What are you cutting 2024? - pics welcome

[doc henderson]

So, a tree service ai know called with about "50" pine logs.  I told them I would take the bigger ones at least 8 to 10 inches. and a few strait smaller ones to make posts.  I showed up and met the homeowner and she was 86.  she had asked them to leave one particular log, as it looked neat.  It had gray stain she could see from the cut end.  I offered to take a short piece and cut it up for her.  She said she wanted a few slabs.  (cookies).



This is a few on the mill.  this is what it looks like to cut a stack.



this is what it looks like when you have a tall stack and drop the head before you get behind the stack.  It looked like a drunk robotics card dealer at a casino on the jetsons.  or the little star trek toy gun that shoots the discs back in the 80s.  you get the idea. 



this is an engraved one.  you can see why she thought it was cool.  she requested one engraved, so when I got home, I made cookies and engraved it and took it back to her in about half an hor.  then she asked if I could make a few more.  In the end I made one more than every ten years of her life. 






a bunch raw




a bunch with cutting board oil on.  She liked this best. 

[customsawyer]

Doc that is one fine deed you did for that lady. I'm going to give you a pat on the back and a ata boy

[cutterboy]

Doc, you have a kind heart. Bless you.

[nativewolf]

@teakwood what you really need is a ponsse bear and an elephant all tracked up.  Now that you are an important mining magnate you will need equipment to depreciate and reduce your tax obligations.  Plus it will keep you from getting your toes muddy.  We all know the Swiss hate getting toes muddy.  I have lots of other excellent reasons for making a generous offer on our equipment.  

Enjoy the cooler weather, thanks for the pics!

[nativewolf]

In our work to save this white oak stand we are sometime faced with a need to remove some larger YP but where to put them ...where to put them.  You can see in the first 2 pics that this YP wanted to go right into our save WO (with a nice veneer log in a future harvest).  Our challenge was moving it into the gap you can see in the canopy and not move it so much that it smacked the bark of the save YP.











So a wedge and manipulating hinge thickness let me move this one into the gap in the canopy.

[nativewolf]

Looked at a property we'll harvest in November. 



One the larger and nicer scarlet oak that I've seen.  Still it has to be at end of life as this is not a young stand.  So, down it will come, 42" dbh.  Seedlings are there, we'll remove the worst competition with a basal spray (red maple, beech, glackgum).  Hopefully we'll see more.

[Nealm66]

Threading the needle

[cutterboy]

Yesterday morning I went after this white pine. This pine is the last one of a stand I've been working on for the last 6-7 years. This has opened up a half acre wildlife area in the woods. Anyway I cut it down and started transporting the logs out to the barnyard.






All the logs from this tree will be stored on this platform to keep them off the ground. They will be left there for 6-8 weeks to let the pitch dry out.
Back to the woods this morning for a couple more logs.





As you can see in the next picture the pitch is oozing out of the ends of the logs. If I were to saw them now the band and sawmill would become a sticky mess.



Tomorrow I'll go after more logs if it doesn't rain.


  Keep on cutting.....Cutter

[Magicman]

Looking good my friend, mighty fine indeed!! 

[Stephen1]

I didn't cut them but the arborists and their crew did and dropped them in my yard
Sap everywhere on the pavement dripping out the ends. 

[BurkettvilleBob]

That scarlet oak is a beauty. I've never heard of that species.

[cutterboy]

It took me a couple of days to get the rest of the pine logs out of the woods because of the rainy weather. That tree gave me eight 8ft logs. I'd like to do another pine but I also need red oak, red maple and cherry.

[Magicman]

That log whack looks awesome, enjoy the accomplishment. 

[cutterboy]

Thanks MM, the first three logs are really nice and the rest are ok.

[Wlmedley]

Those first three are really nice.They would be a joy to saw.I've found the crooked ones make about as much slabs as lumber but still make nice lumber.

[aigheadish]

Welp, I've never posted to this thread, and I guess it's about time, seeings as two big-for-me trees are now on the ground, and I'm still alive.

If I have my druthers I will use the backhoe to push trees down. Unfortunately, it has problems that I don't know how to fix, so while I procrastinate on calling a mechanic my lovely wife asked me to take down some dead trees. My time at the pig roast inspired me to actually get out there with the saw and do it.

I'm still not a big fan of cutting down trees. This one was a dead standing ash. My wedge cut was not great and when I came at the back side I got about a fifth of the way through and the tree decided to lean hard, but not fall. After running away I stood there and stared at it for about 10 minutes before I dove back in. I cut a few more inches into it and it shifted around a bit again and off I ran to stare it it some more. Still just leaning, and the breeze wasn't pushing it enough. Dove back in and finished up, it fell right where I wanted and I didn't die. Wee!



The next was a dying honey Locust. Again, not a great wedge cut, but this one was holding better than the ash. I got the wedge cut but needed to finish it from the side the tree was leaning to, cutting slow and watching for any movement I managed to do OK as I cut through the back. It fell where I thought it would but not really where I wanted. I don't think I had much option there. It's laying across the creek but I should be able to drag it out. It also had a mess of wire fence or something grown into it so I had to cut higher than I would have liked.



Two is enough for me for the eevening.  Though I did a woodpecker pole up front, that one didn't count.

I've decided that chainsawing, to me, is a lot like riding a motorcycle. Both would be a lot of fun if they weren't so scary!

[Old Greenhorn]

Nicely done Austin. One of the things that was hard for me to learn early on was that you have time when cutting these things, especially the smaller ones under 20". If you noticed, when I cut that little pecker pole in Jeff's yard, I stopped when the tree started to move, just as you did.  We had a rope on that one so I figured the crew would just yank t over, but the hinge was too thick and no go, just like yours did.  You can work your way up on that hinge nice and easy as long as there is no chance of a barber chair. The other way of looking at it ids that even though you see movement, you can continue to cut until you hit the hinge thickness you wanted or it really starts to go over.
 What you did on your trees was fine and worked out nicely, which is all that matters. On bigger trees you have to hang in there a few seconds more and chase that cut up to your desired hinge and then bail out and it should go right over.
 Good plan on that second tree too. Taking it high was the smart way to go. Now you can go back and clean that stump off at ground height, unless you want a flower pot stand. I took an ash once on the edge of a pasture and wound up putting the notch 5" above grade because of the barbed wire form 100 years ago. I cut a clean cut, but when I put that butt log on the mill, I hit wire 3' further up the log. I have no idea how that wire got up that high.
 By the way, little dead trees can hurt you as much as big ones if you take them for granted. No tree (in my book) doesn't count. I got in a real bad spot last fall taking a 10" mushroom tree 10" from a 10KV overhead line. I thought it was an easy 'cut and push' (by hand). Turned out I was wrong and the weight was just against me a little bit. I stood there holding that tree from falling backwards (into the lines) for about 5 minutes trying to get it to go over. I even called for help but nobody was around. I could barely hold it. Finally I managed to one-hand the saw and thin the hinge and using every fiber in my legs, I got it to go over. I thought my legs would explode. Lesson re-learned: never underestimate a small tree.
 Nicely done.

[teakwood]

Not cutting, just looking. Amazing!!

[Magicman]

I smiled when I saw what a marvelous trip that WOC is taking you on. 

[aigheadish]

Thanks for the words of encouragement, Tom. The two bigger trees were probably in the 18-22" range as my 20" bar wasn't going all the way through. They sketched me and the wife out enough that 2 was enough. The small tree I didn't count was essentially sponge, it could have landed square on my head and I'da been fine.

@teakwood those are great! Amazing trees aren't they? So big!

@caveman I took your Husqvarna sharpening jig advice and it's treating me well, thank you!

Through the miracle of modern machinery, namely a tractor that drug most of the tree to the firepile and a chainsaw, weve managed to melt down most of the bigger ash tree already.

[aigheadish]

I moved the big trunk log over to the fire, yesterday, and bucked it up for the fire. I found several with some real nice streaks of spalting in them, so i set them to the side to cut further. I tried using my fancy new bandsaw to cut, like a mill, a round that was probably 12ish inches around. I was using a pretty stout blade but couldn't cut a straight line, the cut would start at about 2" into the wood then run to about 1" on the end of the cut. It also wasn't as easy for the saw as I was hoping... We'll see what happens.

[B.C.C. Lapp]

aigheadish the more you cut the better you'll get at it.  Its only the first couple thousand or so trees that's hard.    I started cutting timber in 1997.  I think I'm starting to get the hang of it.

[BargeMonkey]

After 70 days I'm ready to go home.

 

[BargeMonkey]

Finishing up a clearing job, Timbco is already moved, need to move 1x skidder, stroker and slasher up by the weekend.

Walk to the right of that dozer and it turns into ledge UP and then DOWN. State comes out and monitors the dens, only seen 1x so far here but I haven't went looking.
Had a few more brush piles to get rid of,

Had 2x customers breaking my balls, had some wood left on this job and quoted them a cheap trucking price just to clean it up, guy thought I was joking when I said I was going to throw a match on the log pile.

Now he wants a bridge across this small creek come spring 🤦....  Wicked pile of road I've put in on this job.

[cutterboy]

The rain stopped finally so up to the woods for this red oak. The one on the right. Last year I cut a few trees in this area and made a little clearing. I like to drop trees into a clearing, it's so much easier to work on them. This tree fell into the clearing, I cut it into logs and moved them to the log deck in between the barns.




The last 16 foot section was in thick brush so I pulled it out into the clearing, cut it in half and transported the two logs to the sawmill.



That tree gave me six 8' logs.


Now I want to grab another pine before I saw these oak logs.


  Keep on cutting.....Cutter