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Milling Eucalyptus

Started by Peder McElroy, April 13, 2010, 11:37:34 PM

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Peder McElroy

Can anyone tell me what eucalyptus will act like when air dried ? I have some and was wondering. I don't want to mill it if it's no good. Thanks, Peder.

Ianab

It varies. There are hundreds of species of Eucalyptus, some dies OK, some goes crazy with warping and internal checking. In Australia I think they often let it air dry first, the slower air drying seems more likely to succeed.

Pick the biggest straightest logs, anything smaller and knotty will likely go crazy on you.

I have sawn up a local E. botryoides with mixed results. The boards that stayed straight and unchecked were great for woodworking, really hard and strong. But a lot of trimming out of degraded bits.

Some of the Aussie guys may have better advice as they cut it all the time, but like I said, the species matters.

Ian
Weekend warrior, Peterson JP test pilot, Dolmar 7900 and Stihl MS310 saws and  the usual collection of power tools :)

sigidi

Peder I cut Eucs almost exclusively - maybe around 90% of my cutting is Eucs.

I love 'em, have only had trouble with drying figured timber - which one would not normally cut lumber from anyway. In slab form I've had some cranky sons of.......... logs but on the whole producing lumber has almost been childs play from Eucs. Some species need short logs to get nice timber from at an acceptable recovery rate if the logs are longer one find the tension is huge and there is too much messing around to get good timber and good recovery.

Having said all this, I'm sure you're Eucs would be totally different to ours???
Always willing to help - Allan

Peder McElroy

By shorter logs what do you mean? Thanks for the info, I'll give some a try. Peder

sigidi

Peder, when talking short about keeping the log short, I was speaking about our spotted gum;http://www.dpi.qld.gov.au/26_5162.htm  with this species I have found a younger tree (diameter less than 400mm 16" at DBH) tends to exhibit a lot of tension when sawn, so I like to keep the lengths from 4m (about 14') maybe even 3.5m (12') long. I know I can get a 6m (20') or 7m (23') stick from one of these guys, but the loss to get it regular and even in dimension is big and therefore the stick needs to be looked at as a specialty piece of timber


Edit: by all means, give it a go - especially if you have some on hand. I've found if it bends while milling it won't get better, but if it stays pretty straight, then you can look after it and keep it straight. No matter how good looking a stick of timber came off the mill it won't look good just left out on it's own in the sun.
Always willing to help - Allan

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