CUTTING THE PERFECT TIMBERS FOR YOUR TIMBER FRAME

Alright, while I left Jason over at the table planing all the wood for our project, I'm heading into what we call the White Oak Lumber Yard. I'm going to show you, we're going to show you how we pick out the trees that we're actually going to drop for a specific job. Show you how I cut them, as to hopefully not to crack them. That's the most important part. You're not really looking to, let's say, just put the tree on the ground. You're looking to put the tree on the ground safely, so that we don't have cracks, stresses. I mean, it happens. More often than not, it happens anyway. But, we do our best to see if we can eliminate that. So, I'll show you where we're going to be cutting today, from the trees we're going to be looking for. And I know we need a massive amount of 8x8 columns. And we, for this large project, it's mostly built out of 12x12. So, I'm going to need some dirty trees. Now, I'm just looking for big trees, straight trees. Hopefully, one like this tree here we're looking at. I mean, yeah, you can cut it down, you can get lumber and stuff out of it, but for a column or a post, no. I try to pick out the straightest growing trees, so that you don't have stresses when you're trying to cut a bow or something out of it. Sorry about that. I was just looking to see how deep I was going to go today. Alright, I'm looking for this tree to fall this way. It's going to be the easiest way for us to log it out of here. So, I'm going to make a big cut. I'm going to cut down here low, get past the heart, get past the middle of this, cut my wedge, and we're going to break its back. Hopefully, we've cut deep enough on our low cut that we're not going to get any cracking. See, I've cut way past the halfway. I'm looking at places. Wedge out! Now, that's how you lay down a perfect log that you're looking to mill. No stress cracks. Nothing. Perfect. I've got me a nice 40 plus foot log. We'll bucket tomorrow and show you how we drag it out of here. Even though I was mainly chasing white oak this morning, I am going to drop this red oak. We also need a ton of red oak when we're on the inside part of the frame. So, this is a perfect tree. I'm going to get at least 3, 4, 10 foot 8 by 8 columns of it. It's more. We're about 15, 16 inches down here, which means we're going to taper back some. I'm going to take this tree. There's another red oak right here. Next victim. Red oak. Not as nice as the other one, but we're going to be here dragging. Looking to lay it right down this way. Same thing. Looks like it's going to want to go that way for me. We're going to do the same exact thing we just did. Number 2 down. See, we did suffer a little stress crack. Just this little piece right here. This little piece right here. I'm going to show you how right here in the field we're going to take care of it. See how deep it goes. Now if it does crack, we will turn it in. But I'm going to buck this end off and see if she don't go too deep. There you have it. Scars a little bit. Surface there. Time we get this through the mill. Chop off another foot. Another piece of oak. Take a good look at it. When we buck this thing, if I don't show you tomorrow, I'm going to put it right here. You can see where it starts to bend. Then I'm going to produce up and get as much product as I can. Alright, again. Look down this log. Work with the logs you've got. You can't change mother nature. Now there's a good big fat post there. He's just not long. We need to cut right about here. Give this a 10 foot post. Then I'm going to have a massive, massive whatever I want. I mean, I don't know. It sounds like common sense. But when I first started, I cut every log in the woods without checking what I had. I ended up making a lot more waste. I'm more of a carpenter than a sawyer. I just do it out of necessity. We're going for another 22 foot of here. I'm telling you. On this big build, we've got some long eaves. I don't know how to guys. We've got to do it. Ended up on another 12 footer. Alright, we're going to get these out of here. You can see that. I just turned around to move the vehicles. There's an eagle's nest in the perch of the tree right here. There's a ton of eagles here because we live right on the lake in this property. They're everywhere. Nobody's home now. I'm going to leave that tree alone. Look at that beautiful chestnut. Come on. Look how much lumber here. One, two, three, four. I can't count. I don't count. I just keep going. I'm going to take this white oak here. It's 50-50. It's wanting to maybe come this way and I want to lay it this way. One, just because I don't want to block the road right now. Let's see what happens. Went exactly the way I wanted it. And I know I cut longer when that tree's fallen than you should. No cracks. Boom. Another 40 feet of timber. I'm going to go and tack this red oak. He's wanting. Let's see if we can keep getting lucky. We don't want to get hung up. We don't have to worry about hitting houses and stuff, but we don't want to get hung up. Boom. Another beautiful drop. I'm sorry you missed that last piece of it. Had the saw stuck. Had to get my other saw just to break. This little piece held us up. Premium. Premium, boys. Another red oak. Right in our territory. This should be an easy drop. Not too much in the way. Heck yeah. We haven't gone anywhere. Got 10 trees down. Been here maybe an hour and a half. Let's see. Time flies. Two. Two hours. I'm going to drop this one and go get some lunch. Again, no cracks. Perfect cut. Right where I want it to go. There you go. Cut 10 trees that quick. I wish getting them out would be. You can see I've got a little log pile. White oak logs laying. We're starting to collect all our stuff, but we're going to start stockpiling down here. This inner town is getting full. We're trying to build another. I need to build another 40 foot, let's say lumber storage timber frame. So, as time goes on, we'll have a class on building that frame. Chestnut, oak, hickory. There's the lake. And we're back up in the timber town.