- Hey everyone. My name is Matt, welcome to my back yard. This time we're gonna be slicing up this big old white Oak here which I picked up on my brand
new trailer, which I built. If you missed the build of the trailer or the pickup of the log, using the trailer for the first time, I'll leave you a link to those. So this thing is
righteously big, I'll say. It's so yeah, 11 feet long. We're over four feet here at the butt and a little over
three feet there at the top. So as always let's take a walk around the log real quick, take
a look at what we're dealing with, and then we'll get
into doing some cutting. So like I said, we're at
about 11 feet long right now. And up here, we have the
nice little crotch section. So we have a crotch on this side and we also have a crotch
coming out on this side too. So I have aligned things
with the log right now, so that these two crotches
are parallel to the ground, which should expose the crotch figure in the actual slabs. Interesting notes you know, not a whole lot of crazy
things going on here. We have this old split here which if we take a look at the bottom which we'll see later on, there
was like a lightning strike or something that caused the
whole outside of the tree, the sapwood section to be
completely, like, blown off. So actually I have the upper
section, which is right here. So you can see it, it's missing
this whole chunk right here. And the tree is trying to
grow around itself again. So probably a lightning strike at some point, or that's really the only thing I've ever seen that
causes something like that. So we have that in this case that actually
oriented towards the bottom. So it's not a huge deal. It's right over here and kind of curves around
a little bit to the bottom. So that's what this section
is missing down here is. So we'll get down to that eventually. Most interesting and exciting note for me is the iron staining
on this end of the log. So they have this kind of
blue-ish, black stain right here and also a little one
right here, which indicates that there is some embedded
iron somewhere in this tree but before the top, if it was further up on the tree, you would see
the staining of both ends. But because it's only on this end, it's some
more contained in this log. So it is somewhere at this height in the log, but somewhere
longitudinally that way. So we'll see what that
is when we get in there, could be something big,
could be something small. It's a pretty big stain though. So it's probably something pretty big. So we'll see how many blades
we go through for this thing. (chuckles) Can see, we also have that split there which should a lot of it
will be eliminated based on the orientation of the log. But as we get towards the
bottom here, we'll have a split in our slabs, which should be, you know interesting enough for slabs. Some more visual interest. So this thing being 11 feet long and with it's rough diameter here at the end of 52 and 37 at
the top puts the estimated weight somewhere around 7,700 pounds. So, close to four tons. So pretty big log to get on
the trailer for the first time. And it went perfectly well. And I'm just really excited
to get into this thing. One thing to note right now
is it's not fully stable as you can see I can rock it a little bit. So before I get to actually cutting, I'm gonna grab the skid steer and we'll do a little bit of stabilizing so this thing isn't rocking around while I'm trying to cut it and then we'll get into
actually sawing it. I'm thinking the first cut will be at 40 inches, that should
remove enough of the curvature of the log to produce a nice
flat area for the stack. So that's the sequence of events here. Help. Yeah, that's probably better. (saw screeches) (metallic clang) (saw whirs) (engine runs) So I think now we are
deep enough into the log where I have enough width here to put down onto my stack down here. Just, let's go up here a little bit. Yeah, 28 inches is pretty wide. It's probably like 18 down there. It's gonna be pretty good. So I'm gonna call this
one slab number one. This will be the first
actual slab off of here. Let's take a quick look with the water, see what
we're dealing with here, because this grain looks pretty crazy. It's got some really dark,
like striation thing going on. (water splashes) 11 feet of white Oak. That has some cool grain. We have all of these much larger
cathedral things down here because we had that whole
buttress that we just cut off. So we're kind of coming into the grain as we're swooping them through here but it is pretty clear,
as far as wood goes, like, cool grain. Not a whole lot of
weird stuff, (chuckles). But I'm sure that will change. So at this point, I'm
just gonna go through and cut the first round of slabs. So we'll just make some
slices until we get down until we can't cut any
more with the throat or until we hit something along the way and have to stop. (saw whirs) (saw whirs) (chain rattles) (engine roars) (chain rattles) (saw screeches) So it looks like we are just going to get into the blue state now, but you can see this guy is probably gonna be fully
encapsulated in this slab. So probably gonna miss that. And I don't know what's gonna happen here. We might, I don't know. That's a lot of staining. (chuckles) Let's maybe say goodbye to this blade. (laughs) (saw screeches) This next one will be going right into the bigger area, the blue stain. So maybe we'll hit something this time. Place your bets. Are we gonna be hitting
something this time or what? (saw screeches) (saw slows) Nothing. (high pitched squeak) So nothing in that cut, which is very weird because we went right through the middle of that blue stain. So I almost feel lied to at this point because most people tell you this log isn't even worth 'cutting
cause of that stain in there and then potentially hitting something. But what might have happened is that whatever was in
this tree was removed. So thank you responsible person for removing whatever you hung in here before it got consumed by the tree, but we'll see, we'll see. Let's make another cut. Right in the middle. Right smack dab in the middle, nothing. (saw whirs) Okay, so that pretty
much bottoms up the saw. I can't make another cut. So I think we'll get into
offloading and stacking next. So we'll get, let's say we'll
do like the first one or two and get them out of the way and then we can keep cutting again. So I have a spot right back here. This log here is almost gone. So I'll leave you a link to
the video cutting this thing in case you missed it, that was a, that one was what the most
steel I've ever cut through or something like that. Had the most amount of
embedded metal in it of any log I've ever cut. And still to this day holds that title. Yeah, the bottom two slabs
here are sold already. So they have to go off
to their final drying. So I'm gonna stick those aside for now and get this area all ready to go to receive all these new slabs. (engine rumbles) (Matt groans)
(Matt chuckles) Oh man. I was hoping I could just slide this off. That's not gonna happen. (engine rumbles) Oh, she's heavy. So I'm pretty excited. I'm gonna try my new slab
flipper, roller, stand set-up. So when I made these patisserie stands, that was for the trailer build. I made them out of scraps. So they're like way, way
heavier than they need to be which is kind of unfortunate. 'Cause I like having them around but their weight makes them ridiculous. Like, I can't even pick them up. But being able to spin
a slab around instead of aggressively, violently flipping it should be kind of a nice thing to have. (breathes heavily) All right. So tired now. This thing's set up. So these are the slab rolling mounts that I welded up yesterday. Really simple. It was a piece of two inch angle iron with a piece of pipe welded to it. And that'll allow me to
clamp this whole thing to the end of a slab. And I can mount the whole slab between the stands and
just roll it right over. And just because I know
it'll bother somebody, this one's gonna go the other way. (laughs) Take that symmetry. Okay. (engine starts) Okay, let's do some water stuff. (wipes dust) (Matt shouts)
(water splashes) Oh my God. That was a good one. All right, so this is actually some pretty interesting stuff. We've got some really wild grain in here which I like a lot. It's a lot nicer than normal
cathedrals because of this, of course, the buttress
root gave us this kind of weird thing down here. And then coming up here,
we have these old limbs which is what these kind of circles are. But check this out. This, one's got a little bit of a burl starting to form here. So we've got some burl
pattern coming in here too. So, you know, pretty interesting thing. A little bit of bark
inclusions around it too. So that's a good starter. I think it's a good indication
of what we have ahead of ourselves in the log here. So I think I'm gonna grab one more. We'll get it stacked, take a look at it and then we'll cut another two. (engine rumbles) Oh this is cool. (metal clangs) All right, let's see here. A little momentum that time. Oh yeah. We're getting a little
further through that burl. So got a little bit of burl right here. This is bark inclusion that
runs all the way through here and we are, oh, look, an old limb. This used to be a limb down, way down here at some point. That's cool. But up here we're getting through this
limb that was coming out I guess that way, technically, which had to heel around itself. So that's very cool. Another one here too. So, still kind of in the plain sawn area. As we get further down into the log, we'll see a little more
straight grain stuff versus this cathedral pattern. So let's head back to the
saw, make a few more cuts. (saw whirs) (saw slows down) Huh, blade seems fine. (metal clangs) (metallic hammering) All right. See if the blade's got any damage on it. Assumption's that we hit something. 'Cause I think we're
supposed to hit something, at this point. Teeth are all still here. And it's not like it's dull. Did I make that up? Maybe I made that up. Maybe it was caught on something else? Okay, let's go again and see what happens. (saw screeches) The blade is still, whole log is rocking. I'm gonna pull the blade
out and put a new one on. I think maybe the blade is
too dull to cut with maybe? And the log is rocking around, so I gotta stabilize it a little better. I saw the whole log like this. Here we go. I see someone to push the saw through. Okay. What's the band in the blade? (metallic clanging) - [John] You want me
to get some gloves on? - Sure. Ooh, easy. There we go. Okay. Let's get a new blade. (Matt shouts)
(saw screeches) Human power saw. Okay. (engine rumbles) That seems much better. Here we go. (saw whirs) So I don't think, hit anything again. Nothing in there. I gonna move another one
and then some water toss and some more sawing I guess. (engine rumbles) Okay. (water splashes) Boop. (Matt laughs) That is pretty darn awesome. All right, so starting up here we got a little bit of this old limb here. Another one up here with this little tiny
cookie there in the middle. Yeah, this one's got not a whole lot of crazy things going on. We're getting all the way through that limb or at least
most of the way through that. A little bit of that burl left. We do have these bark
inclusions in the middle here. And if you come all the way down here we have a little bit of
that blue stain up in here. So maybe there is something embedded beneath the surface there but it's pretty clear looking slab though. A lot of good wood in there, that's wet. All right, let's grab another one. (repetitive hammering) (engine rumbles) That is some serious staining. Must have just missed whatever it was. (engine rumbles) Check this out. Look at that blue stain, that
is some intense blue staining. And here we go. (water splashes) So, nothing on this side that I can tell that was hit, so, either whatever was in there was removed or it's embedded in the wood that's in the slab right now. What's interesting about white Oak is it stains really easily when it comes in contact with iron so you can see staining here
already from my pallet forks. That's just on the surface, but white Oak will stain super quickly. So don't leave it, sit on
something with iron in it. 'Cause it will splint
even deeper than that. So you can see we're starting to get into some more tighter grain material. We have a little bit of the flat sun area here with the cathedrals in the middle still. As we get out towards the center of the tree, we're gonna
see the growth rings start to come more vertical towards the surface. And eventually it'd be to the quarter sawn orientation, which is what's happening out here. We're starting to see a little bit of ray fleck towards the
very outside of the slab. Let's get some measurements on this guy just to get some ideas. We got here. 42 up in here. Let's see, we got through the middle here. 39 and then down here, we're at 47. So there's one 11 foot
dining table, right there. What do you think, should
we grab another one? Let's grab another one and
then we'll saw some more. (engine rumbles) So it looks like we found what
caused all of that staining. I am really surprised actually because it's just this tiny nail here. And actually this is barbed wire. So this was in a fence line at some point. So if you can come in here you can see those two little
pieces of steel in there. So it was a piece of barbed wire that's running through here. That is, that's a lot of staining for such a small piece of metal. And what's interesting about that is most people
will see that much staining and assume it's a huge piece of steel and this log would have
been thrown away just for that reason. But the little things don't
really impact my saw at all. So that's why we never
really noticed anything. (engine rumbles) (water splashes) Oh, I got myself in the shoe. Oh boy. So we're starting to get
into some crotch figure here from these limbs, which means these next ones will have a
lot more crotch figure. You can see all this bark inclusions and structural
defects here in the middle. Got a little bit of burl action over here. And what's going on down here? You got a little bit of that crack kind of thing happening here and some staining from
that barbed wire, I guess. Very cool. Let me get some measurements quick to see what this is in the middle. Between the bark, 39. That's probably the same as the last one. So probably get a scooch bigger than this. Oh, that was a big slab. So it's been a few days, we're gonna get back to the actual sawing. So we're gonna get back to looking at these three slabs and then
we'll get back to sawing. So I'm gonna get this guy into the stack and grab some water and we'll take a look at it. (engine rumbles) (water splashes) So if you look over here, we're
starting to see a little bit of ray fleck as we're
starting to get closer to quarter sawn out here. So the next slab or two will have a little
bit more pronounced ray fleck and that stain is huge for
that tiny little piece of wire. And then this is that defect
starting to show itself on the surface. Up here we're starting to
get into that first crotch. So there's a tiny little bit of figure around there right now. We should start to see some more. There's a little bit of figure
up in this area here too. This cut's not super great. It's got a little bit of a wave in it, towards, I think at this point that blade was
getting a little bit dull and the blades I have right
now are not really the best for this hardness of wood. So there's that too. But we're still getting through it a little bit of a surfacing
will clean that right up. (water splashes) Boop. So what's cool about this slab is it has this little piece here from the center of a
tree when it used to be like a really tiny little baby young tree. So this thing was probably like I don't know, like 15
years old at that point. And maybe it, what happened
is it used to like fork out in two of them at
once and then like part of it died and the rest of
it grew around it again. It's kinda this pretty
interesting, but based on where this is at and
where we were with the steel the fence line was probably
put up around the same time this kind of happened. So trees are kind of cool like that. You have this nice historical reference of things that happened in its past. So all up and down here, you
can see all those big ray fleck over here, we're quarter
sawn on that side. And we're getting up into this little bit crotch figure up here. So we've got nice banding crotch figure. We've got some more ray fleck down here. It's looking pretty good. So let's grab the last one. (smacks wood) (repetitive hammering) (wood crashes) See there was something that is like a, probably a staple, like when of those big old fence
U shaped staple things. That's probably what that was. That's a little more steel
than that blade could handle. But when we looked at it, there was no teeth missing or anything. So I don't know, not a huge deal, I guess. Whew, that is wavy. (engine rumbles) - There it is.
- Not very dramatic that time. Oh boy. See what we got here. So the new blade kind of actually did pretty good job
compared to the old one. This is a lot flatter of a cut. So that's a nice change. This is crazy and kind of sad, but that's
the nature of the game. See we got here, we got some, oh, we're
pretty much kind of getting outside the quarter sawn area. Now we have some very small ray flecks, all the ray flecks, not as
huge, much more subdued. I like this style of
ray fleck a lot better than the true full quarter sawn which is the giant ray fleck. A little bit of that original tree. The sapling tree here in the middle which is, I think that's really cool. And then there's this
structural defect over there but really straight grain stuff to the left and the
right of the pith area. That's crazy. (engine rumbles) Come on, please don't fall off the backside of the saw. I don't think the stop
is tall enough for this. I don't know about this. I'll just push it over. It should fall. It should flop No. (loud clang) Maybe, if I make it. (chain clanging) (metallic whirring) (engine rumbles) It's so close. Just out of my reach. There we go. Okay, so, with great timing, the new bi-metal blades I
ordered finally showed up. They took, what, five weeks since I ordered them to finally get here. So these are a little more
suited for harder woods like we got here, white Oak. This is a seven degree blade. I bought a couple of these bi-metal blades and
tried them out last month. I liked them a lot. They stay sharp quite a bit longer. And at least the idea that
I haven't tested yet is that in theory, if you cut through some steel with this, the blade shouldn't wander off. You'll probably still damage
it, but you be able to get out of that cut without a big swoop in it. So these guys are twice the cost of the standard blades
that I normally use. But if it means I don't have those dips if I hit anything, it's worth it to me. So these blades are about
103 a piece in a 10 pack and the other ones are 48. So we will get why these guys aren't here and get back to sawing finally. (saw whirs) Yeah, those blades cut a lot better. That's crazy what a different
three degrees makes. This is sawing so smoothly and I think I'm able to saw
a little bit faster too. (saw whirs) So I think that now that we're
into this weird cut thing and we don't have a whole
lot of material left I'm gonna take one piece at
probably four inches thick and I'll have that in
case I need any leg stock or thicker material that
goes along with this wood. (saw whirs) Well since we flipped
the entire log already don't need to flip slabs anymore. Except I did the shuffling because the bottom slab goes next. (repetitive hammering) Oh well she's heavy. (engine rumbles) (water splashes) Yeah, little half swirl in the air action. Ah, that's a much better cut. Those last ones are kind of embarrassing. This is, man that's beautiful. Look how clear that is, man. It's not, I don't have a whole
lot of things to report here. We got some small kind of pin knot and burly looking
things going on up here. But other than that that's like clear. Also, now that we're through both of those limbs, we're getting
a lot more consistent width. So up here at the very top, we're at 35. There's a bulge here that takes us to 43, but down through here, what we got, 38. And we're splaying out here to 44. So, very consistent width for one piece. Just a slight little structural defect right here in the middle. Nice. Let's try this guy. (loud knock) (Matt chuckles) Here we go. (water splashes) Totally missed. See if I can half redeem myself. (water splashes) That's a little better. So the biggest thing to note on here is gonna be
this area through here. That's where that lightning strike or kind of partially rotted area was. So we got a little bit of staining and rot
infiltration through here as we're getting into that. Whatever that was. That weird thing. Although that's like the only thing, 'cause everything else is like here's some really clear wood. Let's check it out more grain. That's uniform. (engine rumbles) (water splashes) I am losing it. So now you can see we're into the, whatever that lightning
strike, regrowth area, which is I don't know, it's kind of a cool little
detail trough kind of thing. Other than that though,
it's not a whole lot of crazy things going on here. You've got some more fairly straight grain white Oak. (engine rumbles) (water splashes) That was pretty cool. That wasn't. So we're out into the sapwood out here. So there's not a whole
lot of crazy things going on this side. The other side of the
slab will be a little more on the interesting side,
but this will be handy in case I need any thick
stuff, you know, table bases or what have you. So I'm gonna trow this rain cap on here. And this log is dunzo. (engine rumbles) Oh, so this was an amazing log. It's just incredible like how
much staining there was here from just those few small
little pieces in there. I think it just really goes to show that even if you have a little bit of staining in there,
chances are most of the time it's not a big deal if you hit something small, at least on my side, you can really cut through
anything this size. It's not a huge deal. If you have a good blade on there and you keep them sharp,
that's another really good tip. So this one's gonna sit out here for a little while and
get some drying going on. I'm really looking forward
to making something out of these things and
getting at least some of those back to the church
where this tree was growing. What's interesting about this. This is so far back in
the past of the tree. This was probably growing out like in a field before
the area was developed. So if you're from around here in the Minneapolis area, this
was growing in golden Valley. So that fence was probably hanging there, you know, maybe like
in the 1920s, the 1940s or something like that. So way before that area
actually got developed. So kind of a cool little
bit of history there. So I want to say a big thank you to John Evans, Clarity Films
for being out here today. And the day before this, do some of the filming, was a lot
of fun to have him here. So a big thank you to him for all his work with the many cameras
and the many, many hours of footage that he shot while he was here. So that's gonna do it for this one. Thank you as always for watching. I greatly appreciate it. If you have any questions or comments on the saw mill anything back
in the shop, please feel free to leave me a comment. As always I'll be to answer
any questions you might have. And until next time, happy woodworking.
