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Hi,

it has been a while since I have been on. Recent streetscaping under the american recovery act in my neighborhood left me with a huge maple that was cut down. I need to get it quartersawn, but not sure how. I will def. share the wood if anyone can help. located central NJ.

see attached picture. large log is about 2 feet in diameter and the tree was cut about 8 months ago.

questions:

When is the best time to cut it? early or later?
how do you read the log to get the best cut?
How do you maximize the wood output?
what is considered quartersawn, i.e what angle to the cut is acceptable?

any help is always appreciated. I have two more maples coming down in the spring too.

Hos

HEy Hos,

Looks like fun.

I don't know much about this stuff, but there was a thread over on the OLF a couple of days ago about this very thing, and it seemed like the consensus was to get it planked and stickered indoors as soon as possible so the drying process can begin.

The specifics of how to do this are well beyond my experience, so I can't help there.

Hopefully someone else will chime in.

Hos, only the trunk up to where it the limbs start (or the trunk splits) will be useful as lumber. You can try splitting the logs with wedges.......1/2, the 1/4. then 1/8....till wherever you have something small enough to handle on a bandsaw. This would give you good quartersawn stock if that's what you are looking for.

Hey thanks

The piece on the left is the trunk. It is about 5 feet long and about 2 ft in diameter .

Not sure how I would drive a wedge to split that. It is a massive chunk of wood. I'm thinking a chainsaw to get it into smaller portions.

The goal was to make back and sides out of this. My sister had a large cedar fall last week in her yard in VA, 2 ft diameter, so I was hoping to make the top out of it.

The plan was to build two twin classicals with this material. But getting the wood into planks is proving harder than I thought.

With all this maple, it is a shame to waste it. It was a broad leaf maple.