My timber frame build

[Magicman]

I am looking forward to when you can get started but not nearly as much as you are.  

[ljohnsaw]

Update 4/30/18:

Been having lots of warm (80's) down at home so figured it was time to head up the hill.  I loaded up with 30 cement blocks (for stacking wood) and some aluminum covers for my lumber piles.  I picked up off CL some corrugated roofing from a 70s style patio cover.  It was made in 1 foot sections with 2 corrugations each.  I pieced them back together into 4 foot wide sections.  Had enough to make two 9 foot and three 12 foot long.  I used the aluminum gutter channels as the cross bars.  Made for a stiff but lightweight cover.

It looked like there was about ¼" of snow that fell last night.  All of that melted by the afternoon. 



 

 I spent the day re-arranging my wood  stacks - combining the two "post" piles into one taller stack, pulling out all the 2x stock into one stack, piling all the 4x6 brace stock into one stack and installing all the new covers.

No real good pictures from before but this gives you the idea of the mess it was:

After:
Moved the short stack of 4x6 under the plywood to the stack in the back and moved the 8x8, 8x10 and 8x12 posts onto the stack in the back center.  The 6x12 in the far back are cedar sills for the porch.  Have 2 cut, need 1 more.  That area will be the home for the long rafters (26')


 

All the 2x material in a new stack on the left.

The stack against the wall on the left is 5x9 floor joists for the loft.  The right stack has a couple of 3x12 stair runners and some misc 2x3s and 1x4 (strapping) from when I first started cutting.

 
Not the final configuration but I will be cutting up a lot of short (10') logs into 2x8 for the roof deck and stacking them on the empty blocks in the middle of the floor.

[Magicman]

It's good to finally see you "up and at um". 

[ljohnsaw]

I spent some time aligning the blade on my mill this morning.  Then I went at that big log that I loaded on the mill bed before the snow.  It was 10' long, 24 small end, 29 big end.  It was cut about 5 months ago and was still very wet.  I got an 8x8 out of the middle and a lot of side wood, 4x6, 2x10 and lot of 1x2 battens/stickers - 255 bd-ft total.

The mill cut nice and straight (until I attempted to cut my log clamp...).  I took off the hand crank and installed a wheelchair motor so it made raising and lowering a joy.  Had to use my antique car jack to raise the small end up 4" - SO much better then using pry bars.  My starter solenoid gave up - I had to short the terminals to start it each time, time to get a new one.

[fishfighter]

Adding a wheelchair motor to raise and lower the head was the best thing I did to my mill too!

It looks like you are starting to run out of space.

[ljohnsaw]

Update 5-18-2018:

Been spending some days cutting the logs from the campground.  Just have two left - the long one that looks a little punky and a short one with a big sweep to mill into bench slabs.  I did have a big 24" log that just didn't want to be cut.  The blade would dive big time at the knots no matter what we tried.  So I gave up and have a ~ 10" x 20" x 13' "bench" with one live edge.

The rest of the logs were pretty well behaved and made some very nice lumber.  I'm doing mostly 2x10's with a few 2x8's very few 2x6's (for roof planking).  There was a pretty good wack of 1x4 (strapping) that have been produced as well.  The space is filling up!

11 to 13' boards:



9 to 10' boards (made a couple 8x8 posts and some 4x6 brace stock in the back top of stack):



1x4's



 

Next up is the 20 remaining logs from my neighbor...

[fishfighter]

You moving along now.

You might want to build a sticker box to store stickers in. For some reason, them suckers spread out all over the place.  Before you know it, they will be growing out the ground.

[ljohnsaw]

Update 5/21/2018:

Just spent a little while up the hill.  Had a couple of slabs off the log from last week to finish up.  Made two 4x6 and eight 1x4  x12'9".  Cleaned up a lot of pine slabs I was thinking of making into benches or something but just don't have the time and they were checking a bit.  So, off to the burn pile.  I stacked them Lincoln Log style and then piled the fresh(er) slabs around it.  I'll light it off first thing tomorrow morning.


 
I actually did some work on the cabin! I pulled out the two 6x12x13' sills for the porch deck (still have to cut one more) and bolted them down.  I left them long for now.


  I ended the day by loading a big log for tomorrow.  Hope to do a lot of cutting while the slabs burn.

[Magicman]

Hopefully you will get good weather and can make some progress. 

[Weekend_Sawyer]

Wow, I just red this thread over 2 days, in between actually working,
What a great build you are doing.
Thanks for sharing.

Jon

[ljohnsaw]

Update 6/1/18:

Made it up Thursday morning with a friend and he brought along his girlfriend's son.  We stayed in a neighbor's cabin overnight and did lots of milling - about 9 hours each day.  But that includes scraping off sawdust and making my piles bigger down in the cabin basement.
Our little helper.  A very big kid who is only 5!


   Scroll up this tread to see what this looked like not too long ago!

 

 
Totals for Thursday was 910 bd-ft of which 712 bd-ft is for the roofing boards (2x10).  Friday was 728 bd-ft (584 for roofing) and two log stop hits with fairly new blades   My roofing percent went from 37% to 60% cut and the overall cut is up to 30% complete.  I have a few more logs left and then it is on to the main beams and rafters that make up 30% of the bd-ft to cut.

[Magicman]

Wow John, you are gonna soon have to build so that you can have more stacking room! 

Looking good. 

[ljohnsaw]

Update: 6/13/2018

Went up early Saturday morning after dropping my son at the airport at 0430!  Stayed up until this afternoon.

Saturday morning I re-hooked up my water to my bath house.  It can be gravity fed (for the toilet and the sink) and has a 12v pump for the shower.  I re-aligned the pipes at the holding tank in the cabin basement and turned the water on.  I walked around to the bath house only to see water flowing fast and free from under the bath house .  I shut the water off and walked back - I forgot I put in a threaded cap underneath and had taken it off for the winter .  Put it back on and turned on the water.  Then I found my tankless water heater was leaking.   I had removed the plug to winterize but it still seems to have gotten damaged.  I bypassed the water heater.

I was staying at a neighbor's cabin (with a hot shower ).  PG&E had dropped a tree last year and I had them leave it whole.  They trimmed and chipped the branches   I cut the top 8 foot or so off leaving me a 53' log.  I had to reach in with my SkyTrak to retrieve it - I didn't know where their water tank was located.  At full extension I could not lift it, just drag it - barely!  I supported one end in my log arch and carried the other with the SkyTrak (no, my truck is not attached to the arch).  I pushed it down the road and was actually quite easy to steer.

Notice the cable...

 It actually came out pretty easy!

 


Sunday, my fishing buddy came up and we sawed the last "good" log - 20/22" x 12'.  Cut great and got eleven 2x10s and some other side stuff.  Then we put on a "bad" log.  24" top and 30x36" base with a bend.  Hard and nasty pine.  First boards (1x's) came off great then when we got into wide stuff, the blade went wherever it wanted.  Changed blades, more tension, added lube - still bad.  Tossed it aside as a bench.


Monday decided try one more "bad" log.  This one was straight but big - 26" - and fairly dry.  Couple of cuts were good but then went crazy.  Flipped it and the same thing (with a new blade).  It became a bench, too. 

 

 So, switched to do some dirt work on the east side.  Before:

 
Tuesday finished the rock/dirt work.  Will add "little" rocks I can lift into the holes where you see dirt.

 

 
With a little more daylight, I started on redoing my water line.  When I first installed the line and conduit, I had MANY pallets of FasWall blocks in the way.  I hand dug about 10 feet trench about 18" down.  Since then, I regraded the drive much lower and snagged the conduit.  After digging for a little bit, I had this tree stump with a very large lateral root:

 

Wednesday finished up the re-routing of the water and conduit.  I couldn't budge the stump with my backhoe and the SkyTrak did nothing - even with over 9,000lb of lifting force and more with the fork curl.  So, I washed the roots down with water to try and cut them out. 

You can see where I cut next to the stump but as expected, hit a rock.  So I tunneled under finding soccer ball-sized rocks and then back filled.

   Finished the grading on the west side.


I'll be back up in about 10 days to stay for a week.  Hope to attack the 53' log to make my 8x12x51' floor beam and then start taking down some of my trees for the other main beams, taller posts and rafters.

[fishfighter]

Looks like you got a lot done on that trip.

[samandothers]

A lot was done!  Probably seemed like way more work than results!
Thanks for sharing!

[ljohnsaw]

Probably seemed like way more work than results!

 
Thanks.  Yes, little to show for the effort expended!  Eleven to 13 hour days...

[NorcalMatt]

Looks great John!  If you’re up where I think you are, that 53’ tree is probably a rarity. Don’t leave a toe board up!

[ljohnsaw]

Don’t leave a toe board up!

Toeboard?  What's a toeboard?   My homemade mill don't have them!  I use a manual jack.

Actually, I have about 7 or 8 trees next to the cabin I'm taking down that are taller!

[NorcalMatt]

Awesome!  The fire nearby (maybe 2001) must have missed your place.  How long of log can your mill handle?

[ljohnsaw]

When you exit the freeway, you are looking down the Yuba River watershed.  You make a short right and that is the American River watershed.  The "Yuba Gap" fire in 2001 was in the American River watershed.  My cabin is on the Yuba River side of the slight ridge.  The neighbor's cabin I get to use when I stay up to work has a few big trees out about 100-200' from the back (south).  The rest of the land is clear from the fire.  My cabin site is about 1,000' north of where the fire was.

My mill is 3 sections of track.  One is 16', one is 16' 8" and the third is about 6'-something IIRC.  So it is about 38' long and will do a ~33' log.  I made some 5' "parking track" to attach to each end which gives me another 10' (43').  I'm going to pick up some more steel on Monday to make two "lightweight" sections of 5' each so I will extend to ~53'.  These sections will not have log bunks, they will just be track with a scissor jack supporting them mid-span.