New project, building tables from 150 year old oak

nooshinjohn

With the heavy rains recently in Southern California, the third oldest oak tree in Calabasas fell to the ground and was sent off to the wood chipper in the sky.

I was fortunate to get two cross-cut 6 inch thick pieces of the tree. They are full diameter cuts over 36 inches across and weigh 150 pound each.

I want to see if there is any advice or best practices for drying these pieces of history so they don’t crack too badly as they dry. The ring pattern shows at least 100 years of growth for the branch where this wood came from and I want to preserve them as best I can, bark and all.

Eventually I want to make end tables out of them…

VR3

This thread is useless without pics...... Cmon slacker!

nooshinjohn

The building in the picture is a strip mall that burned down several years ago an was just completed and ready for new tenants a couple months ago. The facade was damaged and the roof is also destroyed…

VR3

Wow! Hopefully no one was hurt!

Should make beautiful wood furnishings

nooshinjohn

Most of it was unceremoniously chopped up with a little regard for the history. Myself and one or two other people are the only ones that cared enough about the tree to at least try and preserve some of it. The rest is going to a fireplace.

VR3

Truly a shame

audioluvr

Ouch! Just put the slabs on a flat concrete floor with lath spaced about a foot apart. Then more lath then some boards then some weight to hold it down. Wait 6 months or more and they are ready for furniture making.

dromunds

You’ll need more than six months to properly dry six inch white oak. You should air dry it, with dry “stickers” placed every 12 inches as mentioned, with two stickers at each end to help prevent cracks from going into the wood. I make stickers by ripping a dry board into one inch strips. Place the stickers directly on top of the row below and above. I would put a row of some lumber below and above, or better yet if you had other lumber make a bunch of rows above for weight and then place a lot of weight on the pile to keep the oak from twisting and warping as much as possible. Oak will twist and warp some no matter what you do but you will plane it later. As mentioned, lots of weight will help lessen warping and twisting. The pile needs air circulation. I cover my piles with sheet metal but we have lots of rain here. After air drying for a year or more you will want to get that stuff kiln dried. Six inch thick white oak is seriously thick stuff. I usually cut two or three inch stuff and sometimes it air dries for a couple years before kiln drying. Stickering properly is crucial. Have somebody that knows what they are doing help you. Hopefully, you lumber is longer than those foolish firewood length chunks those idiots cut. They should be tarred and feathered for that idiotic mess they made of that beautiful oak. After kiln drying you can plane. It’s hard to get white oak to dry without warping twisting and cracking so do it correctly. Get your pile up off the ground and put a vapor barrier down if need be on the ground. Most people sticker like idiots. Stickers must be dry. Stickers at the ends of the boards are important as is double stickers on the ends. As is placing the stickers 12 inches apart and directly above and below each other.

SIHAB

Very cool project!

muncybob

W/O a doubt it will take more than 6 months. At least 2 years I think. Oak and other dense woods take a long time to dry. Getting that kind of wood down to 20% moisture content for a wood burner easily takes 2 years if not 3 out in the open weather. Obviously you want a drier wood than that.
Agree with the steps above. Looking forward to pics of the final product.

F1nut

What a shame that glorious tree was butchered into those chunks.

VR3

The sign for the tree is petty ironic considering how it was handled when it fell down

nooshinjohn

These are the pieces I am working with…

audioluvr

Those cross cuts will dry in 6 months and not warp like a rip. I have a similar arid climate as you and burn white oak exclusively. Wood cut in early spring will be ready to burn by late fall if stored in a dry indoor location.

audioluvr

Those will make awesome tables!

dromunds

Sorry, I had assumed you had boards. It may be difficult to get those to dry properly without checking or splits but it will need to dry slowly for sure covered up and out of the sun. Never dried end cut-offs like that. It’s really a shame they had such little foresight to cut that beautiful white oak into firewood

Jstas

I have rounds myself that I'm trying to dry. Well, not trying, I am drying.

Mine was a red oak. It smelled bad so I couldn't dry it indoors.

They've been leaning on the porch since the tree was removed earlier this year. I have good sized checking in them but it seems to have stopped where it is hasn't split the rounds completely. They are still together.

My plan is in the spring, when the weather starts to warm up, I'm going to see how they are doing. If they need to dry more, I'll haul them up to the loft in the barn where it's dry all the time and let them finish.

What I might do is get some bar stock, drill some holes in it and screw it to one of the sides of each round across the checking to stabilize the checking, hopefully.

Once they dry out to the point I can work with them, I'm going to cut them as flat as I can with a chain saw and then use a belt sander to smooth them out. I have a sealer product from Rockler that gets great reviews and I'll soak it all in the sealer. Then I'll fill the gaps with epoxy. I'm not sure if I will epoxy the whole thing or use polyurethane or spar varnish. But I'll make sure they are permanently braced from further checking and then mount them on pedestals. I might be able to do lighting through the checked cracks if I use a clear or translucent epoxy.

But they're going to be tables for the porch and the more I can do to preserve them in the raw, natural state, the happier I will be 'cause I really hated cutting down the tree but it was dying and getting dangerous.

Oh, probably going to build the pedestals out of pallets or maybe spend the money on quarter sawn oak or possibly reclaimed wood.

Jstas

Here's the rounds I had cut from the oak tree when it came down. The tree was taken down August 22nd through 24th of 2022 (Yes, it was that big)



It's dark right now and I thought I had current pictures but I don't. So I'll grab a shot of them tomorrow and share what they look like now so you know what to expect.

The black hazy spots are where there was something nailed into the tree at some point. They are more prominent now that the rounds have dried out. You'll see in the pictures I take tomorrow. We never found what it was and with it being as deep in the tree as it was, it was likely totally dissolved. But the black spots are what happens when the tree leaches all the iron from the fastener through it. Poor tree was about 160 years old and it was Captain Halfass and his copious amounts of concrete that killed it. Growth rings got real tight around 30 years ago which would have been when he put the concrete in. There was a shock to the growth rings about 50-60 years ago which is probably when some other moron previous owner had the tree topped instead of properly trimmed. Prior to that the tree was healthy and growing well with hug gaps between rings. Between the rot holes that opened up in the topped branches and the root system damage from all the concrete, the tree was on borrowed time after about 1999. Pretty sure Captain Halfass had the pair of them topped again around then which about when he laid the concrete.

Anyway, the fastener that caused the iron leaching looks like it would have been stuck there 90-105 years ago which is how old the house is. So it was likely put there by the guy who originally built the house for some purpose related to it. Maybe a survey marker or something.

nooshinjohn

As an added bonus, I get to teach my sons about how important trees are. I also have nearly 100 acorns from the old girl that we are going to try and get to grow. Hopefully we can get a nice tree going for each of them, and some day they will sit beneath them and remember their old man from time to time…

Willow

nooshinjohn wrote: »

As an added bonus, I get to teach my sons about how important trees are. I also have nearly 100 acorns from the old girl that we are going to try and get to grow. Hopefully we can get a nice tree going for each of them, and some day they will sit beneath them and remember their old man from time to time…

And how they traded all your gear for a case of beer and a ziplock full of bud.....

Jstas

Here's a shot of the rounds I have as they are now



You can see how much more prominent the dark spots are.

You can see how big the checking got and honestly, the only way to prevent it is to kiln dry it. But the closest kiln dryer that would cater to the public was almost 2 hours away from me and he didn't know if his kiln would fit rounds this large.

I was going to seal them prior to letting them dry but I was told by a guy who makes bowls that every time he seals rounds before they dry the checking is worse because the sealer causes uneven drying.

So these have been leaning where they are since September. There's plenty of airflow, they get hit by the sun for 2/3rds of the day and they are out of the rain and snow. It's winter now and the air has been dry due to low temps for a while now. I could be mistaken but I haven't seen these checks growing since November. The rounds are still one piece and hopefully they will stay that way. I intend to brace them across the checks to stabilize them when I can finally start working with them.

Jstas

Oh, they are about 30 to 37 inches across depending on how you measure them.

They aren't from the base. They took them from about 3 feet up. The base was almost 5 feet across.

The tree was so tall that they had a hard time reaching the top with the 120 foot boom lift.

nooshinjohn

Mine are the same size… except they come from where the tree forked into two main trunks

nooshinjohn

I read something online about a salt paste that can be applied to the wood and it is supposed to speed up the drying process and prevent cracking. Has anybody heard anything about this or have experience with it?

Jstas

I've heard of it and I've been told it can discolor the wood and cause problems with finishes adhering to the wood.

Jstas

In all honestly, like I said, kiln drying is the way to go if you want to do it fast. But, the problem with it is it's expensive. The two rounds I have they told me $500 and they would have it for like 2 weeks at least, depending on what the moisture measurements were at the end of the first round. They couldn't guarantee it wouldn't check either and that's understandable.

They also said that the bark would likely come off in the kiln as it would dry at a faster rate and pop off.

The kiln guy actually said if I wanted to keep it intact, the air drying outdoors was the best way because I might get large checks like I have but there would be less chance of the rounds building up tensions between the layers of the tree. Those tensions are what cause the rounds to split apart and the regular heat/cold and humid/dry cycles of the weather outside would be able to release those tensions without causing it fall apart. He said to just keep it dry, don't let it get wet. With all that said, he said he typically did kiln drying for people who were making bowls so their rounds were much thicker and the bowl making requires the density created by the kiln drying. For using it as a table top, density doesn't matter as much as stability and nature does a much better job at that than he can.

So it's going to take a while but so far the air drying outside has been effective and the least damaging.

Once it's dried, then you seal it so moisture doesn't start rotting it. Just don't leave it in a spot where bugs will get to it. If the garage is a good spot for you, leave them there. It's going to take a while, though. No way around it. But patience is a virtue.

Malbec

Chemical stabilization might be your best bet.

https://www.pdfdrive.com/understanding-wood-a-craftsmans-guide-to-wood-technology-e165245305.html

Chapter 7. Page 136. This book belongs on your shelf if working wood is one of your hobbies.

audioluvr

Checking is just going to happen on those. The slower you age them the better (but not much as oak just does this). Good thing is once it's planed and sanded smooth you can Apply a 2 part epoxy that will fill all the checks in. Like this.

dromunds

I was at the taxidermist yesterday to pick up a Euro mount of a whitetail I shot last fall, and I asked him how he cures the pieces of butternut wood that he mounts the Euros to. The pieces of butternut are basically slices off the end of a butternut log but cut at an angle to highlight the bark. He said he cuts the pieces at the coldest time of the year otherwise the bark won’t stay on. Then he stickers them and places in a shed or similar open sided building where they get good wind but no sunlight. He said butternut dries pretty good without cracking much, but mentioned oak will almost always crack. That’s been my experience too, oak cracks and twists when drying although my experience is strictly with drying lumber. I can sticker oak lumber on the bottoms of a big lumber pile with lots and lots of weight on it and it still twists and warps some. I get rid of that with planing but need to cut a bit thicker when sawing so to take into account the planing. Anyway, he said he dries the butternut cut-offs for two years. The attached photo is what usually happens to my oak when drying, big check cracks open up. But I don’t sticker my cut-offs, they are just to count the rings. Even so, I’ve seen guys fill the cracks with colored epoxy and it looks good. Thought I’d relate what the taxidermist does even tho a different species of wood. I think I’d do the same thing and hope for the best.

Jstas

I was told that the only reason to keep them out of the sun is because UV will cause the wood to darken and if you plan on staining the wood, it can cause finishes to look different.

I'm not planning on staining with anymore than a blonde stain if I do because every time I've done that, especially on red oak, it brings out the tiger striping and makes it look like ribbon candy once the finish coats are applied, sanded and buffed.

dromunds

You want them to dry slowly. Keeping them in the shade helps them dry slower. Fewer cracks if in the shade but you still have air movement. No air movement and you may get mold.