Mansion Red Oak Project

I apologize for taking so long between blog posts but since I assume no one reads these I guess it doesn’t really matter. Haha! Anyway, things have been crazy busy between my day job, all the work I’ve been getting for HMR and running kids around so I haven’t had time to get on here.

The red oak project is moving right along I’m happy to say. We got the last of the tree off the property and I even got to move a chunk of it all by myself and let me tell you, that is no small feet. I have a new found respect for sawyers every where because that trunk piece was heavy AF. It took a lot of blocking, cribbing, using various jacks, etc to get that thing to roll over off of the thawed ground during a couple warm days in late February. But the surprise that was waiting for me when I saw the cookie that existed under that trunk…….man oh man is that thing beautiful. That is going in the personal stash for some kind of table down the road.

Once everything was broke down we were able to do a ring count and estimate the age of the tree to be around 150 years old which is very cool and quite old even for an oak. Most North American trees live to be around 80 or so before they start to dye off.

So far, at the mill, we have got all the large limbs cut up and stacked and will be cutting up the two large trunk pieces and large crotch piece within the next few weeks to begin the drying process which will take anywhere from 5-6 months due to the thickness of the boards we are cutting (around 2-1/4” or 60mm thick) before they can go into the kiln and complete the process over the course of 2-3 weeks.