Thread: Firewood or Slabs?

[QUOTE=Homestar;3097307]

Originally Posted by Hogarthde

Late reply but it reminded me of the huge yellow box log up where I used to work. It is about 6' diameter and around 20' long. It had been there for more than 30 years when I was there and probably a lot longer. Many have tried to cut a wheel or two off it (including me), all have failed from what I can tell. It even beat a 30 tonne excavator with a hydraulic super saw on it that was at the river near it clearing willow for several weeks. While it did manage to lop one wheel off - it trashed the almost new chain on it so he wouldn't take a second cut and boy did it struggle. The operator said he'd never come across anything like it. We did eventually break up that wheel and burn it but we had to use my 066 Stihl chainsaw to cut it up into usable chunks as the hydraulic splitter wouldn't touch it either and that took days. The rest is still there to this day - 20 years after our attempt to turn it into firewood. It has a few more scars on it from other attempts but nothing else has been removed from it.

Rerminds me of this load of what I was told was white (yellow? is it the same?) box that I collected for firewood a few weeks ago. I had to sharpen the chain three times to get the trailer load and even then I finished off by not blocking it all - that's being done as I need it.

Looks like white box to me which in my experience is harder than yellow box we've got a few very old white box trees arount that would be hundreds of years old. There is one that was fallen when we bought the place that has a 6ft diameter trunk left with a similar cut through it to the ne mentioned above.

Regards,
Tote

Cut seven slabs & two flitches from a pine tree a neighbour had cut down about a month ago. No worries with chain going blunt with softwood like this - only gave it one touch up after the third cut.
Slabs are 50mm thick, 1570mm long and around 600mm wide with some nice patterns. I have no idea what I'll do with them at this stage so if anyone's interested in one or more of them then get in touch.

The tree on the left is a white box, next to it on the ground is the remainder of it's mate which is 6ft in diameter

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The tree can be seen in the background of this picture taken in 1947

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Regards,
Tote

Originally Posted by Xtreme

Cut seven slabs & two flitches from a pine tree a neighbour had cut down about a month ago. No worries with chain going blunt with softwood like this - only gave it one touch up after the third cut.
Slabs are 50mm thick, 1570mm long and around 600mm wide with some nice patterns. I have no idea what I'll do with them at this stage so if anyone's interested in one or more of them then get in touch.

Nice slabs there Roger. Keep them stacked with slats between them as they season. It may help to control the movement in them as the fibres dry.

Originally Posted by Slunnie

Nice slabs there Roger. Keep them stacked with slats between them as they season. It may help to control the movement in them as the fibres dry.

Nurries.
I cut a few 20mm x 20mm spacers from some old decking boards I replaced recently and have stacked the slabs in a nice dry place as suggested.
I'm also going to strap them together today with a few wide ratchet straps as I did with the thinner Sydney Blue Gum slabs.

Some nice coffee table tops there or bench tops.

I'm a bit late into this thread, but I was an area manager for McCulloch chainsaws back in the early 80's.- just at the end of them making great chainsaws. That meant quite a few field days & the Royal Show demonstrations ( pic is of a Forestry Industry expo) . We had a mill which consisted of two 100cc saws & a double ended -probably 60" bar & special chain- it had less wide cutters, probably what you have Roger.
We regularly cut up slabs as the noise soon created a crowd. The best slabs were 150 year old Elm trees that were removed from Caulfield park to make way for a lake- 2x 6' & about 50" wide. They cost us a 50' reel of chain !!. We had a backlog of orders from the audience & sold them for beer money- but we did drink a fair bit on those occasions.
From what we gleaned from the old timers, especially red gum, was the best result is to "chuck them in a dam for a year or so" we soon found that anything less than 50mm would warp, and cypress was useless as slabs.
Very impressed by your efforts there... but I guess you don't have a dam..
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