Pin oaks

Neophyte question: I know there are different uses for red oak and white oak. I've got several pin oaks around my house I'll be taking down soon, and am thinking about using or selling them rather than converting them into firewood.

The one reference work I found any information in, said pin oak is neither a red oak nor a white oak, but rather a "pink oak", something which none of the woodworking books seem to have heard of.

Is pin oak wood useful for anything other than firewood, since it's neither flesh nor fowl?

Ted

Reply to
Ted Eisenstein
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On Sun, 05 Oct 2003 23:38:38 -0500, Ted Eisenstein Crawled out of the shop and said. . .:

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well, ask ten people and you will more than likely get 10 answers to this one.

my Sawyer and i were discussing pin oak last fall, and he told me that the stuff doesn't dry real well, and is prone to splitting and bad warpage during drying.

however, i know the stuff is used for flooring and structural beams in old buildings...

i know the grain is about the same as RO, and is about as strong, (im lazy and don't want to take the time to DAGS about the hardness of it right now)

Traves

Reply to
Traves W. Coppock

Well so long as you aren't trying to eat it, why should this be a problem ?

Oaks are big trees, and it's not generally worth sawing the small ones. Here in the UK we only have pin oaks as unusual self-seedings or as rare display species. The butts are small and there may be branches low down, as they haven't been properly managed for timber. If you can fell a decent butt out of it, then it's probably worth sawing - but you might not get a useful butt of reasonable length or diameter.

Sawing involves bringing a butt and a saw together. For walnuts and good Lebanon cedars, it's worth taking a bandsaw to one butt. For less valuable timbers, then it may not be so, unless you have a number of them. OTOH, if the butts are small, then you might be able to drag them in your own pickup to where a bandsaw is already set up. For much Wood-mizer work, saw setup time costs as much as sawing a butt. You could also look at a chainsaw mill, which is easier to move and quick to set up, but wastes more timber.

Turners can use almost anything, even branches, and even while still green.

"Red oak" and "white oak" are vague terms. A botanist (particularly at this time of year) might regard the red oaks as just the Q. rubra with the bright red Fall leaf colours. The name "red" oak comes from the leaf colour, not the timber. A timberyard would look for tyloses to categorise them (most oaks are blocked, which groups them with the white oaks). From the species name alone, the American Q. alba is the only one really called a "white" oak, yet the two English oaks are generally thought of as interchangeable (they're a bit darker and harder).

From a timber point of view, there's no "pink" oak. It's either blocked or unblocked, and there's no halfway house. Nor is the timber in any way "red, white or pink coloured"

-- Die Gotterspammerung - Junkmail of the Gods

Reply to
Andy Dingley

Traves responds:

It's a red oak. Pink oak? Oh, well.

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's not a whole lot out there, because the wood isn't particularly useful commercially. Great landscaping tree. I put one in about 14 years ago, and it's amazingly large now, with growth upwards of 2' per year (put another in some 6 months later, about 60' away, and it hasn't grown much more than 3' in the nearly 14 years...go figure).

Charlie Self

"The income tax has made liars out of more Americans than golf." Will Rogers

Reply to
Charlie Self

  • + + Pin oak will usually be Quercus palustris
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    this is not guaranteed.

It is a red oak (some people like red oak wood), but with a poor reputation.

Red oak and white oak are distinct terms: these are names for trees belonging to different subgenera.

AFAIK red oaks and white oaks are called that because of the color of the wood (these names are pretty old, likely pre-18th century) . There is a popular myth that white oak wood can be distinguished by having tyloses while red oak wood has none. That definitely is wrong. The typical white oak will have tyloses (making it suitable for wine barrels) and the typical red oak won't. But this won't go for all species in these groups. PvR

Reply to
P van Rijckevorsel

I sawed several large Pin Oaks a number of years ago. I wouldn't do it again. The material dried OK, but frankly it was incredibly boring wood, poor in color, poor in grain characteristics, with tons of tiny "pin" knots. I used it for some jigs, and shop crap, but I felt it was crummy furniture wood.

Rick

Reply to
Rick Stein

How does it hold up structurally? If it's not good for furniture, how'd it be for, oh, beams or rafters or other hidden-by-paint-or-drywall items? I would hate to cut it up, use it, and then have the structure come down in a couple of years.

(Then, again, maybe I _do_ need more firewood.)

Ted

Reply to
Ted Eisenstein

Reply to
Lawrence A. Ramsey

I have to agree with Rick. My parents had a 35-year-old pin oak cut down in their yard a couple of years ago. I was eager to get the lumber from it, as Dad planted it as a 5-foot-tall sapling in 1966 and I thought it'd be nice to make some furniture from it. I got a sawyer lined up, had the tree hauled out to his place, cut it into 2" slabs, etc. My first impression was that the color was awful - a nauseating mix of mostly yellow with some pink. Almost as quickly, I noticed that the wood stank. I don't mean it smelled like green wood, I mean it smelled like a landfill, and just as intense.

I took one of the slabs home so I could dry it and observe the changes in color and odor. Neither improved, after air drying for 6 months. I threw that slab into a dumpster, and let the sawyer have the rest. Very disappointing and in my case, sad.

Mike Fairleigh

Reply to
Mike Fairleigh

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