but finding rough cut oak for trailer decking can be a challenge. The last rough cut oak we bought came from a specialty hardwood mill that deals mainly with peeler logs for plywood laminate, I guess they have some lesser grade oak to saw nominally.
Oak prices here have crept up a little as availability of standing oak sales is restricted and owners are expecting more for their 100+ yr old trees, which is fair enough. However, this seems to be regardless of how much care and attention the trees received, particularly early stem pruning, so even the roughest oaks have a heavy price tag attached...Here in Alabama we have a fairly robust forest industry from pulp/chips to southern yellow pine lumber but finding rough cut oak for trailer decking can be a challenge. The last rough cut oak we bought came from a specialty hardwood mill that deals mainly with peeler logs for plywood laminate, I guess they have some lesser grade oak to saw nominally.
I am looking forward to the day that we work to that method, it seems like a fun way to do it! We were all seriously tempted today, the rubbish we've been cutting. It's a job for the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds. They are a large charity that own a lot of woodland here. Some of their management techniques seem very wacky. We generally get to cut down a lot of rubbish on RSPB jobs, it's all under the guise of ecology or "Sites of Special Scientific Interest", but it's just poor forestry in reality.I was in Savannah working a couple of years ago, and we had a day off to do laundry and tourist around. We were in "Somewhere" Alabama and we stopped to get gas, out behind the minimart was an old tin shed with the sound of a band saw emanating. My working partner and I both worked in the woods here in Washington in our younger life and we were naturally curious. Went back there and there were four old geezers taking turns drinking beer while the fifth one ran the saw, did the off bearing and everything else. They were running red oak, 12 and 14 ‘lengths. They all took turns working and they said they only did the work for beer money since the beer cooler was only about 100 feet away. We sat and spent some time visiting, drinking beer (very generous) and telling lies. We had a great time. They were cutting some pretty sizeable cants 4x 8s through 6x12s. Don’t know if the beer or age fogged my memory banks, but for the life of me “Somewhere Alabama” is all I remember.