Wille Logging Lumber & Timber: 2013

SLAB BUNDLES TEMPORARILY OUT OF STOCK

11/18/13

Pine and Oak slab bundles are out of stock until further notice.

Thank you to our customers!

Log Slices

Here is a photo of a pine log that was sawed into 2".

As mentioned in Cedar Comments, many of the hollow logs that come through Wille Logging get salvaged and turned into furniture and/or artwork by talented craftspeople and artists. Here is an example of such a chunk of wood that made the transformation from "rotten and worthless" to "beautiful and functional."

This piece was designed and commissioned by Don Wille and created with the help of three Minnesota wood artists and Debbie Wille. The table is made of a hollow white pine log and the carvings were created out of Wille Logging materials.
Table & Carvings not for sale.

Here is the table with its glass top and other household objects on top.

Removing the top glass helps the camera take better photos of the layered scene inside the table, which mimics a lake. Here a carved duck decoy sits on top of a clear, plexiglass 'water surface.'

Looking down past the duck, a lake bottom scene has been created.

The plexiglass distorts the camera image of the lake bottom.

At the bottom of the table are two beautiful carved fish and two carved lures.

Though difficult to photograph, the table is really quite detailed and interesting to view in person.

Cedar Comments

Northern White Cedar is popular for its resistance to decay and its light weight properties. It is the timber of choice for fence posts, shingles, furniture, and outdoor applications...to name just a few of the historically documented uses of this beautiful tree.

Cedar has some traits that make it unique among the trees often harvested in Northern Minnesota:

1. It is a slow-growing tree that can live to be 400+ years old.

2. It is an important food source favored by white-tailed deer and snowshoe hares.

3. Severe browsing by deer and hares can lead to difficulty in reestablishing stands of Cedar.
4. Though cedar lumber is resistant to decay from the elements, the live trees often have rot in the trunk. Cedar trees do not usually succumb to the diseases/rot that affect them, however. They can survive for generations with hollow trunks.

Although cedar is not rare or scarce, there are some circumstances that limit its availability within the wood industry. Because of its slow ability to regenerate and grow into a marketable sized log (80 years for posts and up to 160 years for saw timbers) cedar is often reserved from harvesting on county and state lands.

Because the tree typically grows in wet areas, it is only harvested in winter when logging equipment can cross frozen swamps and bogs. This creates a relatively narrow time frame for mills to procure cedar for the upcoming year. Yet cedar logs cannot be stockpiled indefinitely without some loss of quality.
Most of the cedar that Wille Logging purchases and sells comes from private lands.

Concerning cedar, the U.S. Forest Service website states, "..the tree commonly has a curved butt and poor form." It is also common for cedar to have completely hollow butts or rot throughout the trunk. Even younger, smaller cedar trees are frequently hollow.

Here is a photo of some cedar logs taken from the top end of the trees.

And here is a photo of that same load of logs taken from the butt end of the trees.
The one solid trunk shown in the above photo displays a half-ring of the discoloration associated with rot that would make lumber from that section of the tree useless.
Cedar trees also tend to have deep grooves in the trunk that give the cross-section shape of the log an undulating profile. This reduces the amount and size of lumber that can be produced from the rim of strong wood along the outer edge of the trunk.

The grain of cedar wood can also spiral. Clancy Erickson, a sawyer for Wille Logging for 17 years, explains that tiny veins of rot, undetectable from the outside of the log, can spiral up through the trunk rendering all of the lumber from that log useless. A sawyer may spend hours sawing cedar only to produce a few good boards. Erickson recalls sawing 1x3 inch material out of many cedar logs just to salvage some material from them.

It can take a lot more cedar logs, and a lot more saw time, than one might expect to make a stack of 1x6 cedar lumber such as the one shown in the photo below.

Due to the challenges of sawing cedar, unique markets have developed for the seemingly unusable sections of cedar logs. For many years, Wille Logging has been salvaging unusual chunks of cedar for artists and furniture makers. Hollow trunk sections have become small tables, the pedestals and legs for larger tables and pool tables, and many other pieces of one-of-a-kind art. Even unique chunks of cedar limbs, like the one pictured below, are sawed into small sections that can be use for signs, antler mounting boards, and fish mounting boards.

If you would like more information on cedar, please see the websites listed below.

Sources for this article:
http://www.na.fs.fed.us/pubs/silvics_manual/Volume_1/thuja/occidentalis.htm
http://www.myminnesotawoods.umn.edu/2007/04/minnesotas-northern-white-cedar-forest-type/
http://www.atthecreation.com/WOODS/CEDAR/_DEER.CEDAR.html
Don Wille
Clancy Erickson

Natural Edge

NATURAL EDGE PINE

We have a nice supply of natural edge pine on hand. This is lumber that has not been sent through the edger yet and retains some bark on an uneven edge.

NATURAL EDGE OAK

This lumber is excellent for use in projects such as rustic furniture or even windbreaks for livestock.

Contact Don for pricing.

218-766-7748

House Logs

Wille Logging has been supplying house logs for commercial and independent log home and timber frame home builders for many years. We can supply a load of uniform logs or a one-of-a-kind timber to repair an existing home or provide a unique focal point in your structure.

Logs can be peeled, power washed, or sawn to your specifications.

Call Don at 218-766-7748 for more information about the dimensions and specialty length logs Wille Logging can provide.

Porcupine Log

This log displays the healing process a pine tree makes when a porcupine has eaten (chewed) off tender bark from a young tree. The resulting scar on the tree creates visual interest and character in the wood.

These logs make beautiful fireplace mantels, support posts and ceiling beams.

Wille Logging can supply "porcupine" logs. We can even mill these logs to your exact specifications.

Call Don at 218-766-7748 for more information.

8' Tamarack

We have a large load of 8' Tamarack available as logs or sawn lumber. The wood is 8" to 16" in diameter. We have access to more if necessary.

Tamarack is tough and rot resistant. It is flexible in thin strips and was traditionally used to make snowshoes. Also used for corduroy roads because of its resistance to rot. It makes a lovely flooring material too.