Is 30 year old white oak harder?
bankruptedbyNorm
| Posted in General Discussion on
I’m a fairly new woodworker. I bought a bunch of white oak at a farm auction a couple years ago. It was roughcut and had been stickered inside a barn since the early 1970’s. Beautiful grain (no apologies to you oak loathers) on 13 inch wide boards. But this stuff is hard as nails. My jet contractors saw with Forrest WWII blade has had no problem on 5/4 red oak and 10/4 cherry, but this white oak (around 15/16 inch thick ) really bogs down with ripping. Blade is clean and should be sharp. Also accidentally hit it with a hammer while driving in a peg on a tenon….barely a noticeable mark. Is white oak that much harder than red oak? If not, would 30 years affect the hardness?
Adam
Replies
Old wood is certainly harder. We deal with antique lumber and hundred year old heart pine is harder than new oak as well.
Edited 10/11/2005 6:44 pm ET by RickL
I'm noticing that my wood is getting softer with age....
You're killing me......that was good.
if you give the wood a blue pill it might help
If you have a piece of white oak of a more recent vintage you can compare the two. You will probably find the the older wood has a tighter grain, that is, more rings to the inch. It is the tighter grain which gives the older wood the "harder" designation, although from a structural point of view there isn't that much difference.
Price wise, there is a big difference, but you are not buying or selling the stuff.
-Bob
I'm just curious, what is the difference in price between the price for tighter grained, older oak from the kind you can pick up at a hardwood supplier? There was tons -- literally -- of white oak at the auction. I got around 200 board feet for $50 rough sawn. It must have been from one or two very large, old trees on the guy's farm.
Adam
Hummm, Can you back up that statement with research? I would have guessed just the opposite, because in oak, a ring porous wood, the porous portion of the wood is the early or spring portion of the ring which is about the same in fast or slow growing, but the late-wood is composed of denser cells makes up a larger portion of the rings in faster growing oaks.However, without knowing more of the history of this wood, I would bet that it went into the loft of a hot dry barn, which caused rapid initial drying, and since it was not followed by a conditioning process at the end of the drying cycle, it may have a condition called case-hardening. Or it may just be drier than normal. The drier it gets the harder it will be. To learn more about case-hardening, here is a link to the subject on the woodweb forum. http://www.woodweb.com/cgi-bin/search/search.cgi#reference
I don't know, but some I pulled off a 100 year old barn on my place was about as hard as my planer blades! At least it was when I got through the outer 1/8" in. There was some beautiful wood hidden inside. It was rough sawn 4/4 and appears to have been nailed up green. The boards were nailed in the center, then 3/4" x 2" strips nailed over the seams.
PlaneWood by Mike_in_Katy (maker of fine sawdust!)PlaneWood
Try the rafters in my old house! Takes a water cooled diamond drill to go through them and thinks is just OLD spruce! Air nailer just goes in about 1/4 inch!
How old is your house?
Not sure.. BUT most of the wood came from a old barn.. I think the house was built in 1935..Water Cooled Diamond drill stretched it a bit but air OR 16 ounce hammer will not drive a nail into it very deep..I was thinking.. I said spruce.. I really think it is Hemlock.. Not sure..
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