Fascinating!

gr8mesquite · Post by **gr8mesquite** » Sun Jan 05, 2014 8:03 pm

Milling a frozen 3' wide, 20' long cottonwood log.
I need to get one of these.

I can't imagine what someone would do with all of that cottonwood lumber. I don't believe it's all that useful in the wood shop.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1523lUpCaxA

Jerome

joedw00 · Post by **joedw00** » Sun Jan 05, 2014 9:00 pm

WOW that is a lot of wood. Thanks for posting.

dgale · Post by **dgale** » Sun Jan 05, 2014 9:07 pm

Wow - great video, thanks for sharing. I assume that's Black Cottonwood (not sure of there are other species of cottonwood?) - I'd assume it would be similar to poplar - we have lots of it around here but don't usually hear of people using it…I wonder what the customer was planning to do with it - 2-3/4"x12"x20' slabs.

robinson46176 · Post by **robinson46176** » Sun Jan 05, 2014 10:23 pm

I've milled a little cottonwood over the years. You can use it as construction lumber for buildings and barns etc. as long as you up-size it a little since it is a little less strong compared to a lot of other woods. It isn't really anything like yellow (tulip) poplar nor nearly as useful. The cottonwood we have here is horrible to sand. Not really horrible to sand I guess it is the sanding dust that is horrible. Light and shaggy and irritating.
I suspect that some areas might not approve it in home construction.

.

sawmill · Post by **sawmill** » Sun Jan 05, 2014 11:00 pm

I sawed some red oak on mine that was 26 foot long and was 18 to 20 dia. I had to saw a 100 of these for mats to use under a crane. I could saw almost 21 foot in one pass and then we picked it up with their excavator and rolled it to get one end square on 4 sides then picked it up and moved it down to finish it.

charlese · Post by **charlese** » Mon Jan 06, 2014 1:43 am

once saw (looked at) some beautiful kitchen cabinets made from black cottonwood - populus tricocarpa. Don't know the steps he used in finishing, but the cabinets looked like a fine textured hardwood. Had mostly light color with darker areas like stripes. The guy cut his own trees and milled theboards.

Here's a portion of cottonwood descriptions from the USDA:
Uses
Industry: Black cottonwood is a commercially
valuable tree. Primary products include particle
board, plywood, veneer, and lumber. The wood is
light colored and light in weight; it is diffuse-porous
(indistinct growth rings), with a fine, even texture.
The light weight, good nailing characteristics, and
light color of the lumber are ideal for manufacture of
pallets, boxes, and crates. It also is used in concealed
parts of furniture. The fibers are short and fine,
making the wood useful in production of pulp for
tissues and high-grade book and magazine paper.

dgale · Post by **dgale** » Mon Jan 06, 2014 1:38 pm

charlese wrote:once saw (looked at) some beautiful kitchen cabinets made from black cottonwood - populus tricocarpa.

Interesting - up here at the other end of the State it's known as Populus balsamifera (with trichocarpa being a ssp.) There's lots of it growing up this way, primarily as a tall riparian tree growing on broad, open, alluvial floodplains. I haven't seen it used for much in the wood industry up this way, perhaps in part because it primarily grows in riparian and floodplain areas, where timber harvest is more restricted. It grows big and straight, so from that sense it would be ideal for lumber but my guess would have been that it's too fiberous to be able to finish smooth, but obviously there's a way if someone made kitchen cabinets out of it. Come to thin kof it, our local hardwood/wooderworker's mill has about every kind of wood you can imagine, including all of the local varieties, but I can't remember seeing cottonwood there - I'll ask them about it next time I'm in. On a side note, it's a great woodworker's supply and lumber yard for anyone ever passing through redwood country:

http://almquistlumber.com/

I'm still curious what the customer with this video had planned to do with all the lumber - they had it milled to 2-3/4"x12", so were looking for fairly thick and long slabs, so probably not cabinetry. Perhaps bar or table tops or something like that?

sawmill · Post by **sawmill** » Mon Jan 06, 2014 1:50 pm

Up here what we call cottonwood is a junk wood that when sawed dries out real fast and it has wiskers all over it after sawing. I use to saw it for use in the cheap pallets. We have tulip popular and that was sawed for trim boards in building houses. We have another kind which I have a lot of and that when sawed would stink real bad until dried. It was used in furniture and I think that is what some of the plywood is made from. I use a lot of it and it just shines after you plane it. It is light and hard and works very nice and is almost snow white. It would be interesting to see the wood they sawed after it was dry.

dgale · Post by **dgale** » Mon Jan 06, 2014 1:59 pm

sawmill wrote:Up here what we call cottonwood is a junk wood that when sawed dries out real fast and it has wiskers all over it after sawing.

That's kind of what I would have figured, which makes me all the more curious why this customer would go through the expense of having it milled (which I'm guessing wasn't cheap, given the work entailed and the toll it took on their blade).

sawmill · Post by **sawmill** » Mon Jan 06, 2014 2:33 pm

dgale wrote:That's kind of what I would have figured, which makes me all the more curious why this customer would go through the expense of having it milled (which I'm guessing wasn't cheap, given the work entailed and the toll it took on their blade).

To me that does not look like cotton wood because of the colored center section. But they don't get that big up this way usually the wind takes them down before