Sawmills, White Oak, Green and Air Dried - Restoring Elliot White

[Paul Maselli]

Here on Long Island there is 1 mill still operating maybe 2 tops. I can get green white oak timbers from them but getting Air Dried is probably another story. Can anyone fess up the secret locations of a few sawmills in lower New England. I'm going to need quite a few board feet of dried stock as well as a keel timber some 22 feet long. I'd just like to know how many mills are still out there and providing lumber to boatbuilders.

[Bob Smalser]

http://www.sawmill-exchange.com/index.htm

http://www.mobilemfg.com/

http://www.baileys-online.com/

http://www.woodmizer.com/welcome.html

http://www.powersources.com/timberwolf/?43,62

Check the phonebook and the mill manufacturers/sellers for portable sawmillers locally. The mill builders are happy to provide names of local guys who own their mills. Local tree service guys will know of them, too. Few advertise.

[Venchka]

Buried in the fine print classifieds of WoodenBoat Mag. is an ad for New England Naval Timbers. Bring your own truck and trailer. Duke is the owner. He's located in CT near the MA border, west of the CT river as I recall. Northwest of Hartford. Most likely he's got what you need.

[Venchka]

Now I'm in the office where the information is:

Boatbuilding lumber source in New England:

DUKE AT
NEW ENGLAND NAVAL TIMBERS
CORNWALL, CT 06753
860-693-8425 VOICE
860-843-7636 FAX

[Thomas Garber]

Hey Paul,

I'm getting another order of white oak from Duke in the next week or so, maybe we can combine them and save on trucking. I live in Hampton Bays.

[Bruce Hooke]

If I'm reading your post correctly you are looking for lumber that someone has taken the time to air dry. If so I don't think the places Bob posted are going to do any better than your local mills -- all of them are going to focus on sawing lumber and then either selling it right away or kiln drying it.

Unless Duke can help you, for small dimension stuff (under 2 1/2" thick) you may well have to dry it yourself to get air dried lumber -- this is not hard to do but would probably mean that the wood would not be fully air dried until the end of this coming summer. For stock over 2 1/2" thick or so your best bet is probably to get it green and seal it up to try to keep it from drying out too much while you build the boat. Timbers of this size are most likely for the backbone assembly (unless you are building a really big boat) so once the boat is launched they will be completely saturated with water anyway. Trying to air dry a 5" thick piece of hardwood would take half of forever.

[Bob Smalser]

Yup.

But the places Bob posted are one of the best ways to find you local mills, as few advertise. The company that sold them the mills is the first one to ballyhoo who has them as an advertisement.

I ain't in the phone book at all for anything...all my work in every field comes from referrals...I'm into milling as a personal rather than business venture, but if you have a tree or two I'm interested in, we could work something out.

[windfall]

It's a long way but trucking isn;t that expensive...Adam Weslow SAW MiLL in Morrisville VT 802-888-2700. He cut all the oak for the Louis Mclure, 88' schooner launching next year on Lake Champlain. Admittidily he won't have air dried stock on Hand but he runs a Vacum Kiln and does it carefully and will stop it at 12-15% if you ask. It's the next best thing to air dried. I usually hate KD wood but the planking stock he dried for us was great and still bent beutifully.