is sometimes difficult to educate the customer who already has their mind made up based on what they saw on Pinterest.
What you mean is good stewardship of environment... old trees and deadfall, have peaked at sequestering carbon dioxide and that new growth sequesters even more carbon dioxide than old or dead trees. You're preserving for good use wood that would otherwise decay in nature and contribute even more to so-called "greenhouse gases".
The first guy who came up with the epoxy fill should be incarcerated! The gallons of “stuff “ that goes into these projects are ridiculously large and expensive and still look like what they are 😂
Sorry, I don’t dance and bounce like some of the Spandex RUclips channels. However, if you want to learn how to make a few million bucks with a sawmill, you won’t learn that from them, either. Sweet dreams….
I don't do it as manipulative, I do it to get a point across when I'm describing people doing something that I think is wrong or uniformed. There's no reason for me to do it if they are doing something right! Maybe that's why your son in law does it too? You might ask him.
I am a sawyer with 14,000+ bdft (novice numbers I know) behind the band. As a novice mistake, we cut a nice cherry and walnut log in slabs right through the center and one of them split as we were admiring it over a beer with a raucous CCCRRRAAACCCKKK! We learned this lesson the hard way and even sawed on the bias for even more stability. We currently run an all-manual Woodland Mills HM130MAX, and we love it, but cannot wait to upgrade to a full hydraulic mill. Dig the channel sir!
Yep, it happens. I put forward tips and knowledge that we use ourselves, and it is all "real" information, not second hand or hearsay stuff. This is what we do and use everyday.
Thank you for this video. This 82 year old dog learned a couple new tricks from it. The one that matters the most is that I run a manual saw and am on the log clamp side of the log. This means I cannot see the backstops and have had to stop and look to make sure I am clearing them. You made me think, I will now make sure the log clamps are higher than the backstops as I can see them before the blade hits. I have seen a lot of videos put out by people and you are one of the very few I actually enjoy watching and trust to be good information.
Thanks, you are right, many of the best tricks are the the easy ones, and getting into the habit of setting your clamps and heights so to never hit them is easy and after awhile, you won't even think about it. I'm glad you found something useful for your own sawing in my videos, that's why I make them.
I gotta say I only have half the saw Robert has, the (Lt35 hydraulic) and this is by far the best channel, with the best teacher to learn on. I don't waste my time watching the spandex crew.
Thanks! The LT35 is a fine mill, and hopefully lots of what I talk about are things you can use.
@@HobbyHardwoodAlabama absolutely!
I wasn't in your trade, but what and the way you teach in so many of your videos is invaluable to those who WANT to learn your trade. The bottom line is I wish I had something like your videos to help me along in the early years of my trade which was supermarket refrigeration. I spent many hours teaching my trade to others later in my career and one thing you learn early is that there are those yearning to learn more and most of the others just learn enough not to get fired. Stay safe.
I appreciate that! True statements, some want to learn how to be better, some don't care at all.
The most knowledgeable person i have seen on a mill yet thank you for the lesson
Thanks!
The Professor is the single best RUclips course on wood milling. His videos provide a free professional course on the only way to correctly mill raw lumber. In his videos he explains how he built his business to be the leader of this industry beginning with cutting chain saw slabs.
Thanks! Chip does the hard work, though!
Love your videos Robert! I never knew how much I didn't know.
As a woodworker, I bought a mill to get the most interesting wood and grain patterns. What I ended up with is a bunch of wavy, split boards and occasionally I got lucky.
With your guidance, I'm looking forward to a entirely new paradigm! Work smarter, not harder! Thank you Master Yoda!
Straight boards you will saw! But yes, work smarter and never lift both ends of a board at the same time.
You keep making them because you have very valuable information to share to others of us out there that can really benefit off of your experience
I try my best to show how we do it here.
Learn something new every time I watch you share your knowledge, thank you., We’re from Missouri
Thanks!
Woodmizer called me today to let me know my LT35 was ready for pickup, while I was watching this video! I'm telling ya, they ought to be contracting with you to make instructional videos for new sawyers like me! I love Bob Ross and Ricky Bobby!
Now we TALKING my language! One of the best movies made! WM knows me and also know I will say what I think, and they are too nervous to ever sponsor me because I might say something truthful but critical of their sawmills! Anyway, I don't want their money, and don't want to sell my soul to them, I want folks like you to have a good and fun time running a sawmill!
How long did it take to get it ready?
@@Plankmills I put a deposit on the mill in February of 2023. Turns out my mill wasn't ready, someone else's mill was ready and they couldn't accept it so I moved up the list. I was expecting mine to be ready this summer.
@@HobbyHardwoodAlabamaThis is spoken like a True Prodigy & GOOD for you in keeping that state of mind frame because it is TRUE & NOT Fake!!
Truly admire this to the bone man..
There ya go making sense again. Keep them coming. Love your videos! Those boards that you cut the other day with the pith cracks would make good live edge shelves if you cut off the pith section.
Yes, that's what I'm going to have to do, I just hate re handling hunks of wood, I could spend the time making new product, not cleaning up old pieces.
I just discovered your channel and love what you are doing. I've been wanting to do somewhat the same with the mechanical aspects of a Baker sawmill. I've been running a Baker 3650E for a little over 9 years. I'm amazed at the people that buy these mills to make a living with nothing more than a dream. I have a lot of people that come through looking to set up their own but don't understand the simple things like how to set their saw guides. I ran a fairly good size circle mill for several years before making the switch to bands and had to totally relearn everything from the ground up. I actually now specialize in mostly low grade lumber such as pallet lumber and dunnage but run around 35 to 40,000 board feet per week. I actually run my mill backwards of the way they are supposed to be set up because it increases my production significantly. I was impressed to see some of the modifications that you have made to your mill that I had made to mine when I started with it new. Thank you for the education.
I appreciate it. I have some Baker equipment, they build good commercial quality stuff, I like them. Thanks for commenting and I really like it when and experienced sawyer chimes in!
As long as I’m first among the last, I’m okay with that 😉. Respect to the professor! Thanks for the video.
Thanks!
I was glad to hear you emphasize that you have to watch your clamps and backstops. I’ve cut into them many times, once twice in an hour. Good to hear I’m not the only one
My videos are real life and yes, I've hit a backstop once or twice or....maybe more!
Thanks for the knowledge! I did not know any of that. I am a DIY hobbyist but love milling and woodworking and I have witnessed the things you have described. It will be a work to roll the logs I mill but it will be worth it! Thanks again!
Glad to help
Good job very helpful got a big wild cherry to slab.
18:38
These tips really work. Thanks!
As a cheap mill owner I appreciate your advice been milling gum and needed to know how to do it right. Thanks
Milling gum and keeping it straight is tough! It is definitely a "technical" species to saw..
Really appreciate the videos, gonna be very helpful if I can even remember a fraction of the info in just one of your videos once I get our little mill restored. Mostly gonna use it for lumber around the farm, but really want to see if we can read the timber like you and make some nicer quality graded stuff once or twice for the extremely rare household projects.
Sounds like fun, and you will do fine!
LT35 hyd, 200 hrs so far on it. Southern Virginia. I saw white/red oak, red cedar, all kinds of pine. Old friends, complete with cut lists😂 are resurfacing. Your tutorials are helpful to me, so thank you, Sir.
Very nice!
One of your best videos sir!! I happen to have a different brand of mill (starts with a T) and am in process of adding a couple things to make my saw-life a bit easier. Adding laser to back side to shine on log stops along with a camera that views that line. Also adding second camera above blade looking down so I can see when blade has exited log . Lasers and cameras have gotten pretty cheap so I think this will be a worthwhile little project. 🤞
Thanks! I agree that laser can be beneficial and have a one in a box that I just can't get around to installing.
Thank you for imparting your knowledge Robert, very much appreciated. New subscriber here!
Welcome aboard!
Thanks Robert, always informative.
Thanks!
Very cool video! Something I was surprised to learn was having the center of your slab log and turning it upright… you prefer that to flipping it up, cutting the pith out, then putting it back down to keep the quartersawn boards?
Quartersawn boards have a nice, but very distinctive look, so when sawing face sawn slabs, it's a good idea to also get face sawn "filler boards" from the same log. This way, if the slabs are not wide enough for the customer, they can rip them in two pieces down the center, and insert the "filler boards" from the same logs and glue up all the pieces and the grain matches well because its for the same log an also has the same grain orientation. Good question!
Thank you so much for your help. Your videos are so well done. I will mainly be a hobby guy doing things for friends and family. My woodworking club has 3 high schools that we help do flat work as well as some woodturning so I want to do it right for them. Seems impossible to get good wood from the big stores
You are welcome!
Now that was an excellent video! Thank you.
Thanks!
I'm a novice and I can say that there is no better knowledge that one coming from old people, yong guys just don't listen, thank you for sharing your knowledge
Well said!
I have been watching Bob Ross to relax for years. I haven't tried painting, but I do have a sawmill. I use it sporadically as my old arthritic body allows. I have a 20 inch poplar I haven't gotten on the mill yet but have seen a video that says sometimes you get "rainbows" when you open it up. Ever heard of that?
Sure, it was probably one of mine, sawing rainbow poplar.
My lt 35 woodmizer should b here this year I needed that lesson thanks i live in Cleveland Tennessee
Glad to help
Thank you for all your information. I'm trying to build a mill business I want to create the best lumber.
Go for it!
Not a sawyer myself but I always learn interesting stuff. Keep producing I love to watch folks who are detailed. Too bad you are so far away from me, have you considered opening an outlet in northern Illinois or southern Wisconsin? Probably not. Thanks again. By the way I cannot go to the local lumber yards or hardwood suppliers without looking at the end grain to see how the wood was processed; my adult children are amazed at my knowledge - Thanks Bob.
We have been asked to open franchises across the country, but I'm not interested. If I told you the amounts of money we have turned down, from companies you've probably heard of, to buy us out and use our name, you wouldn't believe me. I just tell them I will never work for them to screw the public, I work for folks like yourself and woodworkers who appreciate an honest guy who's not bought and sold and who does what he does because he enjoys it. We do what we do and enjoy doing it, and try to show other people how to do it, also. Thanks for watching!
Hey Robert...I was sent a link to this with a question, "...is he (Robert) correct...?"
My response is, "...it depends..." For the most part, there is little to debate here at all (well done!!!) from a production "slab" perspective if cutting for the average "slab hobbyist" or even most modern "wood machinists" that couldn't tell the top of the tree from the root just by looking at the grain pattern of a slab if their lives depended on it...LMAO!!!...and thus, you are spot on with your advice and guidance. A great source for those doing "average work" with most of them later on slathering all kinds of industrial plastic finishes and fillers all over their slabs...and also only working with the wood “kiln cooked” rather than green or air dried only…
From the perspective of traditional (mostly green) woodworking and perhaps the perspective of the father (grandfather?) of what started the entire "slab craze," (George Nakashima)...NO, I don't agree with most of what you have shared in the video, or I would say, "It depends."
I'm old enough and have been doing this long enough now (40 plus years) including running most of the types of sawmills out there to state that from a position of knowledge, not "armchair opinion" Your advice in this video is very specific to a market and not (overall) good or even proper advice to what a bolt like that can yield or how to properly mill it for the best slabs possible...but again...it all depends on the goal for the project and how you would take slabs out of it…or in your case, the market your selling too...
Overall, depending on the goal for a given bolt section. That reactionary wood in the pith will also yield some of the most interesting grain, and the "pith check" is a huge part of the character a professional (from the traditional perspective) is looking for, so it is not “garbage” at all and quite valuable. However, that is a level of skill and knowledge the average "slab woodworker" (aka who you make money from!!!) is not going to have. Thus, generically I think this is a great video and great advice to others hobbyist sawyers selling generic slabs to the hobby market and looking for the best yield from a bolt section of a log. Thanks for the detailed perspectives on the best yield for the average sawyer and hobbyist market they cater to...
I hear what you are saying, and I agree that slabs cut through the pith have a certain market value to certain woodworkers, but you are describing slabs from premium and valuable species, such as walnut that can be made into a resin table and furniture that actual has some value, and be a work of art, not a low value species such as this. Also, I am not incorrect in that I am basing my opinions on millions of dollars of lumber and slabs sold, including walnut to people all over the country, some of which build slabs tables and furniture in the near $100K range. But these customers are very few and far between and if I based my business on them showing up and buying cracked wood, I would starve. In summary, a cracked slab of any species will have a lower sell rate than the same piece not split. Especially low value logs, such as a popular log, and nobody pays for a pith check or split poplar slab. I have had customers ask me to stop cleaning up the high value walnut slabs, because as they say " how can I put a bowtie into something that instal split" and we do sell some of them (walnut) with heart checks you could drive a truck through, but those buyers are rare and even then, very selective about the cracks they will buy. However, most of the professional furniture makers and private homeowners do not want to mess with them. We empirically test it every time we sell slabs, I will include a few pith crack or defective slabs in the pallet and when the pallet is sold out, ALL the clean slabs are gone and the only ones left are a percentage of the cracked ones are so when it is all said and done, the only slabs left on the pallet are cracked and I am forced to put a new pallet of not cracked slabs down. In addition, and I have tested this several times through the years, I will accumulate a pallet of cracked slabs (because everybody tells me how much they are worth) and they sell only slowly, and as soon as I get tired of looking at them I will edge them out and clean them up and the clean boards will sell immediately. Once again, profit and sale are hard to argue with. I would say the "sell ratio" of clean to pith cracked live edge is about 10:1 in walnut, and less than 50:1 in a low value species such as poplar and oak. So I know for certain, when this pallet of poplar is put on the showroom floor, when it is sold to the bottom, the only slabs left will be those cracked ones on the bottom and I will be forced to edge them out to sell them. Remember we get customers from all over the country and if I thought I was missing out on money, I would change strategies. Either way, for a monetary standpoint, it is a waste of time and money for me to purposely saw cracked live edge. I do highly respect your opinion and thank you for the insight. Robert
@@HobbyHardwoodAlabama Hey Robert...Thank you for such a great response!!! As per my own and a following conversation about this video with others, I would love to see you do a video addressing some of this topic. Someone like you that fully understands wood and both sides of this topic could do a very informative video on the differences between production milling and modern drying of lumber, as compared to the traditional aspects of the craft and what those differences are. Thanks again for a great channel!!! Jay
Are those machine textured stickers in your wood pile?
Yes, another Hobby Hardwood secret.
Very good and meaningful video, thank for sharing
Thanks for visiting
As always, thanks buddy!! Great information. Green peace😅😅😅😅
Thanks again!
Just noticed the battons you have between your live edge slabs. How do you cut those? I already know why you do it and it's a great idea!
They can be cut with a router or molding head. They work great.
Thank you very much for the video sir
Happy to help
how do you make your stickers wow thank you so much for sharing your wealth of knowledge
I used to make stickers, now I buy them from a friend of mine.
So Robert, I know from watching your videos that you've said the stress is different in every log. But in general, what happens to the stress of the 8" "filler" boards you mention compared to the "flat" wider slabs you cut from the left and right (orientation of the log in the beginning of the video)? Do the filler boards remain flat like the slabs? or do they cup more than the slabs as they they go through the air & kiln-drying process? It is my understanding that every board sawn in a flatsawn pattern cups to some extent. Do the filler boards cup more than the wider slabs? If so, and there is stress in the log (evidenced by the horizontal crack of the log orientation in the beginning of the video), and you take 9/4 or 11/4 thick slabs, or in this case 10/4 with your AccuSet from the left and right (log orientation at the beginning of the video) perpendicular to the direction of the pith crack, do you need to cut the filler boards thicker than the wider slabs to compensate in the long-run for not only the cupping, but also the greater risk of bowing for the length of the board (due to those initially drying stresses that produced the initial pith cracks)? The end goal is ending up with the same thickness boards (both filler and wide slabs) when you want to make your flat final product (furniture/table). To me its easier/cheaper to plane out an 8" board a greater amount to final thickness, than plane a wider slab to a thinner thickness to match the final filler board thickness (in the hypothetical case you are using filler boards to widen your 28" slab to i.e. a 40 or 48" table width).
It was interesting notice via your camera angle at 17:05 to notice the stress fluctuation of the gap behind the blade as you proceeded through the filler boards can at "Ricky Bobby speed."
I have yet to have minimal sawdust left on the board using my LT-30 G24 that you achieve with your LT-70 D55, but at least its something to aim for.
Yes, there is a greater chance the 8" boards will bow, but, there are a couple things that will limit that and my concern on these slabs. The wood is poplar, which is generally pretty mold mannered as a whole, and the pith cracks is actually fairly small and not propagating through the end of the log, indicating that although there is some stress, there is not a whole lot in this particular log. Also, I know for certain that the slabs will crack and devalue, however, there is a chance the 8" boards will stay straight enough to not be defective, especially since I can stack a few thousand pounds of weight on them to force them flat when they dry. So It''s a case of knowing they will be devalued by sawing through the pith, or taking a chance they will not be devalued by avoiding the pith but sawing in a bow plane of stress, knowing that I still have some techniques in reserve to try to limit the bow. Worst case, they will bow like crazy, and I can cut them in half and so reduce the bow by 4X and sell them as table leg stock or some other product. Either way I will sell them and make money.
Thanks Professor Milton. Its good to know you have plenty of techniques in reserve to make use of whatever you saw. Thanks for giving us a glimpse in your videos of some of your techniques and some of the theory/why's of what you do. I appreciate the videos and insight you share. Thanks for spending the time to put the videos together.
Thanks for another great video! What is the average length of logs that you saw? We are still primarily milling for customers, so the lengths vary. We advise them to keep the lengths more manageable because they don't have heavy equipment to move the lumber around at home, but it often does not register. We would like to start selling lumber, and it is so much easier to manage 9 foot lengths than 14 foot lengths. Also, we can fit more board feet into our kilns with 9 foot lengths than 14 foot lengths. What is a good length for lumber with your customer base?
You are 100% correct, I can't tell you how many times I have had a customer tell me they "needed" 16 foot long boards, only to carry them to their truck and saw them in half with a circular saw. 90% of high grade furniture lumber is sold as 10 foot and under.
Trust me, those really nice new blades don't fare well when you forget your back stop.😂
That is a fact! I've done to more than once. It's always good for a few sparks!
What do you use for a kiln, or do you air dry?
Both, always air dry for at least 6 weeks to relieve stress and lock in the color, then kiln dry and sterilize. I will not sell a board that has not been sterilized and that can only be done in a kiln.
Thanks for showing us how you do the accuset, that’s helpful. So you make your slabs 2 3/8” thick. What kind of wood was that?
Mineralized poplar.
Great advice as usual-thanks! Any advice on differences in drying when sapwood is present in the slab? Call me crazy but I'm still cogitating on a circular sawmill for dimensional hardwood lumber.
Yes, sapwood will always pull, you always have to be aware of that and make the initial cuts accordingly. I like circular mills, very fast, just I can not get insurance for one or I'd have one myself. Every time I talked to an insurance company, they had visions of Dudly DoWright getting split in half on one and it was a no go.
A very nice and informative class.
I'm trying to learn because I have my first sawmill coming this fall. Was the last dog board tapered, meaning since you leveled the log first, you sawed on that plane and put the taper in the dog board or am I looking at this totally wrong?
Good observation! I did level the bark (parrall bark sawing technique) on the top side because that was the highest grade side I wanted to saw, but when I turned that face to the bed, the cant would not be tapered anymore.
Thanks, that's what I thought. I didn't pay as much attention as I should have when you turned the cant and the taper was an after thought. Thanks again.
If you ain’t first you last an that’s a fact 😂 💪😆you got me I subscribed God bless brother
The immortal words of Ricky Bobby! Love it!
I'm accumulating fallen locust to build a waterwheel. The center of the tree isn't rot resistant. How do I know how close to the center I can use? It's all the same color.
Also, I've read that the base of a tree is more prone to rotting. Is that true? Thank you!!
The center is juvenile wood and if sheared closely on its endgrain, using a very share knife or blade, the differences in cellular structure will be apparent.
hi there interesting thanks john
You bet
The sawmill peofessor
27 sec ..lol
Another great video Robert! Thanks for all your hard work
Are you the only one who caught that? Good job!
After the boards were sawn was the final thickness 21/4’’?
No, they were 2 - 3/8" The Accuset calculates in the thickness o the band and adjusts the drop so that the boards will come out to the dimension I desire.
Thanks
Shake and Bake Robert!
"Well, what do you say we get thrown out of an Applebee's?"
Why not keep saw the wide boards and then saw the pith out of them. I would think they would be wider than the 8’’ boards and possibly more stable as they are still 90 degrees to the stress crack in the pith.
By going to the 8’ boards would they not cup up or down?
Also I’m wondering if those wider boards would be worth more than two of the 8’’ boards?
I've tried that, the problem is the double handling of very wide and heavy boards to rip the center out is a total pain in the rear. Also, like in the board in the video, if there are cracks in the slabs, they have a tendency to propagate, so can crack into clean wood and damage more. Basically, it comes down to either take the center out as a strategy to get clean slabs, or leave them in there, and sell the slabs as epoxy fills, which we also do. However, the percentage of customers who want to do full epoxy in the cracks is about 10:1, so clean slabs sell much better than cracked ones and even though the full wide will have more "virtual bdft" we price and sell on non defective "no cracks" so we would deduct the cracked pith from the price of the slab, anyway, unless it is very minor. I just can't bring myself to have people pay for cracked wood, even if it is in a cracked live edge slab. You are correct, the 8 inches are cut opposite the stress, but with the way we dry and do the secondary processing, they will be straight when we sell them. It's a case of fix the sawing stress with machines after the drying.
Thanks Robert!
Thanks!
another excellent video. what more can be said
Glad you enjoyed it
Maybe stupid question but heard different opinions. Do you cut your stickers and if so what is best wood for stickers
It doesn't matter as long as they are not colored dark wood like walnut, or wood that holds lots of moisture, like poplar or basswood. So most stickers are made of oak or other clean hardwood. The main thing is that they need to be at least air dried to prevent the chances of sticker stain. More importantly, they all need to be the same thickness and placed relatively close together, 16" is good, 2' is maximum. Good stickers make good lumber, bad stickers ruin it.
Does that method of cutting out the juvenile wood apply to species like mesquite or juniper that we have in AZ?
I’m new and trying to figure things out.
We have eastern red cedar here, which is a juniper, and the short answer is "yes."
Very nice
Thanks
thanks i did not know this.
Thanks.
Robert, love your videos. What type of wood did you just cut on the mill? And I was wondering the same thing about your stickers!
It was mineralized poplar. The stickers are basic hardwood.
@@HobbyHardwoodAlabama I'm sorry i meant how did you make the what looks like diagonal grooves on the stickers? And i guess that aids drying or maybe resists staining? That poplar is gorgeous!
So many forums suggest to use the pith inside of a 6x6 or 4x4…your thoughts?
Your saying just use it for firewood,,,, wondering why not make posts?
You are correct it is useful for dimensional lumber in softwoods where it doesn't split so much, but it's only real hardwood commercial use is in railroad crossties, which are always center cut along the pith. Walk a hundred miles of railroad track and every single crosstie will have mega cracks in them. So they are good for crossties, but not for high grade lumber. The issue with using them for posts is that they will split enough where a high percentage will be completely not useful for dimensional load bearing uses, and will never pass building codes if used for commercial purposes. Certainly they can be sold to a specific market, but not as commercial dimensional lumber, not for furniture, and only crossties and pallet wood, which are very low value products. Or firewood.
Do the 8" wide boards bow?
Yes, there is a greater chance the 8" boards will bow, but, there are a couple things that will limit that and reduces my concern on them. The wood is poplar, which is generally pretty mild mannered as a whole, and the pith crack is actually fairly small and not propagating through the end of the log, indicating that although there is some stress, there is not a whole lot in this particular log. Also, I know for certain that the slabs will crack and devalue, however, there is a chance the 8" boards will stay straight enough to not be defective, especially since I can stack a few thousand pounds of weight on them to force them flat when they dry. So It''s a case of knowing they will be devalued by sawing through the pith, or taking a chance they will not be devalued by avoiding the pith but sawing in a bow plane of stress, knowing that I still have some techniques in reserve to try to limit the bow. Worst case, they will bow like crazy, and I can cut them in half and so reduce the bow by 4X and sell them as table leg stock or some other product. Either way I will sell them and make money.
good advice right here.
Glad it was helpful!
Time to call you out! Just for fun research how to make a basket. From cutting down a tree ,pound out the weavers ,thin them down ,then weave you a basket, then put handles on it.
I knew I was going to tick some people off saying that, but hey it was a joke!
Slab top and bottom,box the heart,take quartersawn on the sides
Sure, that would work.
"Chip, I'm gonna come at you like a spider monkey!" Bob Ross also says "Every tree needs a friend"
I was wondering if anybody even remembered Bob Ross.
@@HobbyHardwoodAlabama every episode is on RUclips. If you need to relax before bed, just watch one of his videos, they call it ASMR if you haven’t heard of it helps reduce your heart rhythm.
Good video.
Thanks!
I thought that was where home depot got all their wood from the center left over from saw mills.
That's a fact!
Like how the hell did you do that to your stickers?
Well, I heat them up in a forge and twist them! No, it's a patented technique.
I had a feeling that was a question I wasn’t getting an answer to👍🏼. Love the videos
Informative Video once again. Where is your spider monkey?
He was in the quad, sleeping as usual.
Walkin hard or hardly walkin! 😉
Yep!
I was going to bring some wood to you to sell but decided to mill it myself with an Alaskan chainsaw mill. Would you ever let me come and pick your brain? I live in Taft TN
Unfortunately, we don't give tours. Too busy working.....
@@HobbyHardwoodAlabama maybe one day I’ll have to come work for you 🫡
👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻thank ya
Thanks!
4:20 “The crack tells you how to drive the log.” 🤔
Ha, I had not noticed it, but that sure didn't "come out right."
I have lost count of how many times customers have said to me...."but but but it has to be a single solid slab piece at 5ft wide..." It is sometimes difficult to educate the customer who already has their mind made up based on what they saw on Pinterest.
Yeah, me too. It gets ridiculous, but just have to educate the customer.
lumber squesters CO2 for as long as it's lumber.
Thanks.
What you mean is good stewardship of environment... old trees and deadfall, have peaked at sequestering carbon dioxide and that new growth sequesters even more carbon dioxide than old or dead trees. You're preserving for good use wood that would otherwise decay in nature and contribute even more to so-called "greenhouse gases".
I like it! Thanks!
The first guy who came up with the epoxy fill should be incarcerated! The gallons of “stuff “ that goes into these projects are ridiculously large and expensive and still look like what they are 😂
That's funny!
"I'm too drunk to taste this chicken"
That's like being too drunk to fish!
@@HobbyHardwoodAlabama it's also a line from talladega nights. Lol
War Eagle!
I'm gonna puke! Roll Tide!
@@HobbyHardwoodAlabama Haha. You are an educated engineer and seemed so smart though! Seriously, I appreciate your channel and have learned a lot.
Yeah....basket weaving isnt that simple. Its a real skill. Or rather set of skills.
Sure. You realize it was a joke, right?
time for a haircut
I got one this week, lots of gray hair falling to the floor.
This dialogue is sending me to sleep.
3 minutes is enough. Prof.
Sorry, I don’t dance and bounce like some of the Spandex RUclips channels. However, if you want to learn how to make a few million bucks with a sawmill, you won’t learn that from them, either. Sweet dreams….
my soninlaw uses that chuckle when you say something to make it sound foolish technique too. very manipulative and crappy.
I don't do it as manipulative, I do it to get a point across when I'm describing people doing something that I think is wrong or uniformed. There's no reason for me to do it if they are doing something right! Maybe that's why your son in law does it too? You might ask him.
I am a "simple" basket weaver and find your remark ignorant and derogatory!! Unbelievable!!
Yeah, I saw the basket weaving finals on the ESPN the other day, it did look difficult!
Great video! But eww the faux-craftsmanship of live edge furniture🤮I'm glad you don't endorse it!
Yes, I'm not a big fan of it, but people pay good money for it and I might as well do as good a job as I can.
Slabs 👎
Slabs = Money = Successful Business