Whatcha Sawin' ???

[Jim_Rogers]

Saturday, I traveled some 24 miles east of me, which puts me right at the coast, into the town of Rockport. I set up in the driveway of the cabinet shop to saw the large Ash log he had ready.

It was a challenge to get the mill in between the loading dock and the log, but we got it there and with the log loader arms down:



 

That log was very big and had some metal in it, as well as a crotch at the top. He wanted some large slabs to make benches, and instructed me to cut deep on two sides to make large pieces. These pieces were so large and heavy that they had to cut them into 4' lengths in order to get them off the mill:



 

In the above picture, Steve with the hat on, is cutting the slab with a very small branch trimming chain saw. It could barely cut through the slabs:



 

Next came 2" thick by 24" wide table top pieces. The log was 14' long and that made them very heavy. We used a roller to move them down to the end of the mill so that the four guys there could carry them off:



 

After sawing up this Ash log we moved on to a very large walnut. It had some wire hanging off the side which was attached to a hook we managed to turn out. But we did hit other metal in this log:



 

We did make some very nice 1 1/2" x 20" x 8' pieces from that log.

Next we moved the mill down the driveway to saw out some coffee bean tree logs:



 

Some of the pieces of that tree were very nice:



 

But again these logs were very short, some only 4' long.

At the end of the day, I had to move the mill out of the driveway so I could get my truck out and go home.

The next day, Sunday, we started on the second pile out at the end of the driveway which were all locust logs:



 

And some of them were short too:



 

Here are some pictures of the lumber stacks he made:



 



 

And he had other pieces leaning up every where:



 



 



 

After the coffee bean logs, we did the last walnut and all of that log was cut into 3" thick slabs for benches, table tops or whatever:



 

He was very surprised at the volume of lumber he got.

Jim Rogers

[Jim_Rogers]

Monday morning, I hauled the mill some 30 miles south into the heart of the city. I set up in the back parking lot and they brought out some 12x12x20' southern yellow salvage beams for me to mill into 1" flooring.



 

They told me that they had scanned every beam and had pulled all the nails/hardware. I scanned the first one and found metal.

During this process the neighbor, man standing at the fence in the back ground, asked if we had a permit to do such work. The crew chief asked him why would we need a permit to cut wood. He called the boss of the company and we got shut down without even making one cut.

I hauled the mill home and set up in my yard, and attached my 6' bed extension.

Later that day, they showed up at my yard with a small excavator and a truck loaded with half of the beams for me to process:



 

Using a clamp rig that I have never seen before they off loaded the truckload of beams. Some were 12x12 and others were 12x14.

Today we started in cutting them up:



 

And after dulling every sharp blade I had on hand we had to stop for the day:



 

This one had something in the crack that dulled the blade as soon as it passed through it:



 

But some of them were very nice looking:



 

I'm sharpening blades for tomorrow session.

They have 30+ beams for me to do.

Jim Rogers

[50 Acre Jim]

During this process the neighbor, man standing at the fence in the back ground, asked if we had a permit to do such work. The crew chief asked him why would we need a permit to cut wood. He called the boss of the company and we got shut down without even making one cut.
Jim Rogers

What's wrong with people? 

[Magicman]

Wow Jim, those were/are some nice sawing jobs.  Sometime hiccups go with the territory but having satisfied customers is the name of the game.

[Banjo picker]

Thats the way to endear yourself to your neighbors i would think.  Banjoists

[Bruno of NH]

Jim
You can't run a portable mill in the city ?
Was it at the contractors yard ?
Some cities want a permit for every thing now.
That's why I'm slowly getting out of the building side of things it keeps getting harder to do business .
Run the mill at my place buy my own logs and sell my lumber looks better for me every day.
Nice job on the milling the beam flooring looks great .

[Sixacresand]

The neighbor has probably been a victim of not having a permit for something he was doing and just wanted to share his misery.

[Magicman]

Or maybe just a busybody miserable person.

[John S]

A permit to resaw old beams?  I would think that the city would pay a bonus for recycling!  What does the future hold in store?

[paul case]

Good job there Jim.
I wonder if the coffee bean tree is the same as our Kentucky coffee tree?

The best part of having an interested neighbor that runs you off, Is there are many more that are glad you are there.

They are like one fly in the soup.
PC

[WV Sawmiller]

   Good looking jobs. Glad they worked out for you.

   I hate busybodies. Maybe if you had asked the neighbor if he had anything he wanted sawed while you were there he'd have been happy to have you around. The last job I had was way down a winding private road and the last couple hundred yards were going to be tricky. The neighbor had a 16' RO and told his neighbor to bring the logs to his level field by the road so we sawed there. The young neighbor helped off bear even though he only had one log and the customer had 6. I had to make a fast trip to Fla last weekend to take Mom home and the customer called and wanted me to come back and saw some more logs he has cut.

    Dad had a chain link fence company and would sometimes have a landline fence in town. He would "hire" the neighborhood kids to make sure nobody wiggled the posts till the concrete set up (Of course they were the ones he worried about but this tactfully solved the problem). One customer came home after we had left and went out to look at the posts and started to wiggle them to see if dry and the neighbor kid rushed out with his BB gun and shooed him away.

   The last time I sawed next door to a customer's neighbor I knocked on their door before I ever started the mill to make sure it was not going to cause them problems. They were happy once I explained and it went well.

[JV]

A neighbor brought a solid dead ash over to saw into blocking.  Got that done and decided to clean up the ERC that was stacked 5 years ago.  Our fence row cedar doesn't get very big.  These logs were old trees out of a lawn.  So far no metal.  My neighbor was wanting to dodge some honey do jobs and brought his skid loader along to help.  Neither of us feel like doing a full day so we work until it gets hot and quit. We aren't half way through yet but we keep whittling away.  I had already sawn quite a bit 5 years ago but used most of it.  The sapwood is junk but the rest is solid.



 



 

[Magicman]

Hey that is good looking ERC, and nothing wrong with quitting when it gets hot.   

[50 Acre Jim]

Jim,

Post a picture or two of your clamping setup and where the problem is and I can see if I can figure out what is going on.  I have used the same model mill that you have and we were definitely able to clamp and saw a 1" board without doing anything special.

Yes, you are probably right.  I was playing with the log stop today and realized that I can flip the metal thingy and drop the stop to its lowest position and maybe I could cut to 1" of the bunks.   But it would be tight and at my stage of development, I think I'll just settle for a 2X? at the end of the run. 

[Magicman]

Yes, sawing to 1" is always tight.  My side supports have to be all of the way down and my log clamp "eyeballed" down to ¾".  It will work every time without fail.  The failure is when you forget or overlook something.      :-\   

[50 Acre Jim]

BTW, can anyone tell me why my lumber has these threads hanging off the side?  I was using a new blade, only had 1 or 2 cuts on it. 

TIA

Jim

[btulloh]

Strings.  I don't think they can be avoided on many species.  The grain direction changes between the far right side of the picture and where the strings starts.  With the grain running out, they're definitely going to occur.  Nothing to do with your sawing.  Sometimes I get rid of them right away when they're nice and tender.  Sometimes later when I use the lumber.  A quick pass with the pocket knife knocks 'em right off.  High angle of attack, going in the direction the strings ( to the right in this case).

On sawing to 1" of the deck:  Sawing to 1" is doable on almost all bandmills, but I find it's not worth my trouble in most cases.  It's always a little tense.  Too many things have to be right or you waste a blade.  Dogging that thin invites the cant to raise off the bed with my dogs. Flipping the cant and leaving a 2x works so well in most cases it's just the best way (for me).  That way the pith board is automatically sorted out of the good stuff. A lot of times the cant is asking to be flipped at that point anyway.  I never sweat that 1" pass unless is it's a special circumstance.  It's just what works for me.

[WV Sawmiller]

   I asked the same thing a few weeks ago. I get them on tulip poplar often. See thread below for comments about them.
https://forestryforum.com/board/index.php/topic,96001.msg1481089.html#msg1481089

[Magicman]

It is nothing more than unsupported wood and could be sorta compared to the "blowout" on the back side of a hole being drilled through a board.  The softer the species the more likely it is to string.  Sapwood more likely than heartwood, etc.

[grouch]

   I asked the same thing a few weeks ago. I get them on tulip poplar often. See thread below for comments about them.
https://forestryforum.com/board/index.php/topic,96001.msg1481089.html#msg1481089

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[50 Acre Jim]

Thank you all.  Had I searched for "strings" (vs threads) I would have found the previous thread.  I think it is the species causing it in this case as later cuts on a White Oak did not do it.  Really enjoying this new hobby. 

[WV Sawmiller]

Grouch,

   Thx for the training session but I have to be careful at my age about learning new things. I have told everyone for years my mental hard drive is full and to learn something new I have to do a memory dump to make room for the new and that might mean I accidentally dump something more important like my wife's birthday or our anniversary or such which gets me in more trouble.

[Jim_Rogers]

Jim
You can't run a portable mill in the city ?

I guess not.

Was it at the contractors yard ?

Yes.

[Jim_Rogers]

Good job there Jim.
I wonder if the coffee bean tree is the same as our Kentucky coffee tree?

Yes, I think it's the same thing, I just used the words the customer used. I have sawn it before, here in MA.

[rjwoelk]

I get that from Birch and more so the wetter it s.