Whatcha Sawin' 2020 ??

[Magicman]

I have to replace my LubeMizer pump tomorrow

I got the LubeMizer pump replaced, but found a leak in the ¼" barb fitting that feeds the tube to the spray nozzles.  I have one in one of the boxes on the truck, but I will try the hardware store first.

I called it a "barb" fitting but the proper name is probably something else.  Anyway, I found my spare but decided to make a trip to my Industrial Supply and see what they had.



I have decided to keep my spare shown on top and use the new one that required an additional coupling.  The longer unit will make the installation a bit more "finger friendly".  It will probably be Friday before I will get everything back together but no matter because it is too wet to move the sawmill anyway.  :

The lube pump is installed and the longer "push on" connector for the ¼" line to the nozzles worked as I predicted.


 
It gave me much more finger room in the tight spot behind the pump motor.

I called the "Red Oak" customer and due to the sloppy ground, we will postpone his sawing until after his upcoming "oilfield" hitch.  Of course if I have to have shoulder surgery it will be postponed anyway.  :-\

[Kwill]

@Kwill I really like that building you have around your mill. The lights are a very nice touch!

Thank you. 

[Kwill]

 

 

 

 I cut this nice cedar this evening . Gonna mill it out in the morning. The tree made a 12ft, a 10ft and a 8ft logs and one 8ft post. Gonna make 2x6's out of the 12ft for the extension on my sawmill shed.

[Jcald327]

My first paying job was today, 3 27-30 inch white oaks (10 footers) that have been down since October wind storm.  We had agreed upon 1 log in slabs, and the rest in dimensional jazz.  Waited on rain to clear up, got there at 12, set up and ready to mill by 1 (after bucking a root ball with my 395 he couldn't get through, breaking my log tongs trying to get it out of a 45+ degree ditch). He then said he wanted to slab it all, great I don't have my electric sharpener.  Had the bright idea to slab 2 of these logs at the same time, you know, becuae my lucas is bad (admin edit).  

Started it up, and the motor was kinda missing on and off.  Probing around resulted in my non functioning hourmeter/tach shocking the mess out of me no less than 3 times, cut that wire real quick lol.

On my third cut (slabs 5 and 6) chain was starting to dull. Swapped for a new one, and coming out of cut 4 (slab 7 and 8), the chain came off at the sprocket end, fell to the ground, with a hell of a bent section, oh boy.

Got to looking at it, and after an hour of adjusting and a phone call with bailey, the consensus was an over tightened chain and a motor/carriage that wasn't fully slid and locked to the right.  Hand sharpened between slabs.  Gave it 7 passes with the file the first time, and 10 the second, and honestly not sure this was enough, knocked down the rakers a bit.  Ended with I 12 actual valuable slabs, and 3 that were just trim cutting to get down into the meat, or the leftovers after we ran all the way down on the winches, and flipped the larger leftover 3rd ontop of the other one.

I feel like the day was a complete failure as it cost me a chain (hoping to get it fixed) and I looked (or at least felt like I looked) like an idiot for an hour messing with my machine.  Cut for probably 3 hours with an hour of setup/teardown/log moving and an hour break messing with the mill, and probably half an hour of sharpening all said and done.

We agreed on 3.5 hours, but when I went to swipe his card he told me just to run it for 4.5, which I guess means hes happy?  Got to go back for 1 log, and he pointed at another he wants to take care of as well, so again i guess hes happy, I just hate when things dont go as planned, and nothing did today.  Learning experience to say the least.

Things learned today.
Dont brag about anything being awesome, 3 times today I said how cool I thought something was, only to have it break no less than 5 minutes later.
Dont leave spare stuff at home becuae you think you wont need it, the second you do, you will need it.
Dont expect mother nature to cooperate, she won't.
Slabbing 2 big oak logs at once is dumb...period....
Dont tell a customer how long a job should take.
No matter how bad your day is going, your Logrite cant hooks will always impress you, and never let you down (they're probably going to break tomorrow now).

[Lawg Dawg]

 

 

Sawin SYP with Nathan...he said he loves this sticky stuff!   :D

[Banjo picker]

No matter how bad your day is going, your Logrite cant hooks will always impress you, and never let you down (they're probably going to break tomorrow now).

I will bet that you are wrong about that. 🙂 Banjo

[WV Sawmiller]

   Well, any local groundhogs here would have seen their shadow so I guess we'll have another 6 weeks of winter. I figured I might as well piddle on my new shed project by squaring up a pole or two so I took little John up in the pasture and picked up a locust butt log that uprooted last Fall. I killed a chain a couple days ago cutting it free from the clay root. When I got to the gate and tried to lift it over John balked like Blackjack, my mule, and lowered his head to the right and lifted his back left wheel pretty respectable so I set the log down and went and got my chainsaw. I sawed 5-6 ft off a fork to 12' which took 100-150 lbs off the load. It was reasonably straight. I got it through the gate and to the mill then started shaving off the thick muddy bark. I finally got decent white wood showing on 3 sides. I split it and got two poles 4.5" thick and pretty much from 6-8 inches wide which will work for 2 on the back or top high corner where it is real rocky and I doubt I get a 2' post hole.


 12' locust about 12-13 inches thick.


 Can you spell stress? Opened up 2-3 inches on each end but will pull into line when I start framing it up.


 I had plenty of supervision from Sampson.


 These are the 2 -12 poles I end up with. They have some banana in them but are good and solid and straight on one side anyway.

  I pulled a 16' stock log over and put it on the mill. I saved after I knocked it down when I cut a large ash up near my shooting house above my pasture. I cut the butt into 2-16' poles, and got several 7' fence posts and some firewood. I square it up into about a 6"X 8" X 16' pole and it will likely be the base of my shed - i.e. the first corner I put up and use to square (Did I really use that word?) the others off of.


 Bigger and more curves. I was sometimes uncertain whether I was sawing or just de-barking it. Locust grows some thick bark over time.


 Several patches of wane still left but plenty strong for what I am planning. I love the green peanut smell from sawing fresh green locust.

[123maxbars]

 

Sawin SYP with Nathan...he said he loves this sticky stuff!   :D

I like it so much it ended up in my truck bed  8)

[SawyerTed]

I feel like the day was a complete failure as it cost me a chain (hoping to get it fixed) and I looked (or at least felt like I looked) like an idiot for an hour messing with my machine.  Cut for probably 3 hours with an hour of setup/teardown/log moving and an hour break messing with the mill, and probably half an hour of sharpening all said and done.

We agreed on 3.5 hours, but when I went to swipe his card he told me just to run it for 4.5, which I guess means hes happy?  Got to go back for 1 log, and he pointed at another he wants to take care of as well, so again i guess hes happy, I just hate when things dont go as planned, and nothing did today.  Learning experience to say the least.

Things learned today.
Dont brag about anything being awesome, 3 times today I said how cool I thought something was, only to have it break no less than 5 minutes later.
Dont leave spare stuff at home becuae you think you wont need it, the second you do, you will need it.
Dont expect mother nature to cooperate, she won't.
Slabbing 2 big oak logs at once is dumb...period....
Dont tell a customer how long a job should take.
No matter how bad your day is going, your Logrite cant hooks will always impress you, and never let you down (they're probably going to break tomorrow now).

While for you it semed like a hard day, in the end the customer was happy.  I'm sure he recognized your effort and that it mattered to you that he was satisfied.  When we are professional and care about our work, we are often our own worst critics.
There's a list a country mile long of stuff I've learned from portable milling jobs!  #1 is Murphy will follow me around unmercifully enforcing his law and any corollaries I can imagine!
Reflecting on what when wrong is best balanced with a reflection on what went right.

[dirtmotor]

I spent yesterday wrestling a large oak log off a tree that was struck by lightning a couple of years ago , much too big to handle but put it on mill anyhow just because it was one of our favorite trees and hope to make a few boards that we can use on our cabin . Its going to be a bear to turn but I can just get blade high enough to start but it will be next weekend before i will be able to .

 

 

 

[Darrel]

Looks like there is a whole lot of fun to be had!

[Bruno of NH]

Milled some spruce 2x6,4x6x16,4/4 ash boards and some 8/4 live edge ash today

 

 

 

 

 

[stanmillnc]

 <b
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A big ol' white oak cant (29" after trimming to fit on my WM wide head). Thanks Logrite for such a high quality heavy duty peavy!

[Bruno of NH]

More ash boards today
Some 10" wide they have been a good seller as of late.

 

 

 

 

 

[Nebraska]

I can see why it's selling looks kinda pretty to me.

[Old Greenhorn]

Very nice. I never get that kind of dark wood in my ash, it's all white and kind of boring. Very nice stuff.

[Hackeldam Wood Products]

nice ash boards. I'll have to saw some. Most of the ash trees around here are dead from the ash borer.

[caveman]

I had a guy order a couple of pine benches last week.  We had a pine log that had been lying around for some time.  I hit it with an ax and it still felt solid.  Not wanting to change the blade from the cypress I had just sawn, I used the 1.25", .045 7°turbo.  It did not cut the hard knots in the pine any better than when we previously used these blades on the heart pine.  Regardless, some nice, blue slabs were the result.  I planed them flat before sticker stacking (I hate wavy wood).

I sawed some cypress that a friend of mine used to make a picnic table that will be donated to the local Cattlemen's Association.  They are going to use their brands to adorn it.  The wood was sawn Sunday and the table was done today.  It is still wet and heavy.



 

 

[Banjo picker]

Red oak & white oak & pine.....it's gonna sit there until tomorrow because the roads are wet with no sign of let up with the rain today.


 Some of the oak is really too good for what they are gonna use it for....shipping....but they take it all so I am satisfied.  Banjo

[SawyerTed]

I understand that "too good" for what it will be used for.

Back in the summer I had 800 board feet of quarter sawn WO 4/4x6x8'.  A customer was looking for fence boards.  I had 1,500 board feet of 4/4x6x8' of utility grade white oak for half the price of the quarter sawn. 

The customer per chased the quarter sawn boards at the premium price.  It was too good for fence boards but got used that way.  I got what I wanted for the lumber, so I was satisfied.

[doc henderson]

I put a hackberry on the mill this eve.  wanted to get lumber to start making some pallets for air drying that can then go into a solar kiln, I hope to build this spring.  20" on big end, 16" DSE and 16.5 feet long.  quite a bit of stress in the log.  29° so maybe a little frozen and a branch on the end that tended to drift my blade.  I will plane all members in the dimension needed to be flat and consistent for the pallets.  



 



 

[cutterboy]

Bruno, those ash boards are beautiful!

[WDH]

Hackberry is one of those spiral grain woods that can "crawl" as you saw it . 

[Bruno of NH]

I have 4 more ash logs
24" to 28" on the small end better than what's in the pictures.
I don't know what to saw them into yet.
I'm going to build a kiln this spring.
I would like to do more hardwood.
White pine keeps me going.
I also like sawing spruce milled some nice 16' stuff for a truss I'm making for the mill shed.

[alanh]

1400 bd ft of pine yesterday, posts and beams for a garage to family room makeover and starting another pile of pine 1x8x12' for horse barn paneling