Whatcha Sawin' 2025 ??

[jpassardi]

Yeah, handling green, wide 2X framing lumber all day will remind you you're not 20 anymore! I'm framing my barn with oak & maple because it's what I have most of clear and wide - cut/stack/sticker joists & rafters all day and you sleep well. 
Framing with it now and it's still not light even though it's now air dried...

[Jeff]

I can't imagine! I like swamping northern white cedar and spruce, although close grain spruce can be pretty durn heavy.

[Old Greenhorn]

Well, a couple of days ago I took down a pretty large stick and the next thing I know I have plans to mill up lumber from it and build a small bridge across my creek. Since my manual mill s right there, doing it manually actually made more sense than trying to take the logs down to the LT50 and bring the lumber back, slower yes, but in the long run it will get done. I have nothing here to load logs with. First order of business was to buck the stem up and get the logs out of the swamp. Yesterday morning it looked like this.


 I bucked 2 12's and 2 10's out of it and got 3 of those out yesterday, but the butt log kicked my butt. I worked on that this morning and finally got it out but geez, what a job! So now it looks like this:



Next step was to go over the mill and fire it up. oil good and still had gas in it from 3 years ago. I lubed up a bunch of stuff. It fired on the second pull. I put some water in the lube jug.
 I had a 4' ash log on the mill from doing a demo a few years back, so I had to finish that off before going any further. I took 3 x 9/4 slabs off of it and 1 8/4 slab. Benches or tables I guess.



I did notice a fuel drip from somewhere near the carb on the engine, so I will have to pull the cowling and figure out what is going on there before getting into the real work.
 The next log up is going to max out the mill and just t be safe, I have to do a little more bibbying on the butt flares before I roll it up, assuming I can i fact find the leg muscles to roll it up. I may have to call a friend.  I am hoping I can get five 6x6's x 12' out of this butt log.



As I said, it max's out my mill at 28" or so. I know I may have some wane in a few pieces but that's ok, they are bridge stringers. So assuming I can get at least 5 good ones, then I just have to mill the other 3 logs into 2x10's (or wider) for the decking.



 They only need to be about 8' long or whatever I settle on the the bridge width. The logs are currently bucked at 10 and 12' and I will buck them again after I cut the stringers and see how that all lays out. The nice thing about having the mill 15 feet away from where you are building is that you can mill and make changes as you go along.

 It was nice to get my little mill running and making wood today, first time in a long time. I used the 4° blade I had on there from 4 years ago and it still cuts as flat as a billiard table, rust and all. 

 Tomorrow looks to be a rainout and I can let my back and legs recover. Big difference between my manual Hud-son mill and the LT50, but it's good to get back to my roots a little bit.

[doc henderson]

hard to tell in the picture, but what kind of valley are we taking side to side.  I wish I lived closer.  looks kind of flat, but something needs to keep the water in.  any old tele poles around with a little treatment on board?  have you put a string across?

[Old Greenhorn]

It's about a 2" drop below grade and really about 8' across that jump, but I am going with 12' stringers for now just to be well clear on the edges. Yeah, the photo really gives you no idea. When I start working on it I will have an 'end view' that should show it better, but of course, y'all have no idea what the water depth is. Water is down now and only 10" or so deep with 6' of muck below that. Top of the water is about 14" below grade today.

Edit to add: I did lay a stiff tape across and said to myself "yeah, I'll start with 12' stringers and that will be plenty safe". Also, yes I have some PT 6x6's I am digging in for footer to lay the stringers on top of.

[doc henderson]

glad the old faithful mill got some exercise.  thanks for the info.  

[Resonator]

Making progress working through my stack of pitchy, pitchy, pine. One good thing the warmer weather is helping the bark peel more cleanly.

Starting to think I should jack my mill up a foot or two. The chute just keeps draggin' in the sawdust pile.

[TimW]

Naw, just put the chute in transport position!

[Magicman]

Making progress working through my stack of pitchy, pitchy, pine.

That is a very professional operation.    




A good habit is to shovel the sawdust away after every log.  The sawdust went all of the way around the Pine tree in the center.  Makes the scoop look small.

This was after sawing 35Mft. 

[Resonator]

Yup, usually I keep the sawdust pile in check. I have my mill area set up so I can drive my tractor around behind the mill, and load out with the bucket. Currently it is down for unexpected repairs, so things got kinda deep.  
I did dig the pile back after I took that pic, found snow still frozen underneath it.

[jpassardi]

I found snow under sawdust this spring also - goes to show how good an insulator it can be.

[Jeff]

I found snow under sawdust this spring also - goes to show how good an insulator it can be.

We used to find it in July at the big mill. If a bunch slid off the roof, it would get covered up in the corse of the winter as we had a blower pipe out there from the gangsaws. In a big mill, you always had new guys, and they were always stunned when they would get ambushed by snowballs from the long timers.  

[Jim_Rogers]

In my area of New England, the "icehouses" had wall cavities filled with sawdust as "insulation" to keep the ice cold.
When an icehouse burned it was usually a big fire.

Jim Rogers

[SawyerTed]

Ice houses here in NC used to use sawdust to hold ice into summer.  

Usually the ice was cut in the north and delivered by ships during winter.  Later rail cars were used to ship ice.   

Iceboxes were a thing here of course.  

Even on Portsmouth, where there was never electricity much less mechanical refrigeration, the walls of the ice houses were packed with sawdust.  The buy boats brought ice when they bought the seafood from the residents. 

Kids used to sneak a chip of ice but had to wait until the sawdust melted off of they got a mouthful.  

[Magicman]

The "Ice Man" made his regular delivery to us, probably once per week.  The ice was packed in sawdust on the truck.  We had an "ice box" in the house.
 
He backed his truck over our reel lawn mower while turning around so after that our grass was cut with a sling blade.  The very small fenced yard was the only place that the cows did not mow.

We had no "trickalicity nor frigerator" until after I was 7 years old, no TV until I was 16, and never had a phone.  It was sorta funny that when I went to work with the phone company when I was 19, I had never had a phone.

[trimguy]

I cut some red oak today. It's for a couple of tables that I have been asked to make for the people I'm trimming a house for. A 5' x 10' dining room table and a 5' x 7' oval for the outside kitchen. These trees came from the property they are building a house on. I told her I would send her pictures as it went along so she could put the story together.

[Old Greenhorn]

Nice clear RO there Arnold! That is gonna make some pretty wood for sure. Lucky customers you've got there.

All this talk of ice houses got me thinking about the industry here, and it was a full blown industry. The Hudson river would freeze over in the winter and hundreds of folks were employed cutting, moving, and storing ice for the following year. Along the river were many ice houses built in balloon construction up to three or more stories with no floors and the 2x2x4' block were stacked as high as they could get them with layers of sawdust (from the sawmills) covering every layer. These were huge stacks of ice and all year long it was shipped down the Hudson on barges to supply NYC for all their needs. It was a major employer and industry. You can still find ice saws all over in antique shops, barns and other place. Most folks don't even know what they are and think they are wood saws.

 The 'problem' was that the sawdust would fall off the ice as it was removed for transport and would build up in these huge buildings. Eventually all of those ice houses burned to the ground. Often they were rebuilt until the industry died out. We had a series of those major industries that came, became big for a few decades, the faded away as technology changed. Bluestone, tanning, chair making, farming, all came and went.

[doc henderson]

My great great grandfather Lanoue had an icehouse on the Republican River north of Concordia.  there was a pic of him in the foreground on one side of the river, with the Icehouse on the other side.  He, it turns out, is standing in a patch of marijuana.  It was supposedly (I never saw it but, in that pic,) insulated with cork.  It also burned and they said it took weeks for the fire to go completely out.  

[Texas Ranger]

Back in my building days I tore down the interior of an old icehouse with 20-foot concrete walls and rebuilt it into a warehouse.  The ice making vat was under the floor and intact, we had to cut through two steel walls sandwiching in a foot thick layer of saw dust.  It was an ammonia freezer, how it worked I could not tell you, however we managed to catch the saw dust on fire with the cutting torch.  100-year-old packed saw dust, it smoldered until we manage to pump enough water into the dust.  Under the floor of the office area we found glass pint creme bottles, give away ice picks, and cashed paychecks from the 1920's.  If I remember correctly (not always accurate) the foreman received $18 a week and laborers from $8 to $12.  Not a 40-hour week either.

It was a journey into the past for me, particularly when a friend told me about going to the icehouse in the 50's with his grandfather to get a water keg filled with ice to cool his beer for the day, the old man was an oil field gauge reader and drove around all day drinking beer and reading those gauges.  I gave my friend some of the icepicks and he displayed them at the old home place; they were imprinted with "Livingston Icehouse" and he told stories about his trips with his grandfather.

Different ice story but it was brought to mind.

[TimW]

Been getting some orders off of Facebook Marketplace.
Trenching timbers for a drainage company 2.25x12x14s

[TimW]

Been holding Full size 1x10x8s for 20 months.  A customer no showed me on the order.  They are selling now, a handful at a time.

[TimW]

Also a new customer wanting cedar first cuts for deco replacement on a South Texas ranch.

[Nebraska]

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A few bundles of shingles I coated with Tung oil, ready to haul up to the cabin and put up.
I had a pretty good evening sawed some ERC for trim around the shingles. Going to put the shingle jig back on tomorrow and finish that project for now. 
That Republican River Doc mentions flowed about a half of a mile South of the  house I grew up in, South central part of Nebraska. 

 

[jpassardi]

Been getting some orders off of Facebook Marketplace.
Trenching timbers for a drainage company 2.25x12x14s

I assume they're using it for lagging between soldier piles and not vertical wood sheeting? Rare to see vertical wood used these days as opposed to trench boxes or hydraulic shoring.

[TimW]

I have no idea how they are using them.