Score! Fresh from the sawmill

[Ky-Flinter]

This is my first foray into cutting blanks from logs.  The 3 planks on the left are Ash and the 3 on the right are Cherry.  8 feet long and 3" thick.  The 2 short slabs are Cherry for, hopefully, some pistol stocks.



This is from an Ash plank that I bought from the sawmill.  Looks like curl to me!



A friend is letting me use a stall in his horse barn to stack and sticker the planks.  Check back with me in 3 or 4 years and I'll let you know how it turned out. 

-Ron

[Joey R]

Coat them ends Ron! Nice sized planks,3 or 4 years...to be continued.

[Acer Saccharum]

Latex paint, wax, or special sealer, coat the ends!

Cherry is prone to splitting, and not just end checking, but all the way into the plank.

[Ky-Flinter]

Yep, I painted the ends of the logs the day they hit the ground.  Once they were sawed into planks, I dipped the ends in hot wax.  That was a trick.  Those ash planks must weigh a hundred pounds or better.  I would bear-hug one and waddle over to dip them in the wax pan.  The real trick was swapping ends.  I was by myself.  About killed this old man.

-Ron

[Ky-Flinter]

Tom,

Is there anything that can be done to prevent the cherry from splitting?  Besides coating the endgrain.  Thanks.

-Ron

[Robby]

Roughing out your blank with a band saw will help. It removes some of the stressors, and lets it begin the seasoning faster. Nice stuff!!!
Robby

[T*O*F]

Is there anything that can be done to prevent the cherry from splitting?

I had 2 walnut planks 3" x 12" x 8' drying in my garage.  The ends were sealed.  After 2 years we had a hot day that got up to 100 degrees and one of the planks split from end to end.  I don't know how hot it got inside the garage, but I would definitely rough out your blanks first.

[Mike Brooks]

Those cherry blanks are nice. I checked my walnut planks yesterday. 6 planks 8.5'L X 21"W X 3"T. All have crotch grain on one end. I painted the ends but still have 3" checks on both ends, no big deal. They have been cut for 3 1/2 years now, I'll have to get some blanks cut out when I have time.

[oldtravler61]

It-Flinter. Diffianetly rough out your planks. Asap lost a beautiful cherry stock by not doing it. Looks like nice wood.

[Acer Saccharum]

Yep, I agree on cutting near net shape NOW. leaving the wood in the plank will set up tremendous internal stress. The wider the plank, the more likely to split. Smaller, less likely.

[Ky-Flinter]

Thanks for all the replies.  I don't have a big enough bandsaw, but I do have a chain saw.

Once the planks are cut into gun shaped blanks, do you stack and sticker them, as you would with planks?

-Ron

[Robby]

Yes, sticker them with something of weight stickered on the top of the stack. Chain saw works fine you just have to be a bit more careful, and think safety.
Robby

[WKevinD]

Take a look at this thread, in particular Acers stack and clamp sketch, brilliant!
http://americanlongrifles.org/forum/index.php?topic=37748.0

[David R. Pennington]

I was very fortunate, I stacked and stickered my planks for 3 years with the end grain painted and had very little seasoning cracks. I am sure they dried slowly here in the high humidity. I then sawed generous sized blanks out with electric chain saw and have them stored in the shop rafters awaiting future builds. (I re painted all the end grain again.)

[Acer Saccharum]

Ron, use DRY stickers, or your stack will mold at the stickers. More of a problem with maple, I don't know about ash or cherry.

[Stoner creek]

Ron, use DRY stickers, or your stack will mold at the stickers. More of a problem with maple, I don't know about ash or cherry.

Tobacco sticks are plentiful.

[Fred Hembree]

Enjoying this post Ky-Flinter...hope they come out just fine for you.

[Ky-Flinter]

Thanks everyone for all the input and advise.  The planks were sawed out last Tuesday and with work and other commitments, I didn't get the bark peeled off the edges until yesterday.  I sawed one cherry stock blank out, but was running out of daylight, so I stacked and stickered the rest of the planks in a friend's barn.  I was afraid to leave them unstacked for much longer.  I painted all the ends after stacking.  I'll go back and saw out blanks as I have time this winter.

I should have mentioned, the ash tree we cut had been dead at least a year, maybe 2.  The cherry was dead too, but I don't know for how long.  A flood last spring deposited the whole tree, roots and all, in our deer camp.  Fortuitous.  The landowner kept a 23 foot log out of the trunk.  It was straight as a gun barrel and no limbs.  The log I got was one limb where the tree forked.

This has been fun, but a helluva lot of work!  I hope it ends up being worth the trouble.

-Ron

[David R. Pennington]

It is quite a chore lugging those planks. They are heavier than they look aren't they? You should get some good blanks, and looks like some curl in some of it.

[GANGGREEN]

That's interesting.  I had an ash log turn up dead on my property and I left it to rot because I had always heard that they stain so quickly, but yours looks fine.  I'll be interested to see some more pics as you get them roughed out, dried and built.

[Mike Brooks]

It is quite a chore lugging those planks. They are heavier than they look aren't they? You should get some good blanks, and looks like some curl in some of it.

My planks are stored in another barn a couple miles away from my place. I figured to load a plank up and bring it home when I was over looking at them a couple days ago. I couldn't even flip the top one over let alone try and get it in the back of my truck!

[OldSchool]

An old bowyer trick for sealing the end grain on blanks. Coat them heavy with exterior wood glue. Good ole Elmers works wonderfully. It is not affected by the moisture in the wood as some paints/sealers would be, and forces the wood to dry uniformly along its length. Good luck on the drying process.
Paul

[Eric Krewson]

I put a lot of work in trying to salvage some stock blanks out of a huge dead cherry tree near my house.



All the wood had bad spots in it and I didn't get anything that was very good.



One thing I do with big chunks of wood is to coat the ends with 3 or 4 coats of shellac and the entire blank with one coat.  Moisture will still pass through the shellac but the surface won't dry out fast enough to check as badly as bare wood. I learned this from working big pieces of osage for bow making. I have cut and processed 25 or more osage trees into bow staves, some of them were really big so I have a little experience in dealing with large chunks of wood.

I have used a bunch of stuff for sealing wood and shellac is the best in my opinion.

[Eric Krewson]

I had perfct grain orentation through the wrist on one blank, great figure in the butt;



But, a bad spot on the other side that may or may not be there on the finished gun. I will probably have to go to the Mike Brooks stock blemish recovery school to use this blank.




My point is; You guys have some good looking wood to work from. In my case, when I hit that first concentration of bad spots, I should have made firewood instead of trying to make stock blanks.
 

[David R. Pennington]

Cherry is notorious for some kind of mineral inclusions or some thing (the experts can help me out here). Shows up as little dark lines and imperfections. I made a band saw boo boo once and filled it with resin glue. Everyone thinks its a natural flaw in the wood.