Cutting Beech Tree

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.

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 ??

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).

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.