PROBLEM SOLVED: How to Mill a “Banana” log!

hey everyone welcome back to Lumber Capital login in today's video I'm going to be talking about an issue amongst the Sawyers and that is how to mill a banana log you might be asking what is a banana log emerald and that I would have to say is pretty self-explanatory it's when a log is shaped like a banana has a curve in it and it's kind of awkward to cut and you end up not getting a lot out of the lug at all so I'm going to be showing you how you can get the most out of a log like this and how to mill it in general so let's go all right and here is our banana log it's definitely not the worst it could be but it's definitely banana and it's gonna have to take some extra care to make sure that we get something out of this log and it's not completely wasted so I do have a few tricks for dealing with logs like this the boss being the logger that he is that doesn't bring us a lot of banana logs they're usually pretty straight so I think that this was probably one that we purchased from a different log seller because he just doesn't bring logs quite like this in we usually get to cut the nicer logs so here we go let's roll this baby on and get started now if you guys are Sawyers which I know some of you are you'll know that these are the bane of our existence they don't roll they're awkward to do anything with even the slabs coming off are just super weird and pieced out it's not like one huge piece is coming off sometimes it's like chunks I don't know you'll see what I mean but um yeah that's why we try to avoid it at all costs plus a lot is wasted a log that is banana does not get nearly as much Lumber out of a log that is straight even if it is the same size so that's why they would obviously be scaled differently you're going to pay a lot less for a log that is bowed so we didn't obviously pay you know a lot for this log which is why it is here and we're Milling it so let's put this on the mill deck here and get started foreign [Music] and of course it's not gonna roll all the way on because it's a pain in my behind so all right so now what I usually do for a log like this is adjust it on the mill so that the first cut you're going to make is either on with the hump side up or the curbside up because those are your problem sides so today just because of the way it sits on the mill I'm gonna cut the hump first I like to just get those two sides out of the way because because then I know how wide I'm going to be able to make my boards because that's a real issue I don't know just from looking at this log what dimensions I'm really going to be able to get out of it until I start cutting into it because who knows what it's going to look like after I get it all squared up but there is one technique that I try to visualize when I'm trying to basically figure this out and that is drawing a straight line through this log so basically if I were to go to the end of this log and look down it the straight line that I can see however thick is basically one I'm gonna be able to get out of that log because this log is so curvy that line that straight line that I can get isn't very thick so that's just basically telling me that I'm not going to yield this log isn't going to yield a lot and you'll see more what I mean because when we're trying to get a can out of it it's a straight beam and another issue with cutting banana logs like this is that it might be pressured in there and when I cut it it might all pop and bow sometimes that happens with logs like this sometimes it doesn't it's just the way that the tree grows whether the lumber that comes off of a out of a log like this is going to be bowed or not I keep on calling this Abode log because technically is it doesn't necessarily mean that when I cut into it the lumber coming off of it's going to be bowed it might we're just going to have to see like I said it's just how that tree grows [Music] all right so I'm gonna go ahead and start making my first cut here and I'm not gonna put up any of the rollers I don't think the way that I usually figure out whether I should put up rollers for this is to actually just take a big step back and look at it from far away because then you can really see if that log is even on the deck obviously the slug isn't going to be too even anyhow I'm going to make this first cut and see what happens then rotate it 180 and cut off then the inside basically of that curve and we're going to see if we can get something out of this you can see here that this is a very thin piece of wood here that we got out of it and that took off a huge chunk right there so usually what I would do is take another cut off because this isn't really wide enough to make a can out of but I like to make smaller cuts and just more of them when I'm cutting a log like this just so I know for sure that I did everything in my power to get the most out of this log so what I'm gonna do is not make another cut on the side quite yet I'm going to turn it take another cut off probably Square it up as best as possible before we start really trying to perfect and take all of the outer bark off because it's just It's Tricky and that can help just not trying to make the every cut perfect right away and turning it and making just extra Cuts here and there to try and get a good can so you can see what I mean I mean the the slab that came off was just ridiculous foreign [Music] [Music] really didn't want to turn this log at all and that's because it's right in the dip I get that a lot when you get wonky logs that aren't shaped quite right the claw just doesn't want to turn it and that's another reason why it's really important to have nice straight logs when you're Milling all day because it's really just about efficiency if the mill isn't capable of turning the log on its own that means a lot more manual work I did manage to get it with just using it the Hydraulics here but most of the time I'd have to step in with the cant hook and just manually turn it and so we managed to do it though even though it was kind of tricky so we're going to take this dip off next and like I said I like to deal with the problem areas first so I cut the hump and then I'm also cutting the dip for uh secondly so let's take take this second slab off and I don't know we'll see how much we even get out of it you're starting to see now that it's gonna I mean was that good eight inches about if we cut off that I mean we're gonna get something out of it it's just not gonna be you know obviously we're not gonna be able to get one by tens so let's go ahead and take this second piece off here together foreign by it doesn't come off in one solid chunk and obviously we didn't even break into the wood here so I'm definitely going to have to make another cut because there's just no way that's going to work so I actually cut this at 10 so there's still plenty of room to work with here I think I'm probably going to cut it to eight so take off two more inches before we turn it to the next side foreign foreign okay so this is cut at eight inches so right now at this point I can get one by eight two by eights two by fours whatever I choose to cut I can get an eight inch wide board out of this at the current moment now you can't forget that the other side still needs cut so I think that this is probably going to end up being a six which is just what it is you saw how big the log was to get a one by six out of it is pretty small but just because the other side I think only had like four good inches of wood showing so I'm going to go ahead and actually turn it to this side and cut off the other slab before I deal with that troubled side so I'm gonna go ahead and square this baby up and we'll go from there so at last I have a can that I am happy with it did end up being pretty small it's an eight by six but there's a variety of things I could cut out of it at this point I think I'm just going to cut two by fours so I'm gonna make two inch uh well I'm gonna make two bites and then turn it and cut it in half to make two by fours so you can see how it's significantly smaller than the log itself because of the fact that it was just banana so you can see how our Sawyers really don't like how these Vlogs end up turning out once you put them on the mill so in the end is cutting a banana log worth it well for us it is because we didn't have to pay very much for this log like I already said we didn't pay the cost of a good log so because it was a cheap lug and we're still going to get quite a few two by fours out of it it was worth it to us but really just depends on the cost of operation for you guys which you're going to have to decide for yourselves so I'm going to cut these into two by fours and I'll be back in a minute foreign [Music] thanks for watching everyone I hope that you enjoyed today's video if you did please remember to like And subscribe if you haven't already and a huge thank you to our members we've gotten a lot of positive feedback from our Sunday videos it has been super fun to make with Sammy and I hope that we can continue it so a huge thanks for all of our members for participating and I will see you guys tomorrow so adios to for today

Channel: Lumber Capital Log Yard

Views: 498,235

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Id: fqseGhBz52U

Length: 15min 7sec (907 seconds)

Published: Mon Sep 19 2022