Lessons in Milling logs: Burr Oak Challenges

After my last adventure with wavy boards I watched a few milling videos to try to determine which blades I should buy to mill these oak logs. In one of them the guy mentioned that burr oak was a really hard wood and he used different blades on it that other types of oak.

Challenge #1 – Burr oak is very, very hard. It’s probably going to dull blades just because it’s hard.

Challenge #2 – These logs are really heavy! Which means I’ve had to make friends with the chainsaw in order to cut them to length. An 8’ log about 18” in diameter is all my little tractor can move. Even then it has to be perfectly balanced to get anywhere. And even then the back wheel might have come off the ground a time or two trying to turn around.

And if you’re going to use a chainsaw, you also need to become decent at sharpening your blade. My first attempt sitting on the tailgate gave me a chain that cut to the right…no matter how I tried to line things up, it always cut to the right.

So for my next attempt I walked “all the way” from the garage to the shop to put use the saw sharpening vice. This attempt cut the log much straighter.

Challenge # 3 – There is a lot of dirt/sand in the bark. Let’s revisit the previous Post where I mentioned that sometimes I’m a slow learner. A big part of my problem has been that I don’t want to waste any of the wood, which led me to thinking I shouldn’t remove all of the bark before starting to cut boards.

No. It might work with some trees, but these came from a sand dune and have been sitting around in a very dusty yard for months and their bark is full of all sorts of dirt and debris.

When I opened up the saw to change the blade I realized that it was full of very gritty saw dust. I was using too much water on the blade and it was carrying a gritty slurry into the rest of the mill. Not a very good idea. Since I was leaving the bark on one side, every time I cut a board I was dragging more dirt through the log and mill.

I started spraying the logs off with the hose to get rid of the worst of the dirt. I think it helped a little :0)

You’re not going to be able to use the boards with the beautiful ray flecks if you can’t mill them flat and stack them flat…and hope they don’t crack, warp or twist as they dry ;0)

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