Whatcha Sawin' 2020 ??

[Magicman]

Luke and I arrived at our sawing location this morning to find this....


 
The customer hauling the logs and staging them at the sawmill.


 
And then he had to go and get a replacement pallet fork.  It popped like a pistol going off.  


 
Mostly 4/4 X various widths, plus a few 2X6's and some cull 2x4's.  No tally because we were stopped by rain.


 
Seven SYP and four Tulip Poplar logs for tomorrow, plus the customer will bring up a ~26" Cypress.  The Cypress cut list is for eight 4X12's plus whatever else.??  I love to saw Cypress but the sticky sawdust clogs the sawdust chute.

[teakwood]

Luke and & I arrived at our sawing location this morning

Magicman, you're 76 and still working full?? Respect! I'm half your age and don't know if i could work another 38 years

[teakwood]

Did the biggest log of teak i ever cut. Remember it's from my own plantations which i planted in 2005 and it's a thinning, so the best trees are still standing.




2,5m (8') 37cm diam (15")





Perfect log, no defects, no tensions 


gave me 15 boards for decks, 1.125x5", at 11$ per board =161$ 

[Magicman]

Thank You.  Yes I am still full part time sawing.  I said it that way because I really don't and never have considered myself as full time.  I probably average 2-3 full days of sawing each week and knock out 100Mbf+ each year.  Not bad.  My Son Marty, was downsized/retired this past month and it has always been the plan for him and his (2) sons to take over the sawmilling business.  I had knee replacement surgery in November and shoulder reconstruction in February so the "takeover" process has already begun, but as long as I can put one foot in front of the other, the sawmill ain't sawing without me being there.  Yesterday I said that there were 21 names on my sawing list, but today there are 22.  Guy saw me sawing and stopped.   

[Old Greenhorn]

Luke and & I arrived at our sawing location this morning

Magicman, you're 76 and still working full?? Respect! I'm half your age and don't know if i could work another 38 years

Teakwood, it's not the years, it's the miles. :D But MM has both. 
That is some mighty pretty teak you have there!
MM I have never ever seen, or heard of a fork breaking like that. Holy Fat Cow! There is a manufacturing problem there, likely in the material itself.  I have seen them bend many times, beat up and even twisted, but never broken, and in that spot too! The owner should pursue that with the mfg co.. That could have killed somebody.

[EOTE]

Luke and & I arrived at our sawing location this morning

Magicman, you're 76 and still working full?? Respect! I'm half your age and don't know if i could work another 38 years

All you have to do is throw away the "off" switch.  Although I am 8 years younger the MM, I am working sometimes 7 days a week.  I am sure he grew up with someone in his life demonstrating a work ethic that he embraced.  That's how it happened for me.

[Magicman]

There was an older slight (dark) crack line but today's break is clearly seen.  The log that was on the forks was only ~16".  Maybe he had really stressed it with several logs before we got there and the last single log was the last straw.



Here is a set of badly bent forks.  One up and the other down rendering them completely unusable, but they did not break.

[firefighter ontheside]

That broken fork is scary.  I can imagine the sound it made.

[Bruno of NH]

12' white pine log 44" on the butt and 34" on the small end.
It's a customers log he wants 22" wide boards out of it.
Sawed hemlock framing lumber and black locust today too.
I getting lots of orders for the black locust. 

 

 

[Magicman]

Mine and Luke's today went very well.  First we finished sawing the SYP before moving on to Tulip Poplar.


 
Five very good and one kinda small.


 
Three 9/4 X 20".


 
A shadowy picture of 1947bf of various lumber dimensions sawn in 14 hours.  I'm glad that I won't have to sticker this.



We will begin tomorrow morning with these 5 Cherry logs before moving on to ERC and then to Cypress.  Do I see mud on the skidsteer?



Yup, I do see mud on the skidsteer.  This was taken just as he was finally getting out. 

 

[Magicman]

I love starting sawing jobs but I really love finishing them.  Luke and I cranked up sawing Cherry this morning.


 


 
And found these two sets of bookmatched bad boys inside of one log.


 
The Cherry lumber.  The blue painted end board has an embedded bullet.


 
While we were sawing Cherry the customer was selecting a Cypress tree.


 
The Cypress logs plus some ERC that sneaked in.  The second ERC logs looks "empty" and was.


 
The Cypress.  3X3¾'s on the left and 3X12's on the right.  The rest are 1½X3¾.  A few were 8' but most were 12'.  We finished the job with 2996bf sawed in 22 hours.  

[WV Sawmiller]

Lynn,

   Pretty wood and I know sawing w/Luke is a real joy. When you say 22 hours is that engine hours on the mill or total hours? If total hours have you ever done a comparison w/engine hours to see how much time you were physically sawing? I find in a long hard 12 total day I am hard pressed to actually rub 8 engine hours. I typically shut my mill off to load a log and such unless my helper has already loaded it on the arms. You have a lot better and more experienced helper than I do do you probably run a lot more than I can.

[Magicman]

That was the total hours that we were on the job site.  I have never done any comparison or kept up with actual sawing time, but just guessing I would think that it would be somewhere between 50% and 75%.  If I see that I will have log handling time I will shut the engine off, but otherwise she runs.  We walked down the hill to take the picture of the customer with the Cypress tree and when we got back to the sawmill I noticed that I had left it running.  :

[Magicman]

We have a Hurricane that will move through this weekend and early next week so I have no sawing planned until Friday.  It's a 117 mile (one way) road trip so I will use the down time to be sure that everything is "ship shape".


 
This one has been waiting since September.  Three 14' Red Oak logs and the butt log is 36".


 
The top log is nothing to brag about and the first order of business will be to chainsaw that knot off.  As you can see they are strung out so I may have to move and set the sawmill up after each log is sawn.  We plan to leave home early and be sawing before 8:00AM.  Marty is planning to go too so I will have plenty of good help.    We will just get up before breakfast and get rolling.

The Tool Box Calculator shows ~5900 lbs, ~5300 lbs, & ~3800 lbs so I probably will have to shorten the two largest logs.  I am thinking that the butt log will have to be 10' and the second log 12'.  The butt log shows some heart rot anyway.  The customer is OK with shortening if necessary.

To me, this is what portable sawmilling is all about. 

[Banjo picker]

Lynn, that-second picture looks like some sort of star wars creature with maybe a nasty disposition.  Banjo

[Bruno of NH]

I started sawing the black locust into 5/4 ×6" and 5/4 × 4" porch and deck boards.
Have an order for (90) 3"×5"×8' fence post out of Massachusetts. 
I have only sawn one locust log before.
This is fresh cut but man is this stuff dusty.
I'm using a Cooks 8° 1.5 x .050 band , it cuts it flat and true.
But that dust is something. 

 

[olcowhand]

Lynn,
How early do you have to get up to make it before breakfast? I'll bet that's pretty early....
Steve

[Don P]

Bruno, keep an eye on your breathing. Some people have a pretty strong reaction to locust dust. for me I don't saw a lot at any given time but I can tell when I've been sawing it, feel kind of heavy in the chest, for some it can really shut them down.

[Magicman]

Bruno, I do not and never have sawn anything without wearing an N95 mask.  My take is that it is not what you see but what you don't/can't see that will mess your breathing up.

Yes Banjo, I had those laid out for the customer when he got back to the sawmill after felling the Cypress tree.  He 'bout flipped and wore his phone out taking pictures. 

Steve, getting up before breakfast is kinda like early-thirty. Da hourglass runs outta sand much too soon.

[Magicman]

Howard along the same thought process as time vs time sawing; I don't time myself sawing log(s) and I don't attempt to tell a customer how many bf are in his log whack.  I have no idea how many bf a blade will last nor how many times it has been resharpened.  To me it just doesn't matter.  We will tally when I finish the log whack and the whack will be gone when I finish sawing it.  I will change the blade when it gets dull, and the blade will either break or be rejected when it's life is over. 

[Bruno of NH]

I'm going to wear a mask.
The dust is fine like table saw dust.
I'm not taking a chance with it.
I had that bilateral pe 
I like breathing

[Walnut Beast]

I'm going to wear a mask.
The dust is fine like table saw dust.
I'm not taking a chance with it.
I had that bilateral pe
I like breathing

Good to be safe! Good advice from Magicman 👍👍

[Walnut Beast]

Bruno, keep an eye on your breathing. Some people have a pretty strong reaction to locust dust. for me I don't saw a lot at any given time but I can tell when I've been sawing it, feel kind of heavy in the chest, for some it can really shut them down.

Good advice Don & Magicman 👍👍

[WV Sawmiller]

Lynn,

   I like that attitude. I give the customer a business card with a log scale on the back and tell them they can measure and estimate their whack of logs if they want to. The amount does not matter to me. If they ask I may estimate 2K-3K bf in a stack and tell them I could be way off (Usually not but I have not seen the insides yet). If they have a budget and pre-set a limit I will periodically do an interim measure so not to overshoot by too much but that is rare as usually if they have cut and dragged the log up they want the lumber from it. Usually we just tally at the end of the day/job. I know some sawyers mark a tally sheet as they cut every board. I am not that coordinated. I am either sawing or recording and don't try to do both at the same time. When a band seems to be getting in a strain or tries to skip over a knot I change it. Maybe I should have changed earlier or maybe I could have finished the cant with it. It doesn't matter to me and just part of the cost of doing business as long as no nails.

[dirtmotor]

we spent the day cutting down a nice bunch of sassafras trees , can't wait to get them on the mill . did not know there was any this big in our area , guy in pic is a whiz at felling trees and we made short work of getting them stacked and tops cleaned up , took several trips to get everything hauled back but I think it was worth it