Is this pine log worth anything?

[N80]

At my mother's a 24" diam white pine was blown over and when it fell it leaned on large rocks thus never touching the soil.
Fast fwd 5-6 years I hired a mobile saw mill and reaped many very usable board feet.
The mill cost $250. to process that tree resulting in very cheap nice wood.
We made many pieces of furniture from our tree.
LOL, I still have a few lengths left for future projects.

That is the kind of story that tempts me to do something with this tree. Large trees get blown over on my place all the time. Many of them I can't get to. Smaller, accessible hardwood blow downs I cut up for firewood. It just grieves me when I can't get to the more desirable trees. I hate to see them rot. There is a huge, tall, straight white oak, close to 24" in diameter rotting in one of my valleys right now.

My B-I-L neighbor hired a portable saw mill to cut up some huge cedars he had to cut down. For years there was a huge stack of sawn cedar on his place. A lot of it rotted but he got a number of cedar chests made, I used a lot of it to make the counter tops in my cabin and some other uses.

So maybe I'll drag the 12 foot piece out then cut the 25' piece in half and drag them out too. If I don't find use for them I'll make fat lighter out of them or give them away.

I've always wanted a saw mill but don't have any real reason to own one or any way to get a ROI.

 

[forgeblast]

If you look on the side you can see a lot of bug holes, I am betting there is a lot of bug in the middle too.
I carve a lot of storm damaged wood, most has some insect damage a lot are infested which go right to the burn pit.
Ten years down is a long time to be rotting.

 

[N80]

If you look on the side you can see a lot of bug holes, I am betting there is a lot of bug in the middle too.
I carve a lot of storm damaged wood, most has some insect damage a lot are infested which go right to the burn pit.
Ten years down is a long time to be rotting.

Looking at the ends of each cut I see very little bug damage at all. Definitely no active infestation. This thing reeks of turpentine.

 

[deanocraft]

I build banjos for a living. I am building a custom banjo for a guy who supplied me with some heart pine that he said came from an old factory built about 150 years ago. The stuff is just as you describe, very hard and full of pitch. The pitch is all dry at this point, but you feel it when you touch the wood and you can smell the turpentine. It had a pretty tight grain. I have his pot turned and ready for finish, (there are a few holes I'll need to drill in it before finishing). The other wood in there is padauk... You can see the neck wood in the background. I have never used pine for a banjo, but this is not ordinary pine and it does have a nice ring to it when tapped.

 

[N80]

Wow! Amazing woodwork. My log does not have super tight grain and was not a very old tree when it died. The wood my house is framed in is pine. The house is 90 years old. The grain in that stuff is so tight you can hardly see it. You don't see wood like that anymore. Not in a lumber yard or a big box store anyway.

 

[deanocraft]

Thank you, N80! I think it will be a nice banjo when complete. I am not sure what you should do with your log... Good luck!

 

[MossRoad]

I build banjos for a living. I am building a custom banjo for a guy who supplied me with some heart pine that he said came from an old factory built about 150 years ago. The stuff is just as you describe, very hard and full of pitch. The pitch is all dry at this point, but you feel it when you touch the wood and you can smell the turpentine. It had a pretty tight grain. I have his pot turned and ready for finish, (there are a few holes I'll need to drill in it before finishing). The other wood in there is padauk... You can see the neck wood in the background. I have never used pine for a banjo, but this is not ordinary pine and it does have a nice ring to it when tapped.
View attachment 536863

MAN! That's pretty! :thumbsup:

 

[oosik]

Amazing - the way you cut the wood and emphasized that grain. I would have never believed you could make simple pine so very beautiful.
I've used padauk for making music boxes. Favorite wood for music boxes - tight grained rose wood. Like having an amplifier built into the music box.

 

[deanocraft]

Thank you guys. I don't want to hijack this thread... I just wanted to show something made from a similar wood. The crazy grain in the pot just happens when I turn it. I try to get the grain running up and down and when it gets turned round on the lathe, that pattern emerges. With most woods it's not that pronounced, but with the heart pine it is striking.

 

[turnkey4099]

Everybody around here burns pine or a little further north perhaps some tamarack. Its not got the btu's or the burning longevity but its an easy wood to convert into firewood. AND its just about all we have. I've burned an old apple tree - didn't notice that it was much better than pine.

However, I got three old black locust trees from an old homestead down the road. Thank goodness I had a hydraulic splitter for that stuff. When it had aged a year I burned it. Now, THAT, was some good firewood. Burned hot & lasted a long time.

But that's three trees in 36 years out here.

The Locust Borer moved in here about 20 years ago and killed locust by the acre. BL is a non-native species here and was mostly planted by the settlers. I spent about 5 years harvesting nothing but BL. Fantastic firewood, posts, etc. I have a lifetime supply split and stacked, most of it by hand, around 80 cord. I find BL easy to split and the dryer it is, the easier. Occasionally I wouild run into one tree out of a groves or once ever every tree that was a bit stubborn. The hydraulics handled those.