From Trees to floorboards

Hey, rather than waste time with excuses as to why I haven't contributed a blog. Here is a pictorial Blog about how we got floorboards from trees.

The first step is obviously selecting the trees. Photo 1 is the tree we used for all of our 4x2 timber. We selected this type of tree specifically because I had heard of people using this in building huts and as long as they didn’t leak, the timber remained in perfect condition for up to 30 years. Mind you this was small saplings that they used not properly matured trees, so I assumed that the benefits would be amplified with the age of the tree. This particular tree would be somewhere between 50-80 yrs old. No one really knows as it is in the middle of the bush, but they apparently grow slow.

Photo 2 is one of the 3 Mahogany trees that we cut down. They were all about this same size which for me when I was felling it seemed pretty forkin big! They certainly make a mess of the surrounding bush when they come down. This particular one snapped 2 coconut trees clean in half on its way down.

Photo 3-5 is of the same tree after it has been felled, cleaned up, rolled onto logs and ready for the first cut with the chainsaw mill. We also have to cut paths into the bush to get to the tree, and also to be able to carry the slabs out, and also clear all the surrounding bush so that we have space to work and stack the slabs. This usually takes  about 2 days to get to the point of pulling out the chainsaw and mill.

Photo 6 are the rails set up on the log to take the mill for the first cut. We need the rails so that we can get a perfectly flat surface. Once this has been achieved, we can remove the rails and the mill can slide along the top of new cut. Dad designed the rails which have worked perfect every time. You can imagine the difficulty in trying to get a perfect flat surface on a log that is round. There cannot be any movement in the rails, which isn’t easy with a chainsaw on top of them cutting a slab and vibrating madly!    

Photo 7 is the chainsaw mill about to perform its first cut.

Photo 8 is mid cut. Compared to hand milling with the chainsaw, the mill is very slow. However its only advantage is that it is very accurate with wide, thin slabs.

 

Photo 9 is our first cut finished. The rails can now be dismantled and the chainsaw mill will now run along the top of the flat surface, producing slabs of timber. From felling to stacked slabs takes about 6 days for the large mahogany trees. If everything goes well, that is the mill or the chainsaw doesn’t play up, the slabbing goes quite quickly now.  

Photos 10-12 Show stacks of freshly cut slabs. These slabs now have to be carried out of the bush, stacked onto the back of the truck, transported back to the house, offloaded and stacked with thin strips of wood between each individual slab so as to allow air to circulate evenly through the stack and to dry quicker. Each individual stack has to be covered in tarps or plastic sheets so as to not allow any direct sunlight as this will warp the wood. The slabs were left to dry for about 8 months.It only takes 10 weeks for slabs this size to dry to the point of being able to used for floorboards.

 

Photo 13. Here are some air dried slabs that are now about to be cut with the circular saw. 

Photo 14. Back in the workshop, the slabs are now placed on wooden horses and one of the rails is now used as a straight edge as a guide for the circular saw. This is a little time consuming but it gives us a perfectly straight cut which is important when we join the floorboards up so that there are no gaps.

Photos 15-17 show us removing the sides of the slab, so that we now only have the heartwood left and 2 perfect straight edges. The edges are then used as firewood to burn down the remaining tree stumps surrounding the house. It seems a pity to burn mahogany, but aside from using it as material to build scaffolding, we don’t have any other use for it.

 

Photo 18 is now cutting up the remaining slab into 2oo mm wide floorboards. 

Photo 19 Here are the floorboards. Now they just need to have the ends cut off with the dropsaw and put through the thicknesser.

  

Photo 20 Is a floor board that has had its ends cut off square and is about to put through the thicknesser.

Photo 21 The board is now being put through the thicknesser. The boards are on average around 27mm thick. Cutting up the boards was a little time consuming, but the thicknesser was painfully slow, as each board would go through about 4-6 times. What I thought would only take us a week has taken 2 weeks and we are about 80% through. We were well and truely sick and tired of doing this part of the work by the end of the second week.

Photo22 is finished product. All thats left is to lay them, sand them and give them 3 coats of polyurethane.

A bloody laborious exercise, but well worth the effort once we saw the finished product. I am hoping that they will look even better when they are layed. I guess the other good thing about it is, that not many people have 200mm wide and 27mm thick mahogany floorboards available to them to make a floor with.

Well this blog is a little dry and boring, especially if you are not into wood or the production of floor boards. However hopefully it has given you an idea of what we have been up to work wise for the past while. If you are thinking of doing this at home, think long and hard as the old maxim, “hard work never killed anyone”, is maybe not completely true in this case. Alright maybe a little melodramatic, but there were certainly some days where I felt like the saying was a lie. Until the next post take it easy!

Carl..