A few days milling beautiful Elm in Inverurie

Back in January I spent a couple of days up in Inverurie milling Elm with Keith Threadgall and Tom Cooper. Despite the cold weather we got some good cutting done and graded through 7 tonnes of logs. We were fortunate to be able to pick and choose from 20 plus tonnes of Elm to get a good mix of straight grain, character and burr boards. Lengths varied from 1500 to 2800mm and upto 500mm wide which we cut to our usual sizes of 32, 40 and 54mm thickness with a few boards at 60mm too.

We got the boards hauled down to the workshops at the end of february and we’ve been getting them stacked and stickered ready for air drying since then. We decided to give everything a good dose of Borax (ACS Boratreat 10p) to stop and fungal infection and sticker marks from spoiling the wood. Hopefully the Borax will deter woodworm from feasting on the fresher wood. Most of the elm has come from standing deadwood and has a much lower moisture content and less sap wood so we’re not anticipating too much trouble with wood borers…

Just need to wait a year or so before we can get this into the kiln and dry it down to 8 - 10% moisture content ready for use. Gives me plenty of time to decide what to make from it - any suggestions?