I friend I work with had a large pecan tree come down during a tornado earlier this year. They have to pieces of the main trunk about 8 ft long. IF so I figure I can get my son inlaw to haul it to a sawmill. I've never done this before so should I get it sliced in 1" thick pieces. I was thinking of putting it in the basement for about a year or so. Any recomendations will be greatly appreciated. Thanks
Mike S. asks:
Do it. If the tree is large enough, you may not fit it in your basement. Have it cut half 4/4 and half 6/4 (that's 1" and 1-1/2").
Get hold of some DRY stickers and some cement blocks to make a platform. Stack the first row, sticker every 20-24", stack the next row, sticker and continue until you're out of wood. If you're outdoors, use plastic or old sheetmetal roofing to cover the top row, appropriately weighted to keep it in place.
A year per inch works.
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Charlie Self "Ain't no man can avoid being born average, but there ain't no man got to be common." Satchel Paige
What Charlie said. It's a very nice wood for making furniture; it has a creamy-tan color and nice figure. Might I also suggest that you save as much of the tree as possible, and use the smaller chunks in the barbeque. Pecan is one of the BEST woods for cooking, and I'd take it over Hickory, Oak, or Mequite any day. If you're not into that, you could certainly sell the smaller chunks to someone who is.
yeh what they said. also you may have some turners in your area who whould like some chunks for bowls ect....... skeez
Only if you don't know cherry. Pores and pattern, let alone natural cherry color, all different.
I suppose a "Normed-up" gel-stained pair might have pretty much the same _color_ , anyway.
Charlie & the others, thanks for the info. I had to work today so going to try and go get those logs tomorrow. Again thanks.
There was a discussion several weeks earlier about salvaging trees that have been felled by huricanes. One poster said that stresses in the wood resulting from the bending and breakage would render the wood unsalvagable. Basically, he said, it's only good for firewood. However, personally, I'd give it a try and see what happens. Maybe you;ll get a 40% or better yeild after drying which isn't too bad if the tree is large.
unsalvagable.
You would not know they had problems, unless you learned to see compression fractures in the wood. He was right. A very high percentage will be damaged.
when I worked in a commercial cabinet shop(we did NOT make kitchen cabinets) pecan was the 'hated wood', due to the embedded sand particles in it. We made all the trim for a store in a large mall, and they wanted pecan trim, The moulder was a 6 head 24' long machine and it was nicking the blades every 30 feet or so.
--Shiva--
Makes me wonder where you got your pecan. Same genus as hickory, hard as all get out, but nothing in my experience or in the literature shows mineral inclusions in any Carya. Overall family is the same as walnut. You must have picked up a lot of stuff near beaches, similar areas.
Charlie Self "Politics: A strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles. The conduct of public affairs for private advantage. " Ambrose Bierce
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