The Forestry Forum

Sawing some road side trees lately!

I was sawing a 24 inch X 14 foot White Pine butt log and it had a bunch of "State Land" signs on it from over the years.

Well I pulled all of them off and figured I had all of the nails too.

I had it on the mill, leveled and ready to start cutting, well I hit a nail before I was into the log 2 feet.

I finished the cut and made up my mind that even though there were marks on the cant, that I was going to remove all of the slabs before I changed  the blade!

We took a short break before turning the log and, the nail strike was visible between the blade roller guides and I got to thinking about it and figured the marks were caused by nail pieces stuck on the teeth.

I took a 3-cornered file and picked all of the little curls of "nail" off of the teeth.  Well low and behold, I cut another 600 board feet of good quality lumber before changing the blade.

Sometimes things just seem to work out!  8)

Good fact to know. Next nail i hit ill check for that. Worst thing ive hit so far was a stainless cable in a log. Talk about ruining a band. I had services and said a few words over that poor band. :D

I was really surprised after picking the pieces of metal off of the teeth.

There was barely a stray mark on the lumber, that blade cut just like new!

I often do that if I am sawing a log and think I haven't hit the last nail in that log.  Picking the metal bits off will often make the blade usable at least for the rest of the log.

Nick