Harvesting wood - how to?

[Little Ricky]

My neighbor has a large spruce tree that bit the dust. There is still a 'stump' that is about 1.5 feet diameter and 8 feet tall and he said he will not send it to the chipper so that I can harvest it.
I own an 18" chainsaw.
How should I go about cutting it down and turning it into guitar wood?
Thanks.

 

[guitarbuilder]

Tonewoods should chime in here. I've never done it but from what I've read, I'd say cut it into about 2.5" thick slabs as straight as you can. If you have an attachment that helps mill it on your saw, maybe you could go thinner. You want it thick enough to yield 1.75 when it's all done shrinking and bending while drying. Paint the ends right away and stack it in a place that is covered but will let the air circulate. Painting of the ends is critical to slow moisture evaporation. In about 2 years you might have some stuff ready to go. If it were me, I'd probably try quartersawing it as I think the grain of that looks great. A google search will probably yield more information like this:

http://www.woodworkingtalk.com/f26/thckness-rough-cutting-drying-logs-lumber-14591/

 

[TaylorPlayer]

Sorry I can't help with your question, but I like the way this guy stacked his harvested wood!

 

[parsaver]

Sorry I can't help with your question, but I like the way this guy stacked his harvested wood!

I think if you search the forum, you'll find that ScatterLee has a woodpile jig to make that!

 

[mtshark]

Isn't spruce usually used for acoustic tops?

 

[Picton]

Isn't spruce usually used for acoustic tops?

Yes, it is...

No reason you can't use it as a drop-top if you like the grain, but I'd hesitate before building an entire solidbody out of it. It's usually very soft... soft enough for things like string ferrules to sink into it pretty deeply.

Anyway, guitarbuilder has it right. In addition, make sure you put "stickers" in between the slabs as they're drying (little 1/2" rectangular sticks). They allow air to circulate among the boards.

 

[otterhound]

Seal the open cut ASAP .
You will not want to cut the stump into sections into less than 24" lengths .
Seal these end grains ASAP .
You will now want to begin splitting the sections into smaller wedges . 1/4's are fine .
Remove all bark .
Remove heartwood .
You can now begin splitting the wedges into smaller sections or into sizes that you can resaw for bookmatched top pieces .
You will want to sticker , stack and weight the pieces to air dry . Seal the ends again . Be sure to have air flow .
Stack them and wait patiently . Three to four years is nice .
Is the growth of the tree straight and not twisted ? Are there knots in the stump from branches ?
If the ends are not sealed and/or you do not remove the bark , your sections should be 36 inches in length because of possible end checking .
Soft woods dry better when cut down to at least the size needed for resawing later . Hardwoods do better when not cut down that far , 4/4 or thicker .
There is no need to do this in panic mode , but the sooner done , the better .
I am sure that someone else will want to add to this .

 

[guitarbuilder]

Isn't spruce usually used for acoustic tops?

The stuff you get at lowes is " white" wood which could be spruce, pine, or fir in many instances. Many guys here have made bodies out of the stuff. Pine is probably just as soft too. Expect that it will dent Spruce is used for acoustic tops and comes in a bunch of varieties. Englemann, Sitka, Red, European...etc. They see to hold up ok to some picking.

 

[adjason]

I don't think it would be worth it -since it is spruce-unless you have some attachment to the tree I would skip it.

 

[otterhound]

Spruce is used for the sandwich wood in the latest Rosewood Tele incarnation between pieces of Rosewood .

 

[Colt W. Knight]

Some areas have guys with portable bandsaw mills, that can come to your property and cut up trees for you for a fee. If its good wood, you can even make deals with them. Such as, they can have the majority of the lumber if they give you enough to make "x" amount of guitars. Cutting up trees into lumber is a major PITA. Its something you do because you enjoy the process, and working with wood you harvest yourself.

 

[Satch]

I don't know how to provide you with direct links to these. Bob Taylor gives a couple of pretty good basic tutorials on processing spruce on Youtube. Search for " sourcing spruce pt.1 & pt. 2 ". Enjoy!

 

[Colt W. Knight]

I don't know how to provide you with direct links to these. Bob Taylor gives a couple of pretty good basic tutorials on processing spruce on Youtube. Search for " sourcing spruce pt.1 & pt. 2 ". Enjoy!

Taylor has some serious BIG BOY TOYS!

 

[Satch]

Thanks for the help with the links!

 

[otterhound]

It's nice to see that Mr. Taylor is in agreement with me .

 

[TeleTim911]

I enjoyed those vids, learned a lot. Thanks.

 

[parsaver]

Painting of the ends is critical to slow moisture evaporation. In about 2 years you might have some stuff ready to go.

I live in the hottest part of US.....gonna be 116 on sunday and we get about an inch of rain a year. Would doing the above steps and putting it in my garage quicken the time to dry at all? I've though about cruising for a fallen tree or huge stump before but the dry times always put me off.

 

[bluesoverlord]

I live in the hottest part of US.....gonna be 116 on sunday and we get about an inch of rain a year. Would doing the above steps and putting it in my garage quicken the time to dry at all? I've though about cruising for a fallen tree or huge stump before but the dry times always put me off.

The desert is kind of like kiln drying. The debate rages on the positives and negatives of this in all kinds of uses of wood (I know more about this with regard to building bows). Anyway, your problem would be the wood drying too fast and checking, and also you could get down below 5-6% moisture content if you're not careful. You would need to provide some moisture (like a wet towel or even a humidifier) in an enclosed space (like your garage or your attic) and using a humidity guage and/or a moisture meter. Or you could just keep weighing the wood until it stopped losing weight, but that doesn't tell you what mositure content it reached equilibrium at. In the desert the equilibrium could be below 6%. That number seems to be important to a lot of woodworkers of all types because dare I say there is some voodoo that the wood never is "right" again coming back up in moisture once it has dropped so low. There actually might be some science to that. I've seen the wood become more brittle and lose it's strength at the fiber level. How it affect "tone" I would think is up to debate, but it's clear that a guitar is a dynamic thing and strong equals stable, so too low moisture would seem to be bad even if it equilibrates back up again. As always, YMMV.

Notice I didn't say low heat, just low moisture. I don't think that air drying is any better than kiln drying if the latter is done correctly. In fact, thermo treatment of woods (Google it) brings the temperature of the wood up past 450 degrees while keeping the chamber mositurized to prevent scorching. It has been found that the cellular resin changes in such a way that the wood becomes more stable. It is theorized that the wood becomes instantly "played in", e.g. it doesn't have that new guitar syndrome and may make a guitar seem as if it is 40 years old.

I don't have personal experience with this, but I would take Juha Ruokangas at his word. He believes in it and he looks to be a stellar luthier.

Bottom line, you could be at an advantage living where you do as long as you manage your wood well.

Now finding local wood in the desert is the hard part. I know, I used to live in Las Vegas and St. George, UT. Not a lot to pick from except what gets transported in.

Good luck!

 

[guitarbuilder]

The typical answer to" how long does it take to dry wood ?",is a year per 1" of thickness. Obviously that would be faster and slower depending on climatic conditions. I think that rapid drying may cause the board to develop internal stresses like case hardening. That is where the board moves when it is sawn...like when the wood clamps tight to your sawblade as you cut into it. You might try to find somebody local that sells wood and ask them how people approach it in your region.

 

[parsaver]

Thanks bluesoverlord...good stuff.

As far as cali trees....with a few hours drive as you get to the more temperate climates, there is alder and maple to be found in plenty.

Plus every now and then some one complains that a redwood is blocking their solar panels and the state spends the money to chop down a 6 foot wide tree...... I'm not sure what they do with the wood but that's a lot of redwood guitars lol