Sweethome Oak Tree- Mill Your Own Quartersawn Oak

Anna had a big oak blow down during a storm on one of her family's leased properties. She was able to get me permission to cut it up, so I decided to quartersaw the big stuff, and slab some of the medium sized pieces. The branches and anything I cant use for furniture will go in the firewood pile. Lots of work ahead!

Anna in front of her oak tree.

Here she is midway up the trunk- it probably extends another 20 feet past her to the butt of the tree. The end is held off the ground by massive branches- maybe 15 feet in the air?

After about 2 hours of work. Big trees make for nice piles of logs! It was tricky getting this thing out of the air in mid suspension, off its branches.

Johnny Utah, doing his best to look annoyed for making him pose.

And here's why it came down- massive ants nest in the trunk.

ANTS! I found them the hard way, and lets just say it wasn't a pleasant surprise for them or for me! Millions of those little suckers.

A nice ant/sawdust mix. These buggers are AGGRESSIVE.

I left the ants alone for a while and moved on to a section just up from there- (although they were still all over the place, crawling up my pantlegs and biting the heck out of me.) 

Quartersawing wood, step 1: split it in half. I cut as deep into the log as my chainsaw would allow, in about an 8 foot section. I then used old axe heads and pulaski heads as wedges. Ehen the split got big enough, I cut some oak wedges from a smaller piece laying around, and pounded that in.

After it got going, I just kept adding more wedges until she split open. You can start to see how much rot was in the middle of the oak. There's still a good amount of usable wood here.

Finally got it. If the middle wasn't so rotted out, this would make a really great table top.

 

Step 2: The quartering begins. This one wasn't splitting very easily, so I fired up the chainsaw and ripped down the middle to get started. From  here, I'll mill these in half again so I can handle them, then rip them and start dimensioning to turn them into usable material. After that, to the dry kiln they go.

This really cool old abandoned house was staring at me while I worked all day. (you can barely see it in a couple of the photos above) Just had to take a photo with the incredible stormy spring sky in the background.

I love spring in the Willamette Valley! If I didn't know how wet and bleak and dreary the winters were, this kinda stuff might just make me wanna move back.

You wouldn't guess that just over an hour ago I was in beautiful, lush spring conditions. There was fresh snow on the pass on my way home just that morning. And that little dot on the road ahead of me- that's a bobcat.

 

Just happened to have my camera out to snap a shot of this still very wintery pass, when a bobcat crossed the road ahead of me. I couldn't believe my timing. Like he was on cue! Hwy 20 in Oregon is one of my favorite mountain passes I've ever driven. It's windy, steep treacherous, gets shut down due to weather and slides all the time, but absolutely a gorgeous drive with hardly any traffic. The river just dumps right out of the mountains, and is so beautiful it makes me sick. I can't wait to get my motorcycle out of the shop to hit this up.