What makes you mill?

[Tom Sawyer]

What everyone else said, plus there is something about hearing the Cat diesel purring that makes the testosterone flow. ;D ;D

[medic1289]

Tom Sawyer: So what explains my lady's love for milling ??? She has the bug almost as bad as I do!

[LeeB]

I do believe Tom has missed his true calling. Maybe now that he's not sawing anymore he should pursue a writting carrer. Reading some of the things he has posted over the years always bings me to mind of Samual Clemens.

[woodmills1]

I saw my first Woodmizer in action at the forestry show in Springfield mass in 1993 and just new I had to have one.  It was an HD 40 G24 and in 1995 I found one used and bought it

I really can't think of a better way to pay the bills and have a little left for enjoyment.  I used to be the guy who would pick up a pallet to take home and dismantle to see what I could get from it.  Now I move 100 hundreds of thousands of board feet of logs and lumber.  I cut some of the robert frost tree, my wood was used by the winner of the high school woodworkers competition in mass last year, and my lumber has been on tv due to my barrel maker customer.

and there is nothing like opening my wallet at the bank and having a whack of sawdust fall out. :D

[Tom Sawyer]

Tom Sawyer: So what explains my lady's love for milling ??? She has the bug almost as bad as I do!

Umm...  Mabye she likes having all those piles of sawdust to clean ??? ??? ???

[Nate Surveyor]

and there is nothing like opening my wallet at the bank and having a whack of sawdust fall out. :D

Boy is that true!!



N


PS, um how do I do the inserted quote? OOPS! got it!

[pineywoods]

I do believe Tom has missed his true calling. Maybe now that he's not sawing anymore he should pursue a writting carrer. Reading some of the things he has posted over the years always bings me to mind of Samual Clemens.

If you ain't seen Tom's web site, you have missed a lot. I keep going back and re-reading all his stories. Specially the possum sandwich story and the bit about the peas and the wooden spoon..  ;D  priceless

[blueduck]

I run my mil for various reasons, but the biggest one is that it continues to teach me patients, yes most of the world is in a race to get-r-did and go recreate somewhere, everyone is in a hurry and they have no idea why, with the sawmill it only saws at a steady pace, completes its cycle in about the same time frame each pass, and at the end of the day I can see an accomplishment of what has taken place that day.

I started out with a mill because the big mills we were hauling in to decided that it was better to take the logs and not pay honest scale, I was hauling on a '58 F-800 and was scaling out about 1500 average [got as high as 2400] but then one spring the scale on the same logs they were happy to see got me 800, 900 and 1100 feet one week when we started back on frosty roads and that was it, I knew i could saw more than that out of those logs and dad and I  went looking for something to use..... visited a cousin-in-law who had a old model G Mighty Mite and a Precision scragg beaver mill [small cedar fencing he cut with it] even hauled over a few cedar logs to watch them go through, well we couldnt afford the 100 grand for the scragg set up so when he told of a Model 127 Mobile dimension that a fella needed to get rid of we went and made our deal..... No one can get a book learnin like that which is offered running a mill, reading a log, decipherin what it has in it, how to cut it for the best yeild, and the desire to make it better than is offered at any lumberyard.....

Tom is right the people Ive met over the years are from all walks of life, of course i met the one president 7 years afore i got the sawmill, and the one that was related to us never did come visit while he was in office [I spect it was Nancy what did not approve of the black sheep in the family her daughter married into, but then i coulda been wrong, and o'course we woulda treated them like any other visitors, they woulda got the clean plates to eat victuals offn] Ive been around those folks who have made millions too, and those who are still working on their first, retired Generals and those who barely made it past basic training all in need of lumber, Ive only met a few folks i never cared to meet again, and they eventualy got convicted somewhere of something [not that i aint ever been on both sides of the written law afore, but not when milling logs at least]

And what other profession cana fella do for 6-9 months out of the year, pay all the bills and go hunting anytime he wants, or fishin when the notion strikes? those folks who dont make a living at milling logs either have not tried it full time or are not in the right market... and i admit that a couple years it was slim and i went and worked other jobs to occupy the timeslot..... and pay the bills, but the mill is payed for and I can work it when i want, and love to see the look on folks faces when they ask where i work and I tell them I am "self-UN-employed" with my portable mill..... I can set isde with my feet in the oven and starve if i want as opposed to having to go out and pay for equipment [yes i am thinking of getting a new mill, but 2 mills will double the payback time as long as I can find a competent person to run one of them and I will have the $70 grand payed off in a years time frame, maybe less]

I understand the markets I have to a large degree, and the custom market is played out for a few years for the most part, the cycle is down and going on the upswing but slow, the large picture is what i like seeing, and if i have to park the mill it beckons me back with promises of not having to talk to anyone while its running, with the smells of different woods and resins, and with the lure of a few more dollars to once again return to the hunting grounds and fishin holes ive found over the years..... besides giving the wife a new pair of boots to shovel sawdust in...... <-----[ok if she reads that i am in trouble]

The reasons to quit just dont outnumber all the reasons to keep going on sawing.

William
Central Idaho