Cutting Beech Tree

I cut down two trees in the sheep pasture back in January, an oak and a bee= ch, and finally got around to sawing them into firewood logs this weekend. = It seemed to me that the beech wood was much harder to cut than the oak. Ha= s anyone had experience in sawing beech wood?

Reply to
Pavel314
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and finally got around to sawing them into firewood logs this weekend. It seemed to me that the beech wood was much harder to cut than the oak. Has anyone had experience in sawing beech wood?

Hi, When wood dries it's much harder to cut. When it's green is the time to do it.

Reply to
Tony Hwang

and finally got around to sawing them into firewood logs this weekend. It seemed to me that the beech wood was much harder to cut than the oak. Has anyone had experience in sawing beech wood?

Perhaps your saw needs re-sharpened ??

Reply to
Retired

beech, and finally got around to sawing them into firewood logs this weeke= nd. It seemed to me that the beech wood was much harder to cut than the oak= . Has anyone had experience in sawing beech wood?

Neither Tony nor Retired has addressed his question. He wasn't talking about the difficulty of cutting a log per se. Rather, he was saying it was more difficult to cut one log (Beech) than another log (Oak).

Reply to
GoogaICQ

While I agree that the response related to green vs. seasoned wood doesn't address the question, it is possible the OP dulled his saw on the oak before moving on to the beech.

In any case, this table lists the relative hardness of woods, based on the Janka standard.

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Bottom line: Tasmanian Oak is harder than both types of Beech (European and American), White Oak is about the same, Red Oak is a little bit harder.

Reply to
DerbyDad03

and finally got around to sawing them into firewood logs this weekend. It seemed to me that the beech wood was much harder to cut than the oak. Has anyone had experience in sawing beech wood?

Beech has a finer grain, denser than oak and is harder to cut. I've never cut down a Beech tree so I don't have first hand experience for comparison.. It is good for steam bending too, when cut to thinner strips.

Reply to
Ed Pawlowski

and finally got around to sawing them into firewood logs this weekend. It seemed to me that the beech wood was much harder to cut than the oak. Has anyone had experience in sawing beech wood?

You want to cut them up as soon as you cut them down-- especially beech or locust. Beech seems softer than oak when green, but when it dries. . . . Makes great handles for knives and hammers.

We lost all of our beech trees to some fungus in the 70s. I cut acres of the stuff on state land. Great firewood.

Jim

Reply to
Jim Elbrecht

There are a dozen varieties of beech tree and 500+ varieties of oak, so difficulty of cutting may vary as much between varieties as it does between one species and another. Carpenters used to know these differences, cf. the notable resistance of tamarack (notionally a "softwood") and elm. Nowadays power saws obscure this difference. When firewood cutting seems slow, I simply resharpen the chainsaw.

Reply to
Don Phillipson

Pavel314 wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@googlegroups.com:

Yes, I have. It's much harder to cut than oak. But you already knew that.

I guess you really meant to ask, is that *normal*? Is that something you

*should* be experiencing, something you should expect?

Yes, it is.

Most North American oaks, and American beech, are of roughly similar hardness. But in my experience, beech is much *tougher*: the grain of the wood is much finer, and it often interlocks, making it difficult to saw. Oak has a coarse, open grain, and although hard, it saws easily. That is not true of beech.

Reply to
Doug Miller

Wood hardness will vary from tree to tree, but on average beech and oak are very close. Look up "Janka hardness test" on wikipedia or other info source.

Reply to
Larry W

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