Dead white oak

  • Thread starter Thread starter Al Smith
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  • #27
You know something funny about oak,you can cut into a creosote tie that's layed under set of tracks for 40 years and still smell that oak smell .It isn't bad out side with a chainsaw but if I run any of it through a table saw my eyes water and I get a sneezing jag .

Now that WV oak with that fungus among us ,if that stuff kills the tree I'll bet the log would still be good .Just like the one I cut down .Dry as bone and hard on a bandsaw blades but bandsaw blades are cheap, good oak isn't .BTW that hard as a rock oak is not one of those deals you file every second tank,you might not even make a tank full .
 
I sawed a bone-dead, rock-hard White Oak with my buds' Mizer. I was sawing late one evening and could see sparks. Probably from dirt, but wild to see. I was actually impressed how much I could cut with a resharpened blade.
 
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  • #29
The last I had sawn which was a few years back was all pretty dry.Red oak,hickory ,some dry ash and some windfall green .Before the EAB thing .Oh and some of the nicest black cherry about 800 bd ft straight as a pool cue all F and S primo stuff .

The guy cut it with a little LT 15 Wood Mizer all 12 hp of it and didn't have a bit of trouble dry or no . He had some kind of a lube thing on the band but what he used I haven't a clue
 
Does White Oak grow at lower elevations? Here Oak is all over, but the good white type starts out at about seven or eight hundred meters. The other Oaks are firewood.
 
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  • #31
I suppose it depends .This elevation is somewhere around 800 feet .

The lake states have pretty good oak .I think the best start in about Iowa and go maybe to eastern Pa .north to maybe mid lower Michigan and south to Virginia .

They say the best is Pa but I think that's red oak .I'm not a timber cruiser but I think some of the best white oak comes from about the area I live in .Burr oak and pin oak have really no market except for pallet and cribbing material ,ties maybe .

I mean it's all good but when you talk grain patterns growth rings and coloration for furniture grade stuff it's a whole 'nother ball game .

Then you have niche markets for things like a quarter sawn center cut white oak keel plate for a multi million dollar yacht .You know something like a perfectly clear log say 50 -60 feet would be so rare it would bring a premium in price .Then even if you found a log you have to haul the big long thing then saw it on top of that which would run the price to the sky .
 
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  • #33
They claim it does especially for coloration .

The area directly to the north of which I've mention occasionly was the great black swamp until they drained it .Flat as pancake extending clear up to lake Erie .In pioneer days the area was home to the largest red oaks ever grown on the planet but I don't thing so much the white oak .I don't think the white oak can take the swampish conditions a red oak can .
 
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  • #34
Back to this thing .I finally am getting around to hauling the logs out of the woods along with what seems 10 thousand other things .

I side hauled the butt log out a few days ago ,all 6,000 pounds of it .The process is relatively simple ,just physics using a chain ,a source of power and a few ramps .

It tickles me to see the way some need a crane or some huge source or power to accomplish something so simple .:lol:
 

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