Making Lumber Out of California Black Oak on Woodmizer LT15
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 27 ส.ค. 2024
- Making lumber out of California black oak logs on my Woodmizer LT15 sawmill. doing the experiment to find out if California black oak makes good lumber. Some of the pieces are very beautiful. It is a question now whether they will dry straight enough to be usable. 

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I’m a west coast boy too and have milled my share of black and white oak. Beautiful character, even prettier than eastern red oak, but I’ve found there’s so much stress in it that it bows and warps. I coat mine with linseed oil and keep it stickered in a barn for several years before doing anything with it. Boards that pass muster make the prettiest furniture you ever saw. Side note: White oak with the bark and sap wood chainsawed off make fence posts that last almost as long as old-growth redwood. 👍
Wild Cherry - "Smell that funky black oak white boy". September 1976... great song.
I see your Wild Cherry and raise you Paul Simon.
Looks like it would make great cabin flooring.
I hadn’t thought of flooring. It would definitely be good for a durable floor.
Funny you talk about how oak smells, I just finished up this week filling my woodshed with green red and white oak. My wife and I were sitting on the back porch and she asked (what it that smell) I said that's the smell of winter heat in a year and a half, lol!!!
I like the grain and the look
I was used to eastern red oak as a kid. We called it piss oak because of the small. I bought a bunch of land in the 1980s that was mostly red oaks(I thought). When I started to clear the land, I noticed no smell. Then I learned that I had eastern black oak. I've burned a lot of it and it heats well. 8 years ago we had gypsy moth caterpillars come through and kill dozens of the black oaks. I haven't been able to cut them all down and up yet. Many of my 12' diameter trees were over 80 years old. The woods grew up after a forest fire in the 1930s.
Quarter sawing is a lot of work but the wood is usually beautiful. Good Luck, Rick
4:28 "I try to forget a lot of things about skool" lol
Yep, don't let education get in the way of learnin'
Yeah I sometimes think about all the things I could have learned if I didn’t spend so much time in school as a kid.
Gorgeous wood. I’d love it as flooring. Or cutting boards. Lots of small miscellaneous projects. Even building blocks for kids if that’s still a thing. Jenga (the game) if you’re willing to go micro. Maybe not toothpicks if the barf smell persists.
If they warp smaller things like that would be good. I don’t know if building blocks for kids is still a thing. But I might be likely to secretly play with them myself if I had them.
Enjoy your weekend.
Funky can be a good thing , thank you for sharing
Yes funky can be a good thing, but sometimes it isn’t. 😁
Quarter sawing oak producing really beautiful lumber with Ray flaking, you will love it
I have milled up a fair amount of black oak over the years. Sometimes it makes really nice boards ( similar to red oak ), and stays flat. Other times it twists and is totally worthless. It can have defects which we call "pooch pockets", which will show up in otherwise really nice boards. Sometimes it has ugly black streaks in it ( like one of yours ). You just never know. Fun to mess around with..but I never count on it until it's dried. The funky vomit smell will go away when the wood dries, so it smells nice and sweet when planing the dry lumber. I have made some pretty nice pieces of furniture with it, and it does finish beautifully. Have fun! Oh, and it is my favorite firewood here in Northern Cal for the last fifty plus years.
Good info and good to know the smell goes away. It’s what I thought since I never noticed the smell with dry firewood.
Well you know what they say about opinions. I think it looks like fine lumber and would make interesting whatever someone makes with it. We get similar attitudes about Alder trees up here because some forget we have 2 distinct types. Both the "white" which isn't good for anything but firewood. However Western red Alder is a nice hardwood at the softer end of the scale. The western was sells for fairly high dollar for it in the eastern USA.
Considering how tall this tree was it is rather skinny, which makes it surprising it ever got so tall without breaking.
I think a lot of people forget different varieties of the same species have different properties. The red Alder I have made some beautiful lumber. That oak only got so tall because it had so many trees around it to support it. Even then it’s amazing it got so tall and thin and stayed up as long as it did.
Have you ever done a walk thru review of your mill and discussed how it stacks up to other mills? Thanks for your vids!
I did a walk through on the mill talking about the things I don’t like about it. That was over a year ago, maybe two. The conclusion was even though there are some annoying things about it, all in all I do like it. I don’t have experience with other mills to do a comparison.
1/4 saw the base log, it would make a great how to video and you can advertise "1/4 sawn black oak".....that just sounds expensive 😁
Sounding expensive does sound like a good incentive to quarter saw.
Those logs would have made some beautiful 6x6 or 8x8 support posts, I'm thinkin'.
The main question for me is, "Will that stuff stay straight?" That is going to determine the success or failure of your experiment, I believe. It really is pretty wood.
I have heard one of the reasons our western hardwoods don’t get cut into lumber much is because a lot of them are hard to keep straight. It will be interesting to see what these do.
Last 12" Oak Log: 9x9 fireplace mantle.
The Black Oak is sure beautiful!!!
That would be some gorgeous flooring.
It's just a kind of red oak, the wood's prettier than most red oak, the logs look pretty straight, what could the problem be?
Channel on autopilot over the weekend is a smart move Mr. Wilson. I was watching some of your earlier videos to get info on your saw and you look a lot more comfortable on camera now. Also, watching you load logs onto your trailer with your tractor your camera placement, number of camera angles and editing all that together is impressive! Good job out there in your woods representing SW Oregon!
Yeah just editing my videos I can tell I am more comfortable on camera now. Part of the problem with that is I don’t end up with as many bloopers now as I used to.
Looks like nice wood to me , I’ve always wanted milk so I could make lumber out of it, it makes good construction material for out building’s houses and furniture ,barns , but no mill for me so I just use it for firewood
Thats some fine looking pallet wood😉
So, the fancy hat wasn't for us, he's gussied up for the weekend.
@1:53 it looks like Japanese characters on the backside of The wood. That's quite interesting.
I know completely off topic that's generally how my mind operates is off topic....
Join the club, Other, we have jackets!
@@lpeterman Ooo jackets!! I'm all in on that!
If it wasn’t for off topic thoughts, a lot of us wouldn’t be doing much thinking. 😁
That stuff is beautiful!
yes I believe so firewood and the rest are up to you?
I still think that big one would make a very nice fire place mantle . the cracks and colour just add character .
Nice hat!
Well the red oak in my part of the world (eastern us) smells like urine. Common to call it piss oak here. Enjoying your videos
Nice looking slabs
Mill it!
Hooray, I had a moment of sapwoodish interaction, that was fun! Y'see, my perspective is boatbuilding. Among other things we maintain an oak 30' viking sailboat. For that kind of use sapwood is just out of the question. We leave Oak logs out on the ground, and by the time we use them you can often peel away the sapwood with your fingers anyway.
I used to work as a furnituremaker (Norway). One time we had an order that required imported Red Oak. I was struck by the Rose smell of the heartwood and the vomit smell of the sapwood. -Does California Black Oak smell of puke all the way through or is the heartwood pleasant?
That’s a good question. I never thought of their being a difference and I never thought to do the sniff test on sapwood versus heartwood. Now I’m going to have to do the sniff test on heartwood versus sapwood and find out.
Just about all I split is oak and I never get use to the stench. Red oak seems to be the worst and water oak is tolerable. I don’t have a mill but your videos are very informative and interesting but best of all fun. Thanks!
PEG will stop the shrinkage (cookies)
Can you dry it without internal collapse
Want a challenge try some Eucalyptus globlus I believe that grows in California
The tension wood causes grief, if boards come off the saw all hairy watch out
That looks like some really pretty stuff. Trying to go by all the options
Out there, we wouldn’t get it right no matter what opinion we went with…😂 good job
I enjoy your videos. I have no idea what you should do with that final log 😂. When I saw the wood coming off the mill I kept thinking it would look great as hardwood flooring.
Several people have mentioned hardwood flooring. I hadn’t thought of that. If it dries straight I think it would be good for that.
The massive black oak i just milled smelled not bad here on the east cost.
I’m not sure how it is with the East Coast ones but I have noticed with our, some smell bad, some don’t.
@@WilsonForestLands I did notice some sections were more smelly than others... just more of a odd smell. not good nor bad. just blaaa
narrow strip hardwood flooring
You could cut the last one into cookies and sit them somewhere to dry slowly.
"When I think back on all the crap I learned in high school, it's a wonder I can think at all..." ("Kodachrome" P. Simon 1973)
Another "Pop" reference to pick up and play along with, (see what I did there? HAH!)
Shore is purty wood. Maybe, flooring or counter tops for the cabin?
Another good 'un. Cheers from your neighbour in Linn County.
A couple people mentioned flooring. I hadn’t thought of that. It would make a good durable floor if it ends up straight.
Saw up the log, and let's see what you come up with. If it is all junk, then firewood it can be..
That’s probably a good suggestion.
I wonder if using anchorseal on the sapwood of a cookie, leaving the heartwood unsealed for evap, would keep the stress down? Cracks look pretty good with epoxy resin (tinted or flecked).
That is an interesting question. I don’t know, maybe it would work.
Put it on your mill
7x9 tie would be good for the butt log
Cut what you can out of it, donate to local high school wood shop
I had thought about donating lumber to a woodshop a long time ago but forgot about it. definitely something to keep in mind.
It will make some nice firewood. There’s nothing like a big butt log.
i noticed you put the woodchip deflector back on now? any particular reason? cool video btw
I put it on so it would blow that stinky sawdust down into one spot so I could haul it away quickly.
Aye corrumba 😁
If you want to make crackless cookies you can *insert chemist joke*. But the answer is probably quite tedious if you wanna be safe. Felling and drying leaves on until they wither, then drying for three to twenty years with the bark on before slicing.
Cookies? Because of the cracking?
Frankly, sir. I've never heard a bad joke on this channel.
But, they may have more to do with ME, than you...
😉
I am suspicious this channel attracts those of us who are good with bad jokes. 😁
Try some live edge slabs on the butt log
Cut the Butt log into a 10x10 mantle
I wonder if black oak smells as bad as cotton wood. That stuff smells like nasty swamp water. I got some for free to make chainsaw carvings. But im strongly reconsidering that choice now.
Some of our customers tell us to submerge cookies in mineral oil until they stop bubbling. Then remove and they won't split. Idk we just manufacture this stuff. We leave the rest to the experts.
That’s an interesting and may be good suggestion. I come up with all kinds of ideas to do with wood. Then sometimes I realize I’m better off just selling the wood raw and letting someone else deal with it.
Post oak in Ga. Scrub oak.
Couldn't be any worse smell than Black Walnut.
wanna bet ?
I haven’t been around Black Walnut but I think it might be a safe bet to go with the black oak.
Y you cutting it so skinny you need 2"for woodworking
Because I am a West Coast guy in softwood country who doesn’t know much about cutting hardwood.
California has 7 different varietys of native oaks. Black Oak is not one of them.
!