Wood slab project start to finish

Last June we had a large oak tree fall behind our house. Bummer because it was a great shade tree in the summer. The tree actually looked fine, but once it fell I could see that the bottom was completely hollowed out. 
 

After trimming off all the branches it was still way to heavy for me to lift it with my tractor, so I cut it roughly in half and it was still to heavy for my tractor. Luckily the neighbor has access to a beast of a front end loader so I had him run each half up to the barn. 
 

I had originally thought that I was going to hire someone with a bandsaw mill that lives a few miles down the road to cut it into slabs . The mill only would cut up to around 30-35" wide. So I decided to look into other options. 
 

I ended up ordering a cheap chainsaw mill rig off Amazon, and thought I would give it a go myself. 
 

I set it up with my 28" bar to give it a try on a branch of the oak tree. I wanted see how it worked on the smaller branch to help decide if I wanted to order a longer bar and chain to tackle the top piece of the oak trunk that was still pretty solid. 
 

It was a lot of manual labor to push the saw, but it worked ok so I ordered a 50" bar and chain. 

Wonder if a ratchet strap hooked to the saw platform and the bottom edge of the tree would work.  Slow ratcheting moved the carriage 1/4" at a time?  Less tugging.

The top piece that I am going to try to slab out is about 16' long. At the widest I think it is about 45" wide. 
 

I have a chainsaw mill and an oak truck sitting in my yard waiting for this but still haven't got around to it.

In reply to 914Driver :

That might work. I think they also make a winch setup, specifically for this kind of thing. 
 

On the big trunk, while trying to cut the wider part I have found that my power head on the saw may be a little underpowered (and I think that I am also having a bar oilling issue) so I have been doing an angle cut one way and then angling the saw the other way and not trying to cut the full width all at once. I don't really know how to explain it but it seems to work better than trying a full bar width cut all at once. 
 

Due to the low power issue I think I will just continue to struggle through it by hand. 

Here is a picture of the current setup, I have a remote oiler now, I am not sure it is really working quite right because it is barley using any oil. So I am going to have to look into that and my actual oiler on the saw. For now I have also been dripping some oil onto the chain by hand every so often as well. 
 

I might have about half of the trunk done now. The slabs are so heavy that my dad and I were barely able to lift them. So I got them to the edge of the barn door with the tractor and we scooted them on some car dolly's into the barn. 
 

Following.  I've been wanting to try this for a while.

My buddy in WV ties the mill jig to a fat rubber bungee and his tractor.  He just keeps moving the tractor forward a little bit at a time.  It's all good, but I know one day one of the bungees will snap and then he'll have a 50cc chainsaw flipping through the air at full song.

You gonna build a kiln, or just let it sit for a looooong time to dry out?

In reply to psteav (Forum Supporter) :

I bought someone else's diy kiln off marketplace. 
 

my plan is to let it sit in the barn for about 6months to air dry and then put it in the diy kiln. 

So what's the plan for the slabs?  Coffee tables?  Sell to yuppies?  We have a place here in Jax called Eco Relics that sells salvaged stuff from torn down mansions, old lumber yard stuff, fixtures, everything really.  They have a wood shop and have been doing live edge slab tables with epoxy coatings/filled sections.  The prices they're asking for the finished tables are eye watering (like north of $5k for a couple of the bigger ones).

What powerhead are you using? Is it one of the stihl clones?

I have an old homelite 100cc saw with a 32" bar I bought with this in mind but so far I've only used it to buck a few logs that were too big for my 20".

Kendall Frederick said:

So what's the plan for the slabs?  Coffee tables?  Sell to yuppies?  We have a place here in Jax called Eco Relics that sells salvaged stuff from torn down mansions, old lumber yard stuff, fixtures, everything really.  They have a wood shop and have been doing live edge slab tables with epoxy coatings/filled sections.  The prices they're asking for the finished tables are eye watering (like north of $5k for a couple of the bigger ones).

Eco Relics prices to sell to the nearby Riverside money.  I've gotten stuff 50% off there regularly just by asking.

In reply to Kendall Frederick :

Right now plan is to build a couple of things for our house, headboard/foot board, coffee table, maybe a basement bar eventually. 
 

Mostly I just want to use the bigger trees that are down on our property for something other than firewood. 

In reply to EvanB :

I did try out a clone (of a husqvarna). 

https://www.farmertec.com/US-STOCK-93-6cc-Holzfforma®-G395XP-Gasoline-Chain-Saw-Power-Head-56mm-Bore-Without-Guide-Bar-and-Chain-Top-Quality-By-Farmertec-All-parts-are-For-Husqvarna-394-395-394XP-395XP-Chainsaw-2-4-Days-Delivery-Time-Fast-Shipping-p1057968.html

Only issue so far is the oiler. And maybe I just need to clean that out. 
 

With the 28" bar this saw seems really powerful, once you step up to the 50" and try to cut a slab it still works, but has to work at it. 

In reply to Stampie :

That's why I said "asking".  I have been buying stuff from them for more than 10 years, and have generally gotten good deals by bargaining.  I bought a bunch of 1" thick tongue and groove oak flooring from them recently that we used in the upstairs of our new house -- $2/sqft, which I thought was a good price.  Of course we've had to sand and finish it, but I have a friend who does it on the side and previously refinished my 70 year old Murray Hill oak floors.  

Somebeach: I admire your drive with this!  I just cut/knocked down a few fairly large pines on our new place, and I had idle thoughts that it'd be nice to use the wood.  That's all they've been so far, is idle thoughts.

 

I've done something similar too. I had picked up a very dry maple that was 50" wide. I used a G660 and a 54" bar with a homemade mill.  I put over 5 gallons of fuel through that saw at full throttle and it hasn't missed a beat. Each slab would take about 10 minutes and 3/4 tank of fuel.

Looking forward to seeing this. A neighbor builds furniture for a living and is making some really neat living-edge tables with siamesed slabs with tinted resin between them, but I only see the finished product, not the process. 

There's a guy here in Minnesota who built his own huge bandsaw mill for cutting slabs, it can do logs up to around six feet in diameter.  Check YouTube for Matt Cremona, it's interesting stuff.

In reply to NBraun :

Those slabs look great. 

How long were those slabs and is maple softer than oak? 
 

It takes me a lot longer to get through a slab than 10 minutes. Wondering if I am doing something wrong. 

Lol, Maple is like cast-iron.

This thread is awesome. I have a gigantic Silver Maple in my backyard, and a gigantic oak - that I imagine trying to do something like this for whenever they meet their demise. Of course, our backyard isn't big enough for a mill, and I don't have a barn - but those are details..

I would bet the silver maple has a 4-5ft diameter, and the oak isn't much smaller. 

In reply to Somebeach (Forum Supporter) :

This was a silver maple, which is a soft maple. Oaks are going to be harder than soft maple.

The my first slabs took quite a while before I figured it out. I could only get around 3 slabs before the chain was noticeably duller and I'd have to touch it up. Which I'm still not that great at. The other thing was making sure to use felling wedges behind the blade as I moved along to keep the slab from pinching the bar, that helped alot as well. These slabs were a touch over 7' long.

Did you end up using a ripping chain or just a standard crosscut chain on the saw mill? Looks like the initial cuts turned out pretty well either way.

Seems like a good excuse to get a large CNC to flatten it to me.

I did get ripping chain for my 50" bar. I got one semi chisel and one full chisel. So far I have only tried the semi chisel. 
 

I have been thinking about flattening. I have seen some diy router sleds that seem like they would work pretty good. 
 

I think the large cnc would be awesome, but probably outside the price I am looking to commit to a new hobby right now. 

How about a block and tackle and a Harbor Freight 12v winch (with remote) to draw the saw rig down the length of the trunk?