Sawing Logs After Checking Occurs

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Sawing Logs After Checking Occurs

Badly checked logs should be dried and sawn first, then end-trimmed as boards. December 1, 2005

Question
I got a bunch of logs - maple, beech, cherry, birch, basswood - and they are all pretty well checked on the ends, so I'll have a fair amount of waste. I do not know how old the logs are. My plan was to mill them, air dry, take them to the kiln guy, bring them home, then cut off the checked ends. Am I making a mistake? Should I be cutting off the ends of the logs now and Anchorsealing, before milling and drying? Or has the damage already been done?

Forum Responses
(Sawing and Drying Forum)
From Gene Wengert, forum technical advisor:
Hard to say without looking at them, but it is likely that you should saw them now and trim later.

From contributor T:
Won't the checking get worse if he saws and dries them, then trims? I thought you should always remove all checks before drying the lumber. Is this not true anymore?

From Gene Wengert, forum technical advisor:
It sounds to me like the checking is fairly bad already and therefore it will not get worse. If you trim now, it is possible that you will either over-trim or will not get all the checking (under trim) and then checks will develop in the lumber. End coating prevents new checks and prevents very small ones from getting worse, but does not help badly checked wood.

Have you reviewed the related Knowledge Base areas below?

KnowledgeBase: Knowledge Base

KnowledgeBase: Primary Processing

KnowledgeBase: Primary Processing: Air Drying Lumber

KnowledgeBase: Primary Processing: Sawmilling

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