Quick lumber question

hope to float

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Hi guys
What do you call the first cut from the outside of a tree when it is being milled. The one with the bark still on it, sometimes used for cladding on fences and such. Google doesn't seem to know but I'm sure guys will sort it out.
Thanks
 

DeepWoods

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It can vary depending on your location, but it is generally described as a slab. Slab can also mean just as it sounds, a large thick piece of lumber with two parallel faces with two live edges (bark). A flitch is a thinner piece of lumber with two parallel faces with live edges. You don't have a board till you have four sides free of bark.
 

skeets

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One use to be able to get all the SLAB wood you wanted for fire wood just for the asking,, not no more, at least around here
 

hope to float

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That sounds like the stuff. Probably can't get it here either. It's probably used for pellets
 

North Idaho Wolfman

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Wane, or waney cant.

Most production mills don't have it anymore as they debark before they start cutting, the unused edges are ground up and used for paper pulp or pellets.
 

RCW

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Yep, slab.

Used to be able to get it free or cheap for firewood.

Others use it for fences, siding, etc. Nice rustic finish and hell, the bark is made to withstand weather...;)

Live Edge is cool stuff where they don't square a log to a cant, but saw usually thick (2" or so) "slab" cuts of logs leaving just the bark along the thickness of the plank. The slab will still have the log's natural contours/taper/figure along it's length from one-end to the other.

Commercial mills now use slab, after debarking, for other purposes. In hardwood country around here, much slab is chipped and burned to heat kilns at the mill to dry the sawn hardwood lumber. Pellet mills also benefit from the waste products.

Wane is when a part of a board still has some bark left on it after sawing, which alters the finished dimension a little. Usually one of the edges for part of it's length. We all see this if you look over the 2x's at a lumber yard.

A cant is a squared-off log, all 4 sides. A cant is the basic starting point to make dimensional lumber for the sawyer.

Magicman is our local expert sawyer.

I hope he corrects me if I missed it! :)
 
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Magicman

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You guys are spot on so there will be no correction from me.

My plans are to move my sawmill to a job tomorrow but I will only be sawing timbers. I'll have to post a few pictures.