In the below video, we are milling up some Willow Oaks for the first time.  We have milled a lot of oak over the years, but this is the first time we have ever milled up Willow Oak.

These logs are from a top quality Golf Course located in the Atlanta area that is part of the PGA tour.  The goal is to turn these logs into four different things. 

 

We quarter-sawed some of the logs at 6/4, or 1.5 inches.  Quarter-sawing is a special sawing technique that results in very stable boards. We wanted them as flat and straight as possible to turn into 3/4 of an inch thick flag sticks.  We are also going to have to dry them as quickly as we safely can, so they will first go into the solar kiln to pre-dry them.  Then they will be moved into our Nyle L200M dehumidification kiln to get them to 8% moisture content.  Since Oak is one of the slowest species to dry, we will have to be careful how hard we push the wood to dry.  We do have a hard deadline, because the golf course is hoping to use these for an upcoming golf tournament.

Half these logs are very clean, meaning very few knots.  The other half are filled with knots.  We used the clean logs to make the flag sticks and golf balls.  The logs full of knots will be used for the live edge slabs and charcuterie boards.

It wound up taking about 2 and a half days to mill these logs.  Part of the reason for the delays had to do with multiple interruptions during the day.  The other reason is that the live edge slabs were not part of the original plan we had developed with the golf course.  After looking at the logs for a little while, I decided that live edge slabbing the knotty logs would be the best option.  So, I paused milling and went back to the golf course to discuss live edge slabbing the remaining logs. 

I decided to break this up into 2 videos.  Check the next post for the live edge slabs.  They are beautiful.