Hi,
I have the opportunity to have a large Black Locust tree for the price of sawing and hauling on my flatbed. I’m aware that it is a great wood for resistance to rot, and years ago I worked a small amount of it. My memory of it is pretty unclear though; yellow brown, very hard and dense. Does someone out there have experience with this wood? If so, please share.
With regard to sawing, I’m curious about ray if I quartersaw. Is there much figure to be had if it’s quartered? I may quartersaw just for stability but would like information if someone has experience here.
Thanks, wb
Replies
I love the stuff. Wish I could get more of it, but what comes in to the Amish mills around here goes out as fence posts. I think that a log suitable for lumber is fairly rare as the locust trees act as nurse trees for other hardwoods which shade them out and kill them. All the locust I've seen was flat sawn, which would result in the center boards being quarter sawn. I don't recall any thing special with the QS. I think that I would have noticed. I don't think that I would QS it because I would want to maximize the yeald.
One thing unusual that I noticed is the the logs can be heavily ribbed. The sawyer may want ot slab off extra wood to get to the sound wood. Keep those board with the open spaces in them. Actually, I expect that they will be filled with bark. After cleaning out the bark to expose the open spaces, I used them for free standing bookshelves with the with the open spaces winding sinously up the vertical shelf supports.
The wood is very hard and dense. You could probably polish it with finer grades of abrasive and it would look as though it was varnished.
Jon Arno will probably pop up here and if he doesn't it worth emailing him because his knowledge of wood is the very best.
BJ
Thanks BJ, but I Think you've summed up black locust pretty well. There isn't much advantage in quartersawing this species. It's not noteworthy for having a spectacular ray pattern on the radial surface, like white oak or sycamore...and it's such a stable wood, there isn't much to be gained functionally by having it quartersawn. It's volumetric shrinkage is only 10.2% green to ovendry and it has a rather low T/R ratio of 1.57, so it doesn't have much of a tendency to cup or distort. In having it milled, my choice would be to opt for the widest flatsawn stock I could get out of the log.
Thanks for the input, Jon. That's probably what I will do.Should really get some nice boards out of this tree. It's 4' at the butt and goes about 15' before there's any limbs. wb
It tends to spliner and get ragged where the grain comes out of the board. It is a pretty, mellow colored wood.Very rot resistant. I like it.
Frank
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