Matthew Cremona: The Biggest Ash Tree I've Cut Yet...

This video is sponsored by Homebase. Welcome back everyone. I got Matt here. Hi. Matt. Matt and Matt today. Matt has come all the way central Iowa to uh where we at central Minnesota-ish. Yeah. Basically and um you got some logs that you can't saw yourself. No. Apparently. No well I mean I can buy your plants but unless I actually build a saw I can't do it myself so here I am. That's the rub right? Doesn't just pop into existence? There's a lot of potential sawing in those plans at my on my desk at home. So what did you what we got here first? I mean you got anyways you brought a few logs. Yes. We're gonna try and run through as many as we can this afternoon. We got three logs. This first one is what you have deemed as the most important or the one that has highest priority. What are we looking at here? This is an ash log from our hometown in Ackley, Iowa. Of course all the ash died but this I noticed in town because you can't. Oh you noticed it. You can't not notice it and when they took it down we came over to get the log. He couldn't even begin to pick it up with his skid loader. Oh yeah. But we have one of these too so. The telehandler club. Yeah. Uh-huh. So I called Matt to see if he'd be interested and I don't know if you knew how big it was but. You sent me a picture but even on the trailer they still look they don't look that big. Yeah. Until you get them down you're standing next to them. Yeah. So we measured this one and what was it 52? 51. 51 across here and then you said it was 13 long ish. It's got kind of a weird bulbous shape to it where it's got pretty significant taper towards the bottom there and then it kind of thins out towards this crotch section up here which is also quite big. I mean look how offset the pith is. There's that much offset. That's crazy and this one's got this cool inclusion hole thing here which uh you know everybody warns me I'll put my hands in the holes. You can't help it. I can't help it. I just can't help it. Put a trap in there. Someone's gonna get me one of these days. Oh man. So we're gonna we'll make our facing cut and kind of figure out our plan from from there I think and I don't know unless you have some other story you want to tell while I figure out where we're cutting. No. No. No more stories. Well this isn't radio. If it was radio you would say hey Matt long-time listener first-time caller. You could say that. You just watch the videos with your eyes closed. I think that's how it works. So you've been watching for how long then? Oh I mean when you were in town for a long time I watched you build your trailer. Well that's six years ago. I mean way before that even because that was I couldn't tell you. Did you watch me build this? No. Okay so sometime between trailer and this? Yeah. Okay. I'm sawing logs with Matt Cremona like it's a crazy day. It's a crazy day. This is about as wild as it gets right here. So how did you get it loaded then and out of there if you couldn't load with a skid loader? You just drove it over? Well we have heavy trailers and then the tele handlers. You brought the machine to the log? Yeah I wasn't too far so then it's been sitting and then I was going to bring it on a basically a car a heavy heavy car trailer and I wanted to bring two logs and that it was way too much for my f250. So then I was going to do a bigger trailer and I thought well it's sad to have a half empty trailer. It would be super sad. Really sad so I brought another log. So it's a good thing I didn't have a bigger trailer. I would have brought more logs up here. Oh boy you can bring a semi next time. I couldn't get it in your yard. Well you just drive down there. It's fine. Come on buddy. Smells like ash. There's already a hole in it. Perfect. I'll let you know the guest gets to cast the first bucket. Has anybody thrown it on you? Uh inadvertently. Hey you got me. Oh yeah that's got quite the hole. It does. I hope that doesn't go very far. That's pretty cool though and it's got some really cool bug holes around in there though. It definitely got some kind of mush. Yeah. Going on there. Yep. Now hopefully that doesn't go too far. Yeah. I don't know what to tell you. It looks like I expected it to. Yep. Except this. This is the surprise. Yeah. Yeah. I mean there's still a lot of wood there even down there. Just the section you're standing at. Oh yeah. Up to here. Mm-hmm. That's a pretty big piece of wood in itself. I didn't know it at the time but I got a black ash from the college that we college campus. It's really pretty because it's not just white. Right. And I was hoping this might be but I don't know. This is like your regular green ash. Yeah or white. I think it's green. Green. Yep. It looks like all the ones we have here and that all the ones we have here are green. Okay but there is some. I mean I don't know if that color will keep going through the middle. That's the typical heartwood color. Okay. So this is more your heartwood amber red. Okay. Type of color and then you have your white sapwood. But it should darken up to be more in this. Nice. Amber kind of tone. Running a business is kind of like the environment of a wood shop. There are a lot of things to keep coordinated. How the projects coming in and out and of course all little things that need to be taken care of along the way so that you don't end up with a bunch of things to do you know all at once. In my case I should have been tidying up as I went through all these different little projects I was working on but I didn't. So now I have to go through and clean the whole shop and reset everything. And on the business side of things there are plenty of little tasks that you need to do and keep track of. Especially if you're managing a team. 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I'm just gonna cut both of these and then pull them off and flip it over and all that stuff. That's got a little tension in there, huh? Oh, did it pop again? On this side. You can see how high it is in the back here. Nothing there. Oh man. Oh man, I hope it comes a little bit. Get your kids toys out of the way. They're my toys. This is the height it has to be for you. You look a lot bigger on camera. Oh, I believe it. I mean, it still feels heavy. Yeah, I bet. What? What's this? Yeah. I left some behind, I guess. You want this? No. Stop. There's a tag. Oh, you got this one on clearance or? On sale. It's a lot of mush. Yeah, it's like. I wonder if there's some weird metal things. That's a little mealworm there for you. I'll go fishing later. I mean, it's crazy because down here is like perfectly fine. Yeah. All right. Well, we just keep cutting from this side then because it's not moving around or anything, so we can keep going if you want. Yeah. There's no reason to flip it. No. If you don't care about keeping everything in perfect sequential order. No, no, no. You'll basically have two sets when we're done. Okay. But then you can put back together however. Yeah, no problem. 14 quarter, 14 quarter. 14. Look at that. Did you have a guess of how far down this went? Oh, it's a ways. Oh, I'm still going. But you're, you're lateral. I am lateral. That is true. Up to my shoulder and it goes this way too. Are you preg testing this tree? It kind of feels like you didn't bring all those like long arm gloves. You have to lube up first. Yeah, a little bit. Yep. Yep. I've been lied to. That one got a little weird. It got like really hard here for some reason. Yeah, you slowed way down. It feels heavy. It's so sad. They're definitely like pond tables. Not river. Or lakes actually. That pond is too small. It's only fitting. I want to watch the master work here. The bucket toss guy. And I'm not going to stand on the other side whichever side you go. I'll probably get you. No matter where you are, I can still get you. Oh boy. Oh my goodness. It's pretty. It's pretty. Yeah. Look at that. Yeah. The way that it was like trying to compartmentalize whatever was going on over here with this inclusion. It's got great color. It really does more than I thought it would. It's not small. It's not a small piece of wood by any means. The gaping hole in the middle of it. Yes. The gaping hole. Because even down here it's like super cool. Look at that. Yeah. Do you want to try another one? No. No. Oh nice. Trying to avoid the hole. Yeah. With the water. That wouldn't make a lot of sense. Oh this is cool. Look at all this. Like the swirly crazy thing going up here. You have a name for everything. What are the names of these things? I don't know. That's just weird. Are they putting your names in like Webster's yet? They should. Guy who makes up wood words. Yeah. Even like as you get into the hole where you have all these bug pockets and bug holes and everything. This is cool. It is fun. I agree. And then you get that. What do they call that when you you cut out a section and you just put a new piece of wood Yeah. Little inlay. I think this is the narrowest spot. 44. Up. At the narrowest. Narrowest. 49. And this is. What's that up here? Down to here. Yeah. 55. Yeah. That's a full like big table too. What? What was it 13? Is that what you said it was? About yeah. There's some wood there. Yeah. 13 and change so. Yeah. It feels heavy. That's so much stuff. Here's your compost pile. Spread out in the garden. Holy crap. Yeah this has way more weight than I expected it would. I guess the size of it is deceiving because there's just so much wood here. Yeah. Still even though you're missing all this. Yeah. Look at this. Doing something. Yeah. Yeah. You want to try one? No you're good. I think I'm just hogging all the fun here. I know. Oh yeah that's cool. There's a couple of old limbs or something going on up here huh? You're starting to get the crotch. Here comes the crotch figure. We're finally getting there. Finally getting down the crotch figure and look we're like yeah we're in the middle so this is quarter sawn. So you got all quarter sawn ash all the way through here through the middle. Yeah all quarter sawn straight grain stuff on one side and then you got the hole. Yeah. Massive. But it does look like this is all rot stain actually. Okay. So that's what we were seeing earlier. I thought it was the heartwood. This too? This is all rot stain all this all the way down. The color is great. It is. You want to see what's under here? I'm nervous. I don't want to find out. I need that bulldozer attached. Oh my god so much crap. Wrappers. Oh yeah still. We're still going. Oh man. What is that? Oh that's a skull. It is. It's a skull. Femur or something. Okay okay. Matt I know where the bodies are buried. This is why you don't stick your hand down some holes right? Oh yeah this is. I'm sorry. It's going all the way. Yeah. That's surprising. I thought I would have stopped. Oh there's a nest. Oh my goodness. There's your nest. Okay what do you want to do? You want to flip this thing over now or you want to try and keep cutting like this or do you care? I do not know what the right thing is. Whatever you want to do. Just keep going I think. Yeah whatever's. Goodness. Yeah that's a whole nest. And that must be from that thing on the other side that we saw. Oh yeah. Yeah that's probably the growth around the hole. Yep. It's like a spoonful. Shovel it out of here. Is that another one or the same one? No another one. The whole family. Sit these around your garage and scare your kids. No they're into that kind of stuff. I gotta find another one so there's one for each of them. One of my first businesses was cutting and selling styrofoam to veterinary supply companies so that they could make shipping coolers. And so my father-in-law and I built a styrofoam cutter. Just went looked at one and then he just started cutting and welding in his shop and it's kind of like this. Kind of like should we do it like this or is this the right way? Like a hot knife one. Like a hot metal hot wire. There we go. That's the word. I still use it today. Sell a little bit of foam and. You're still doing it? Yeah a little bit. And I guess we can see what's left afterwards and if you want we can flip it over. I don't think there'll be much because you get kind of small. Nope there won't be much. Here in the middle. It'll be good. Okay whatever. Whatever you want. I don't have a lot of hope. You did a really good job of hiding how bad it was inside. Good job Tariq. Good job. See we're all just a little empty inside. There aren't any ash left up here either are there? They are gonna be dead this year pretty much. Yeah. All of them. Whatever's left. Not choked all the way up. It's still heavy. I can't believe that thing does that. Find another skull yet? Oh I'm sorry I didn't pick through it. You have one job. I know. The skull guy. Oh I mean it's, well that's cool. What is this? I know there's some, there's on the last one there's these little, these little guys. What do you call that? I don't know. I call them figure pockets. That's what we're calling them today. There we go. There's the good stuff. That is good stuff. That one you could almost say all right you could epoxy that and. That's where you draw the line? Well I don't know. I don't know where I draw the line. It's like can't even get it all in the frame it's so big. I'm having a hard time conveying how big this piece of wood is. It's got some, this is some great crotch section here. It is. Why does it have to be on the same side as the hole? Well there's a joke in there somewhere. What kind of channel is this? I don't know anymore. You're gonna have to do an alt channel just. I could do that. I missed my calling. There's the little figure pocket thing here. There's a bunch of them. There's some smaller ones down here too. You look tiny. No one's ever said that to me. Well you just hang out with the wrong size wood I guess. There you go. These are substantially large. This is still over four feet wide through here. This one is 45 at the narrowest. I mean you actually look itty-bitty on camera. You made it back to full solid wood again. No it's it's funky there too. Is it? Yeah but this this. It looked more promising. There's no any kind of crotch interest but there's this. That's cool. And that yeah whatever that is. That's cool with the uh yeah bug holes and stuff. Yes that. That one's okay. Yep. It's a little less completely gone. Yeah. You sure you want to do one of these? Why did I not do? No I did one at the beginning. You haven't done one for a couple hours. Ready? I'm always ready. Threw it too far. Hey there's your metal inclusion. One little tiny thing. That was a long time ago. No it was quite a while ago wasn't it? It wasn't recent. You got old limb thing going on there with an inclusion. Some nice crotch figure up here and your partial hole. What would be the what are the terms a doctor would use? I'm so sorry to tell you. You have a hole. You have a hole. There's our one little metal inclusion there. You gonna do another one? Yeah. Ready? You in the mood now? You finally warmed up to it? Oh wow look at this. All this cool stuff happened around this inclusion up here. It's like all those ripples. Look at all this. Holy crap look at this. Yeah. Wow. Look at that. And down there. Hey you're showing that before. There's some down here too. This yeah these. This is the most figured one we've had so far. Save the best for last I guess. It has the smallest hole. It's got the most figure. The most things going on. I just can't get over how clear it is down here. It's like perfectly clear ash from the hole on the whole bottom. This has got some kind of fun like swiggly green color striation thing going on there. Right there. Yeah there's a few like bands of it. There's a lot left on the bed. Do you want another one? We should flip it over and. We can flip it. I know a guy with a flipper. I think we should now that we're almost out of the mess. Will you ever start having your kids be part of the videos? I don't know. They're never around. They're at school. Really? They're at home like during the days you know when I'm when I'm working. I see. They're at school so and then like the last thing I want to do if I'm not working is work. Right yeah yeah. It's not super common I guess anymore. No. And they got all their own activities and whatever so it's busy enough I guess. Yeah. What would you guess how much this one weighed? I don't have a guess. I have no idea. I was gonna before I took it off I figured it was like 7,000 pounds or something like that. But I don't know. Maybe it is because it is the slabs are pretty freaking heavy. They feel like they're at least 800 pounds to the machine. Maybe even a thousand for those middle ones where it's kind of getting tippier. Yeah. That's what around a thousand pounds feels like on there. Never really weighed this stuff we pick up with our telehandler so. You don't have a fancy one with the scale built into it? No. No I have an old caterpillar. Oh do I've had for ages. They seem to last. Yeah I like it because it's not a lot of technology on it. Oh there's so many things that can break. Yep. It's got this weird muddling of colors and you have all these kind of weird like figure lines in there. That's pretty cool. Yeah it is. I agree. It's got all the little tiny dot things. It's dotted. Oh that's cool look at that. Just twist them over. I guess so yeah. Close the door. Close the door. You are a very strong man. Well you know strong with stupidity. All right. You can pick it maybe. I can yeah. A long pick? I absolutely can. All right. Want me to? Everything's kind of funny now. It's just how it works now I guess. Did you have a preferred cut plane for this? No. You if you see something we should do then. I mean it's got interesting stuff all over the place so I don't know. I don't know that there's. This has got some rot but. Yeah. I don't know I think this can be interesting no matter where you cut it. I might. So if that if this was rotten then if that was like. I would probably turn 90 from where it is now. It's kind of where my mind's going right now. I like that. Plus already have these kind of trimmed out and then you'll get some of this burl in the edge. I want you to come up and just do this. Tell me what to do Logs. Tell me what to do. What do you want? I'm listening. What is that you say? Oh just cut me I don't care I'm dead already. Okay. Come on. All right you got a story for this one too? Well this came from my friend Blake and he processes firewood but he helps cut down trees and he helped at the Riverview Comfort Center in Cedar Falls, Iowa. Okay. And it's a bur oak that been there for a long time. Yeah they usually grow pretty slowly so this has probably got some age on it and it's got a lot of burls so it's a burly bur oak. I saw some sprouts earlier too when I was looking at it. It was still trying to go. How long has it been down? Do you know? I don't know. Last I think it was cut last year. Yeah it's sprouting. It's trying to keep going. Okay so what kind of thickness we want for this or do you want to procrastinate on making that decision to make the first cut? Either option is fine with me. It's a smaller slab so. Yeah what's the uh. Do you need it as quite as thick? Maybe three might be. That's probably thicker than you probably need on. Okay. For me I would normally do this for like 10 quarter or something. Okay. Because that's super huge. Two and a half. Yeah unless you need like. I think you're right. Thicker stuff for something. Nope. Thinner stuff for something. So 10 quarter is usually pretty safe because if you want to re-saw it you can always get two pieces of four quarter pretty easily out of it. Let's do that. Sounds good. I got numbers for that. Oh boy. You broke it. You broke it. Yeah. That's a lot darker than the ash. Oh my goodness yeah. What a difference. Oh there's gonna be some. This is gonna have some fun kind of shapes and burls and stuff. Yeah that's gonna be fun. You know all the behind the scenes stuff now. There is a hose but I'm waiting for you to use the hose. I've used it in approximately three videos. Man is this a test I've missed. Maybe. I'm sure someone watching this can name all yeah instances of hose usage. People have a really good memory somehow. I think we'll just roll it over now unless you want me to. Or I can cut a few off now. I don't know. It'll be fine. I'll just do that. Boy somebody really dumped a load. I get that. I'm like oh I'm walking uphill now. It always like surprises me and catches me off guard for some reason. Makes quick work of it. Now once you get going it's just not too bad. It's always like getting the log set up. Getting it for this. Making sure it's stable. Is it rolled the right way or some silly thing and then like this like oh you throw on the bed and just yeah go. A few minutes you're done. Yeah it doesn't take that long once you actually start cutting. Do you have something that you're thinking about the next thing? Did I ask you that already? The next thing in relation to what I guess? I don't know. I mean it's you know you have the urban logging and you you do that kind of stuff and then you do woodworking. I don't do enough for you? Is that what we're doing with this? No not at all. And you did your house remodel which was really cool. I love that by the way. Oh good. And uh the guy you worked with I mean he was. Donovan yeah he's great. He was great. Man he was made. He did great on camera. Yeah. He was so much fun. Every time that video came out I was I was raised watching PBS. Watching Home Time and This Old House. I still watch This Old House today. It's one of my favorite shows. Yeah the people who liked it really liked it. Yeah there isn't a feeling. Hopefully you're in a better mood about these. About about these? Hey. Slow-mo. That was pretty cool actually. Style points for sure. Oh yeah they got all kinds of fun burls and stuff in here for sure now. Oh yeah I like that. Yeah all the way down there. Mm-hmm. It's um knots and it it's very red though isn't it? That's burl oak. Yeah I thought it was part of the white oak. It is. Kind of family but it's pretty dark. Yeah it's very nice. That was very nice. Very graceful. Now there's schlop in this water all over the place. These are pretty nice. Definitely a different vibe than the last one. Yeah way way different. Also you know normal size or more normal size. More normal. You look like a normal sized person. I look like a normal sized person now. These are made in Pella, Iowa where I went to college. Oh really? I actually worked for Premier. Assembling stuff and then I got into quality control and then we moved away. But worked for Premier. Good company. Corner song. You found the ray fleck. Yeah this the one on the bed really has it. You can appreciate it when it's an entire slab. When you can take it all in with one look. Well without a hole in the middle of it. This is less holy that's for sure. It is. Hasn't gone to church. It was at the Bible conference. There you go. It's perfect. This is getting pretty clear too. Yeah. You got your tight knots in the middle there from the original limbs but there's not a whole lot of like defects out towards the exterior of the tree. Everything is pretty tight. Yeah it's a solid tree. What a difference. That's quite the contrast. No kidding. Good loft. You're gonna have to go back to the scoring system that you used to have. We could do that. There you go a little ray fleck. It's a there's a lot on that one. I guess we'll go walk over there and take a look because there's nothing crazy notable on these. No it's so boring. It's boring all that boring stuff. Yeah that's gonna be big. That's gonna be something. It's good for something. Look at that. We line up the piths perfectly here. Perfectly aligned pith. We spent a lot of time making sure that pith is leveled out end to end. So that's what's on the other side of that one. That's the underside of that one. So that could be some other table thing you could make. A book matched. Do you want to see how big this thing is? Yeah. I got some dimensions just to get an idea it looks. I carry my tape measure with me. That's pro tip. 32 right there. It didn't even look like that big of a log up there on the trailer. Nine and a half feet. This grain through here is really curves around right through there. That's right around that knot there. Yeah that's gorgeous. What do you think the chances are I can roll this log over with this thing? Oh well I think that's a really good chance of that. You think so? Yeah. All right. I'll be kind of disappointed if you can't. Yeah. Oh my goodness. Now you got it. Something to land on. Well I guess you were right. I did get it. It wasn't pretty. You were right though. That was right on the edge. It was right there. A little more and it wouldn't have happened. No. All right. All right so that's what we're gonna be and we're gonna have five cuts. Nice. I think. If that's the math. I don't know. See if it's still math. We'll see if it's still math. It's been a while. There's new math now. It is new math. It's different. When you said once that you use diesel to lubricate I thought oh it must stink so bad but you don't smell diesel at all once you mix it with the bar. Once you uh spill it on yourself. Then you do. Then you do but otherwise yes. I can't really smell it. I mean you'd in my mind it's like oh the wood probably smells and. I mean if you use a lot. Yeah. You would have to use a lot of diesel. Yeah. To get it to really smell like that or even to affect like the wood or something. Do you want to try and put that one aside because it's so narrow? Oh. Sure. Is that on top or something? Yeah. It wouldn't hurt. Not me. I glued them together. Yeah I know. What? There's rot. What? That dirty so-and-so. Oh it does have a hole. It's like a hoof. It does. It's a hoof print. Oh yeah. I mean there's a little bullseye knot thing down here. It's just I'm surprised how clear it is for how many like protuberances it had. Yeah I thought it would have a whole bunch of stuff going on. It's nice. It's real nice. Two right there. All right. Yep. Like the master. Yeah this has got some nice figure on top of this knot here. And then all these kind of fun burly things. Yeah. Yeah. Wannabes. Yeah. Look at this guy. That's cool. Wow. It's why is it so clear? I don't understand. That's really gorgeous though. Really clear straight grain. You know how to water manage. I have a few very specialized skills. Yeah there's just it's cool. I don't have a whole lot of noteworthy things to say here. This is cool with the kind of radial kind of thing going on there. This is great. A lot different than the last one. Well it's the variety that keeps it interesting. Yeah it does. Just those two logs was as far as we were able to get between Matt's long drive here and then he's got to drive back and I had to head out to go pick up my kids. That was kind of all we got to. So he left this third log which he said is maple. You can't even see it. It's buried in my giant pile it's not supposed to be here. He says he's going to come back at some point and we'll saw this thing up. So hopefully we'll see Matt again at some point in the future. It's a really enjoyable experience as always to share the sawmilling experience with another enthusiastic wood person. So thanks Matt for making the trip and coming to see me. So that is gonna do it for this one. Thank you as always for watching. I greatly appreciate if you have any questions or comments on the sawmill or anything back in the shop please feel free to leave me a comment. As always I'd be happy to answer any questions you might have and until next time happy woodworking!