Quarter sawing with a circular mill

[climbncut]

What's the most practical and efficient way to quarter saw a large log with a lucas mill. I got 2 nice white oak and a some red oak logs I need to mill and I would really like to get the flake as much as possible. I've just been learning to mill with the many pin oaks I've brought home to use for structure lumber. I'm gonna wait to mill my "interior grade" logs when I really got a hang of things and know what I want to use the wood for. I've seen the diagrams that show best cuts using a bandmill but it's hard to flip logs and get them back in the perfect position with the lucus.

[ErikC]

  I use  a peterson but the answer's the same for this question. Just open the log, cut a vertical layer or two, until that starts to be rift sawn, then horizontal for several layers, until that starts to be riftsawn, then finish off with another vertical layer or two. This is only real effective on log over 24" to get a lot of q'sawn. The peterson and lucas websites both show the process with some pictures, they are both linked over to the left. Good luck.

[climbncut]

Thanks Eric. After checking out the cutting pattern on the Peterson site I have a better understanding now. Since the pin oak seems to have more knots than others, does that make it a high tension log? Should I be more careful to plain saw it to help keep it straight?

[ErikC]

  I don't know anything about pin oak but knots make the black oak I sometimes cut act up a little. I think keeping it a little narrower helps sometimes. q'sawn wood has spike knots which don't look good anyway, and are weak as well. So I would flatsaw very knotty oak, if I didn't just make firewood of it. I have no use for pallet wood, ties or what low grade oak is used for all the time. There are some bandmill guys here who know a lot about hardwoods-hope one of them sees this and chimes in.

[scsmith42]

What's the most practical and efficient way to quarter saw a large log with a lucas mill. I got 2 nice white oak and a some red oak logs I need to mill and I would really like to get the flake as much as possible. I've just been learning to mill with the many pin oaks I've brought home to use for structure lumber. I'm gonna wait to mill my "interior grade" logs when I really got a hang of things and know what I want to use the wood for. I've seen the diagrams that show best cuts using a bandmill but it's hard to flip logs and get them back in the perfect position with the lucus.

You don't have to move the log.  Determine where your best wood is, and draw the outline of a big "Plus" sign on the end of the log.  Mill so that whenever your cutting inside the "plus" your blade is pointed towards the pith.  Rift cut the portion of the log outside of the plus sign.

[Ianab]

Thanks Eric. After checking out the cutting pattern on the Peterson site I have a better understanding now. Since the pin oak seems to have more knots than others, does that make it a high tension log? Should I be more careful to plain saw it to help keep it straight?

If the log is knotty then it may not be so good for quarter sawing. Reason is that when you Qsaw any knots will be spike knots across the face of the board, and will make it pretty much useless. A knot on the face of a flat sawn board is not so bad, you can still use the board for something.

So open the log and see how it looks, if you are cutting Qsawn that looks good, carry on. But if you are finding spike knots, switch back to flat sawn and get some high grade boards, and some knotty boards from the centre of the log.

With a swingmill you will get some perfectly Qsawn boards, some that are close to perfect (within the spec for grading) and some rift sawn. But that is also true of any of the other normal methods on other mills.

Ian