Hardest wood to make lumber from

[morbid fury]

OK I now have a large pile of sawdust. I am so happy.
Anyway back to the question. Over the last few weeks I have sawn a few species up here in Maine.
Todat was quartersawn red oak....no knots all clear...hence I am so happy.
I have saw Hemlock, Birch, Maple, Oak, Ash, and the worst to cut of all of them is the Poplar.....it is like cutting taffy. It grabs the blade and makes the mill work harder than any of the wood listed.
What do you guys find is the hardest wood to mill?

[tyb525]

Black or Honey Locust, White Oak, Osage Orange.

Oh, what kind of blade are you using? Poplar should cut the easiest.

[Burlkraft]

Anything with nails  :-\

[morbid fury]

Agreed...thats why the mill and the metal detector are best of friends

[Meadows Miller]

Gday

RED,GREY AND YELLOW BOX Are about the hardest we get down here and I like sawing them   ;)  ;D  there are some other species that are hard going but are not realy cut in any volume  ;) ;D 8)

Regards Chris

[TessiersFarm]

I just re-sawed (chainsaw and alaskan mill) some pressure treated southern yellow pine yesterday, and man oh man did that stuff cut hard.  I had to stop and touch up the chain every 50 feet or so, I don't know if its the chemicals they treat it with or the wood but if I do it again I'm charging extra.  The other one I don't like is cherry, seams like thats hard on blades.

[tyb525]

Walnut also seems tough, at least the tough I get.

Tessier, some chemical treatments do dull blades.

[Banjo picker]

What we call Poplar down South is about the easiest there is...Sweetgum is easy to saw , but twists  pretty bad when drying...If you are talking just sawing, I would pick ash...for what I have sawn...You had better have your ducks in a row...set just right on both sides or it will make the blade dive...Tim

[Ron Wenrich]

Locust and hickory can give you fits.  If you want some real fun, wait until the logs are half frozen.  Species won't matter. 

[cutterboy]

I agree with Tim. Ash is hard to cut. I think the reason  is that ash is a dry wood. The moisture content of green ash is very low compared with the other species in my area. I think we all know that sawing dried wood is more difficult than green wood. So ash is like sawing wood that is half dried. Hickory can give you fits too, especially hickory with large knots.

   Ralph

[laffs]

ash is my lesat favorite also. makes nice lookin boards . you could be sawiing fine one minute and take a 4" dive the next

[paul case]

as for hard...... dry anything.pc

[Kansas]

Cottonwood is one of the hardest things we have to cut. The fibers tear; they don't cut cleanly. It depends not only on the log, but on a particular face of that log. We have to run very heavy set on the blades. Once in awhile, we have to give up on a very good looking log. We have the same problem going through the edger with it.

[Magicman]

Hickory is my all time un-favorite.  Seasoned White Oak next.

Maybe I need to get some of those WM 7° blades.

[morbid fury]

have a pile of white ash...cut down and on the mill in less that 2 hours....no issues at all

[tyb525]

I've cut several white ash logs and didn't have any problems either.

There was one dead, dry American elm that was the worst sawing log EVER! Not only did the boards come off as bananas, but the blade dived or did something weird almost every other cut. I ended getting two halfway decent boards out of one log. Mind you, these were mostly knot-free too.

[backwoods sawyer]

I find that all of the local hardwoods mill up very nice as long as they are green, however the butt log of an old Doug-fir can be rather unpredictable, one may mill up just fine and the next one you cannot get a saw thru it straight. Old spruce logs can give you fits as well when the fibers wrap around the gullet of even a fresh saw out of the box. 

[Chuck White]

Probably my "hardest to saw" logs would be small to medium Spruce.

With all of their knots, the blade really wanders sometimes.

When the logs are dry, they're worse.

[Papa1stuff]

MM,try some 4* for real hard wood!!

[ladylake]

 White ash, saws ok but not very fast. Unless I count 15 big 15 year old white oak, later I found out they were 30 years old. Hard as rock, no bark with cracks about 3" deep to collect dust. I was changing blades every 45 minutes on that job.   Steve

[LeeB]

Live Oak. Hardest stuff I ever put a blade in.

[Papa1stuff]

Live Oak is hard but very pretty lumber!! ;D

[Bert]

I'm on a circle mill, but hard maple is my least favorite. Hard, heavy, and lumpy. Cherry is best in my opinion. Poplar saws fast too but the stringy dust sometimes clogs the blower.

[brdmkr]

Live Oak. Hardest stuff I ever put a blade in.

I've cut live oak when it was green and thought it cut pretty easily.  Once it is dry, it is an intirely different story.  Pecan is the toughest that I have had to deal with.  I sometimes wonder if some woods are easier to saw with a circle blade and others are harder with a band.  For instance, I do not consider SYP easy to saw on my Lucas (It seems to want to bind and gum up).   I prefer sawing about any green hardwood (other than pecan/hickory). 

[crtreedude]

Probably the worst stuff we have cut was corteza (think ipe) that came out of an old bridge. Pure heart wood, so hard that it made sparks (no metal). We cut it with a bi-metal blade on a 20 HP Baker's.

What made it particularly painful is that we had to split some of the logs with a chainsaw, they were too wide for the Baker.