I’m wondering about this fallen Maple of yours, Forest Girl. I’m also wondering about fallen trees in general. Am I to understand that if a tree falls in your yard, a few years later you can drag it up to the house and use it still? What did you have to do to it when it fell? How long can a log just sit on the ground before it becomes unusable, or does it? I ask because I have a few logs in my yard from similar incidents a few years back and wonder if they are still good for woodworking. I live in the Seattle area so obviously it rains alot and I have never done anything to the logs in terms of sealing them or anything. Even if they are no good anymore I’d love to know what to do next time a tree falls in the yard. I have alot of fir, some big leaf maple? and a few other kinds like Alder I believe. Thoughts from anyone are welcome. Thanks.
Cheers,
G
“Never Look outside of yourself for the blame.” – Depak Chopra
Replies
Hey, another Northwesterner! Cool! OK, here's what I know about native fallen trees. Alder -- get it up off the ground and protected ASAP if you want to use it for lumber. It starts decomposing real quick! Fir -- probably the same thing, but I have no experience. Maple -- If you want nice clean maple, mill it as soon as you can. But if you want to try for spalted maple, it can lay there for quite awhile. Here's a thread to read from earlier.
Fir and cedar that's been down for awhile might be OK for fire wood, but not likely for lumber. Alder, definitely not. Alder will "spalt" technically speaking, but the wood gets soft and punky so fast that it's not feasible to do much with it.
Hike around and see if you can find some goodly sized maple pieces to split and peek inside. You might get a very pleasant surprise! In the thread noted above, people talk about various ways to "spalt" pieces of wood. As far as any newly-fallen tree, if you think it's big enough to get some lumber out of, you'll want to get it slabbed out as quickly as possible. I've been cutting everything I play with to 4/4 (1 inch) thick, or just a tad more. Haven't found anything big enough to go to 8/4 yet. Read up on stacking, stickering and drying the lumber. Buy some paraffin wax and get a double boiler to melt it in, coat the ends of the boards with it as soon as it's cut. Beyond that, I'm wingin' it!!!!
Let me know what you find! It's really, really fun searching, I can testify. Oh...then there's saving blocks of wood for turning. I don't turn, so don't know what to say about that. Will probably offer the smaller limb from this maple up to a turner.
forestgirl Another proud member of the "I Rocked With ToolDoc Club" .... :>) you can take the girl out of the forest, but you can't take the forest out of the girl ;-)
Thanks for the response as well as the link. Lot's of good information.
Based on what I've read it seems unlikely that the uncared for logs in my yard will be any good after two or three seasons but I'll take a look. I have another tree that is "down" but not not actually down (perchad at an angle on another tree). Perhaps it faired better. I'll take a hike around the yard tomorrow as you suggested. I'll also hit the library / bookstore for further reading.
In the meantime, how big does a log have to be to be worthwhile or useable for boards? Am I correct in thinking that the max board width would be less than half the log diameter?
Cheers,
G
" A tool is an extension of you. It should be as well engineered and as carefully crafted"
I am a woodturner and spalted maple is a very desired wood for turning. The spalting is caused by a fungus that starts working into the wood and gives very dramatic effects when the wood is turned into a platter, bowl, vase, etc. If the log is left too long on the ground, the spalting will be so extensive as to render the piece of wood useless, because the spalting eventually turns into rotten wood.
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