Turning Timber Into Lumber

 21 Oct 23:

We want to experiment with some Old School ways of boatbuilding, in this case how were trees reshaped into usable boat lumber. So we took the broad axe and chipped away at the bark on a red oak, finding that while this would work it would be very time consuming and would wreck my shoulder muscles. 

What I found was much easier was to haul the timber to a local sawmill. First the logs were unloaded...

...then a Bobcat took them over to the mill.

...where Mike expertly cut them to the one inch thickness we desired. The oak and swamp maple will shrink a bit, and leave us with some extra thickness that will be removed with a planer. 

Video: https://youtu.be/5qtA3m9RiV4

As a bonus the crew ran the one inch slabs through an edger to remove most of the live edge.

Swamp maple and red oak are not premium boat building species, as they tend to rot faster than say white oak or cypress. But for our day sailed boats, we can use them in a few spots as long as we properly seal and coat all surfaces and fastener holes, and do not leave the boats in the water year round. We will most likely make a few interior or boat furniture pieces that get wet very little, or just use this lumber for other projects as Skipper decrees.

Common thinking is that the wood will dry at the rate of one inch per year. We "stickered" the planks with PVC strips, that lets air flow through the stack and hopefully the PVC sticks will not stain the wood. I neatly stacked the wood out in our backyard lumber yard and placed a piece of tin over the top to keep off rain, then remembered that we have a huge tin covered Sunfish Shack where the lumber would have fit, plus there will be a little more sun to dry things out.

Stay tuned.

PS Some builds might benefit from green lumber, such as a carvel planked boat where caulking seams are desired and the wood may bend easier when wet. It takes great familiarity with each species of wood to know how much and at what rate the shrinkage occurs. We'll check the moisture level periodically and make a few small things as the stack dries to see how this wood likes to be used.