Processing your own oak boards

We are blessed with an abundance of hardwood and we lost several giant oak trees during the drought last year. This Oak tree is almost a yard wide, and the rings indicate that it was about 160 years old when it died, probably born right before the Civil War. The ole Oak has seen a lot of history . . . .

I spent over $3,000 on emergency tree-age for it a few years back, but the elderly patient died anyway, (most red Oaks only live to be 100-150 years old, so I don’t feel too bad).



But now, I get my money back in lumber!



Most hardwood planers are only 2 to 3 feet wide and cost over $25,000, so I’m just going to haul the dried boards to the mill again for final finishing. A according to Travis and Dallas, this mega log weighs over 5,000 pounds, and it’s too heavy for my biggest excavator. It’s gonna be a real treat loading-up this hummer for the trip to the mill. . .

I’ve harvested several great cedar trees and a giant persimmon, and they are now ready for planing. As a follow-up to my post on processing your own hardwood lumber, I finally harvested the old persimmon tree, and I’ve got several more giant Oaks out on the back 40, enough for a whole new house. The persimmon came out great, a very fine blonde hardwood:



Now, I’ve got the issue of extracting the fancy burl from the stumps. They are too big to hand saw, and I don’t want to waste fine burl due to kerf lossage from a chain saw, so here they sit:



This Oak stump has the most promise, but she’s massive, I don’t know where to start:



We dearly love burl, but I cannot figure out how to slice her up:



Cousin Mac has some ideas, and it looks like I have no choice but to slice the stumps up into 24 inch slices. The big question is how?