I’ve Been Waiting Years to Saw this Log

Today, I’ve got something a little big to go on the sawmill. 

About a year and a half ago, I got this log, and it was a bit of an adventure. When I got to the site to pick it up, it hadn’t been cut in half yet, so I convinced my buddy Brent not to cut it up and load it into his grapple truck. 

Then he wasn’t able to get it out of his grapple truck, but I somehow snaked it out of the truck with the telehandler. 

Because the crane had a scale on it, I know that this log was 11,000 pounds when it was picked up. It’s probably just a little bit light than that now because it lost a little bit of water weight, but it’s still well over 10,000 pounds. I believe it is about 16 feet long and about 4 feet at the splay, which has two crotch sections. So I think this is going to make some really nice, long tabletop slabs. It’s been sitting long enough that it should have color-shifted away from white and gone more towards yellows, blues, and oranges. 

Based on this first look, it looks like it hasn’t color shifted as much as I had hoped for. I anticipated that it would have shifted more towards the reds, like you can see on that area where that limb was, but it’s mostly still pretty white and in the early stages of discoloring. So… this is going back on the log pile to age a little more.  

Just over a year later, and this log is back on the saw now. I re-weighed the log, because I was curious, and it came in at 7900. Either my scale is wrong or the crane lied to me, because that seemed really light for a 17 foot log. 

Here’s my first look at it. Not as white as it was last time, and it has some spalting. Still wish it was a little less white, but it’s definitely better than it was last year.

There’s also a hole that we’ve uncovered, and these things always produce the most crazy-insane amount of figure, so I’m excited for that. 

Some nice figure at the buttress. The color changes right around the crotch figure, which is really cool. 

We are at 48 inches on one end, 41 inches towards the middle, and then it flares out to 60 inches at the buttress. And this slab is 17 feet long.

These slabs are massive, to the point that it’s impossible to convey with pictures, and they have so much going on in them. They have these massive bark inclusions, with crazy figure surrounding them. There’s crotch figure, flame feathering, buttress figure with curl and spalting… so much happening. 

Here’s a closer look at some of that beautiful figure this log can produce. You can see some bullseyes, a pruning cut, some compression figure… Gorgeous.

All kinds of compression figure here underneath this big ear lobe where these two limbs intersect. 

This tree ended up being pretty ridiculous and incredible. I’m really glad that I let it sit, because it’s drastically different than it was last year. Now I have it stacked and stickered, and this log is ready to sit for at least a few years until it’s ready to move on to the next stage. 

That is going to do it for this one. Thank you as always for joining! I greatly appreciate it. If you have any questions or comments on sawing giant logs, please feel free to leave me a comment. As always, I’d be happy to answer any questions you might have. And until next time, happy woodworking!