Do you ever cut any circle slabs for tables?

Just sent you a pm. May have some wood you might be interested in

Any chance you would mind explains the cut process to go from tree-slab? I assume the 2x4's are a jig of sorts, but what are you applying to the edges? And how do you determine how to cut/where to cut?

Just curious as I have never seen this process before and find these pics amazing.

agrams can correct me if I get any of this wrong but I can answer some of your questions.

Yes, the 2x4's are a guide rail to allow the chain saw mill to slide down the length of the log cutting at an even predetermined depth. After the first cut, some people then just slide the mill down down the flat surface and not use the rail. agrams used the rail for every cut because it offers a couple advantages.

The edges are getting a wax based paint to seal them.

For the big slabs, we just cut down the length of the log in the first picture. Pretty straightforward.


For the smaller coffee table slabs, we used the log with all the branches coming off. This is where it paid to have agrams knowledge. We rolled the log until we found two branches coming off very near each other and parallel to each other. Essentially forming a Y. Then agrams cut the slabs in parallel with the surface of the Y. As you can see in the picture, the grain on the smaller slabs splits into the Y shape of the branches. Very cool.

Cool pictures. Thanks for sharing. Not to derail, but why was the tree cut down? Had it died, or storm damage or some other reason?

Is that the new truck agrams? How do you like it?

aggiedent said:

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agrams can correct me if I get any of this wrong but I can answer some of your questions.

Yes, the 2x4's are a guide rail to allow the chain saw mill to slide down the length of the log cutting at an even predetermined depth. After the first cut, some people then just slide the mill down down the flat surface and not use the rail. agrams used the rail for every cut because it offers a couple advantages.

The edges are getting a wax based paint to seal them.

For the big slabs, we just cut down the length of the log in the first picture. Pretty straightforward.


For the smaller coffee table slabs, we used the log with all the branches coming off. This is where it paid to have agrams knowledge. We rolled the log until we found two branches coming off very near each other and parallel to each other. Essentially forming a Y. Then agrams cut the slabs in parallel with the surface of the Y. As you can see in the picture, the grain on the smaller slabs splits into the Y shape of the branches. Very cool.

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Very cool

Extremely cool picture.....love these posts. We bought what we hope is our final farm to retire too about a month ago. The farm had been in the same family since the mid 1880's. My 88 year-old father in law likes to wander the woods and spends about 95% of his days outside for six to ten hours each day building fences in Iowa and Texas.

We took him to the new place a couple of weeks ago. He came back in from his first hike and told me there was the largest pecan tree he had ever seen on the back 40 between a couple of creeks. Since he was from the Midwest, I figured it was probably large....but no big deal. He and I went back out with a tape measure to see and measure the circumference and compute the diameter. I was pretty surprised. At about five feet off the ground the tree had an 18.5 foot circumference resulting in a diameter of about 70 inches.

I guess that's still about 13 inches shy in diameter of the current state champion. If that tree starts to show any signs of giving up the ghost....I'm definitely hiring Agrams to convert it to something meaningful.

really nice tree! thought i had one that was bigger so i went ahead and measured. looks like i was wrong.

PineTreeAg said:

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Imagine a Texas where Pecan's like this were common.
1915 near San Antonio (note the guy sitting on first branch)

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Wow

Wow! Can't tell whether or not those are elves. But if they're normal sized people, then that is a really big tree!

In the words of the great Jerry Clower - "there wasn't a limb for a while"

soul, I think aggiedent did a pretty good job of it, but if you have any more questions, i am happy to try and explain any details.

corps, it is. It is kind of a reward to myself for the last year or so of busting my butt on woodworking projects. I have been going nonstop since probably September of last year, but I have had the chance to do a lot of cool projects for Ag's and meet a lot of new and interesting people.

Gunny, the champion pecan is in Weatherford, and I have been wanting to swing by to see it. I also have some family in Bowie county near the champion bois d'arc and walnut, and have been trying to swing by them to take a peek sometime.

Call me when you sign up to cut down the bois d'arc I want to watch!

I don't have rights or permission to cut them down, just know they are in the same county as some family. Im not sure I would even cut them down if i had the right to do so. Bois D'Arc is brutal on tools.

I know. I've cut a few down but I wanted to see a professional tackle it.

PineTreeAg said:

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Imagine a Texas where Pecan's like this were common.
1915 near San Antonio (note the guy sitting on first branch)

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Hell no, I can already tell that thing has Poison Ivy growing on it... I'm out!

only, step 1 for me would be to sharpen as many chains as possible before I ever show up... Most of my exposure to bois d'arc is in turning and some smaller milling/drying, nothing larger scale. And even in those smaller instances such as turning a bowl, the amount of sharpening required is noticeably increased.

I don't think I would ever want to tackle a bois d'arc tree which has been dead for a while and dried some, that would be a nightmare. The greener the better for me.

I do love it as a wood though, very unique and distinctly Texan/Southern.

aggiedent said:

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The tree was growing about 20 ft from a 1860's dog trot log house. The base of the tree was starting to rot and a number of upper limbs were starting to die. The house was sustaining damage and they were afraid the house might be destroyed if something large landed on it.

Anywhere else they would have let the tree live on, but it was a short timer anyways. Then again, I have no real knowledge about the live span of Pecan trees. Perhaps it could have lived on a fair while longer. The in-laws made the painful decision with deep regret and a few tears.

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Thanks for the reply. I can appreciate that it was a difficult decision. Very cool that some treasured pieces of furniture will be a lasting memory/tribute to the tree.

This is really cool and can completely appreciate the sentimental value.

Not exactly the same, but my wife had a baby grand depression era piano that she grew up playing. After we married, we had the piano moved down to our house in Austin from Ohio, reuniting the piano with my wife.

After a couple more moves, the piano was really starting to become unsafe and falling apart. We ended up buying a nice house on some land in the hill country, and the piano just wasn't going to fit. We knew it was basically worthless at this point, but the sentimental value was too high to just haul off and throw in a landfill.

After doing quite a bit of research online, I ended up finding someone who could convert the main cabinet (?) of the piano into a bookshelf. He did an amazing job, and really took a personal interest in the project after realizing the life the piano had with my wife.

There were a lot of tears and joy when she saw the bookshelf, knowing that the piano would be preserved in some way.

I really love stories like this, where something with immense sentimental value and history can still be preserved. I'll be watching this thread to hopefully see the final product.

Need to make one of these Fletcher Burwell-Taylor tables out of that!

http://www.fletchertables.com/videos/

agrams - Very nice; thanks for sharing. Can this type of work be done to a tree that has been dead for over 2 years? We have a remaining water oak "stump" that is approximately 15' tall and 9' in circumference.

Is there any chance in salvaging the remaining wood and making any furniture pieces out of it?

willis, a lot depends on why the tree died and if it is in a dry or wet area. If the ground is pretty moist most of the time, you will probably start having some center rot. If the tree had some sort of rot/decay that caused it to die, it could be pretty soft inside. Large crotch sections or larger broken off branches near the trunk that can let water in to the the body of the trunk can cause pith/rot too.

However, outside of those warning signs, I have cut up logs that have laid up for 5+ years and were solid as a rock a few inches in. You may lose a little on the surface from rain/weather decay, but if the log is solid, it will hold up surprisingly well for a long time.

The only way to really tell is to fell the tree and look at the cross section on the cut to see if it is solid or has signs of issues.

Those pictures of large pecans are impressive. I didn't think they lived long enough to get that large.