Well these are the two logs that a homeowner in my neighborhood gave to me and a friend. So we have begun cutting them into slabs with a Stihl 044 Magnum, seems to work well enough with a 36” bar. The slabs will be about 4” thick. Are those thick enough to resist crowning and bowing once they are stacked and stickered?
Anyway not sure what I’ll do with the slabs but a large dining table does come to mind. And certainly a live edge coffee table but I’m not sure anyones going to want a 200 lb. coffee table. Oh well, at least it will be beautiful!
I’ll keep ya’ll appraised of the slabbing process with pics and updates from time to time. I’m in Michigan so got to get it done before it turns really cold.
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| From Beech logs |
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| From Beech logs |
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| From Beech logs |
ps. if anyone has any experience working with Beech, please chime in because prior to my spalted beech small box, I’ve never worked with Beech at all.
thanks in advance for any tips or tricks inherent to Beech,
~isaac
-- "Who but a fool would discard seeminly useless parts? To keep every cog and wheel is the first precaution of intelligent engineering" -- Aldo Leopold
1 comment so far
barlow
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103 posts in 619 days
posted 398 days ago
beech is very nice to work with, however it has to be dried properly to be anything more than very good firewood. I’ve handled around 400,000+ feet of beech combined of European and American beech. If it is not imediately steamed and then kilned properly it will chech all to hell, and not just surface checking, checked throughout almost like shake. I was not buying low grade beech either to warrant some defects i was buying 70% select and better with 30% 1 common. The cracking was especially in the thicker stock, 6/4 and 8/4. We had to reject whole semi loads at a time sometimes do to a poor drying job. I know there is someone out there who may have had some good luck with trying to dry a small dab but for the most part it will check hard and fast. A good friend of mine who i graduated from high school with has a large dry kiln operation (total capacity of 125,000) and his family has been running these for 30 yrs and they dont even want to take a chance and dry me a load because the are scared of the checking. I’m not trying to scare you away from trying to work with it, its just a really difficult wood to dry properly, but when dry it is very nice to work with. If you have any other questions feel free to ask.
-- barlow