Chasing the Sawdust Dream

[Jeff]

Dont drink diet pepsi doc, its not good for you.  ;)

[Magicman]

diet pepsi keeps me going!

It's a proven fact that diet Pepsi will make you fat. :  Have you ever seen a skinny person drinking one??  ???

[Darrel]

diet pepsi keeps me going!

It's a proven fact that diet Pepsi will make you fat. :  Have you ever seen a skinny person drinking one??  ???

That's true Lynn, also, unless you are a very brittle diabetic, you'd be a whole lot better off with the sugar. 

[doc henderson]

when i was in undergrad college, i also worked full time as an RT in the Lawrence memorial hospital.  i drank 5 reg. cokes a day in 8 hours.  I also did research for a year and a half, so i needed the sugar and caffeine.  i weighed 135# and was 3% body fat.  we would meet and run for an hour after work at 1 am and go to class at 8 am.  i was burning all the sugar.  i drink diet coke cause I am already fat, and I do not want to get fatter!   :D  .

[Resonator]

I do like a good tall cold sweet tea myself, reminds me of years ago driving truck down south in the land of grits, where the waitresses called me "Hon' " ;D

Did a little welding and fabricating recently with some pieces I picked up at the steel supply yard near me. The have a large selection of channel, angle, plate, pipe, etc. and charge by the pound for cut-offs and scraps.



Made a jib hoist out of 6" C channel, 5" tube cut in half, and a couple short lengths of chain with hooks. I use this for lifting logs off of trailers that have sides/fenders that get in the way of the forks. 




Also made a trailer jack bracket to mount on my mill. The bracket wraps around the frame, and the removable C channel at the top holds it in place. That way I'm not drilling holes or welding to the trailer monorail frame. I also added a few pieces of 4" nylon cargo strap for padding to keep from scratching the frame paint. The jack itself came with a short steel pipe section I welded in place, and it can be removed by pulling a pin. Adding the jack made a HUGE improvement not only for hitching and unhitching, but also for leveling the mill before sawing. (Wish I would have done this 2 years ago!) :D

[doc henderson]

Dont drink diet pepsi doc, its not good for you.  ;)

new study in JAMA says all soda is bad, do not know why but worldwide correlation

[Nebraska]

Meh.... bad schmad, life is 100% fatal anyway.    Some days diet Pepsi is a blessing, most all things in moderation.. oh yeah and Resonator nice pictures as well, like your jib hoist,  my heavy trailer has those fenders in the way as well. 

[btulloh]

Everyday something is added to the list of stuff that's bad for you.  Occasionally something is removed from the list and determined to be OK after all.  It's important to watch the news closely so you know what to scared of.    :D :D

Be careful of excessive moderation.  ;D

[nativewolf]

when i was in undergrad college, i also worked full time as an RT in the Lawrence memorial hospital.  i drank 5 reg. cokes a day in 8 hours.  I also did research for a year and a half, so i needed the sugar and caffeine.  i weighed 135# and was 3% body fat.  we would meet and run for an hour after work at 1 am and go to class at 8 am.  i was burning all the sugar.  i drink diet coke cause I am already fat, and I do not want to get fatter!   :D  .

Dont drink diet pepsi doc, its not good for you.  ;)

new study in JAMA says all soda is bad, do not know why but worldwide correlation

I can certainly believe this, soda consumption has moved pretty much in correlation with declining health.  We just don't need to drink anything more than H20, a soda should be a treat once a day or less and not these 32 oz things people consume like crazy.  Just common sense I'd think.  In the poor south it used to be people drinking cool-aid with just crazy amounts of sugar, now it is soda.  Sigh.

[Bruno of NH]

My uncle had kidney cancer last year.
Drinks lots and lots of diet soda
I think that did it

[Resonator]

Some of the Sugar Maple I sawed last year, is in a friends shop being made into an island countertop. This will go into a repeat customers new house (the tree came from his land). Stay tuned for more future work on this project. ;)



Sold 650 bd. ft. of my rough sawn 1" Spruce.  8)
This customer saw my ad online, and drove about 2 hours each way to buy it, and was glad to fit it all in his short box pickup! While I was helping this customer, another pulled in my driveway and bought a 3' Black Ash natural edge slab. I'm grateful for the business, but do they have to pull in all at the same time?! :D

[PAmizerman]

I like when customers all come at the same time. That means I don't have to stop what I'm in the middle of to wait on them.

[PAmizerman]

I've had customers drive over 3½ hours one way for hemlock and Ash.

[Resonator]

Stay tuned for more future work on this project. 

As promised the Sugar Maple project continues. My repeat customer found a guy with a solar kiln to dry the lumber for his new breakfast nook. (My lumber is stacked in front.)




He claims it can get up to 120° on a good sunny day. I tend to believe him as I was sweating loading lumber inside on an overcast day. The gray metal duct at the bottom of the wall runs to a furnace for additional heat in winter. During the summer the only cost to run it is the electricity for the fans.




I left my lumber in good hands, knowing he had some large animals standing guard. ;D

[Resonator]

I had a new customer stop in and buy some full 2" x 12" White Pine I had for sale. Some of the wood was from a huge tree taken down by a tree service, and some wood from my own land. I had originally cut it into random widths, but he requested it be resawed into 12" for stair treads. The lumber buyer is a custom builder who plans to build a playhouse - man cave inside a converted grain silo. 




Not long after the lumber customer, I got a call from a many times repeat firewood customer buying the first load of the season. Board footage and cord woodage, just another day chasing the sawdust dream. ;D

[Resonator]

Recently I picked up my Sugar Maple from the solar kiln (the one with the cows standing guard). Both my meter, and the kiln owners meter, read the boards at 6 - 7% M.C. after about 2 months of drying. 8)
I was very pleased how straight they dried, the only bad ones were the short pieces on the top of the stack that looked like airplane propellers. I'll make sure to stack some heavy weight on top next time.
    But before I could start building the custom breakfast nook, my best repeat customer had another project to do. I had helped him and his wife move into his new house, and he soon realized he had to much junk, and not enough storage space. (A friend told me once you need to move every 4 - 5 years to get rid of all your junk. :D) After looking at how much pre-built yard barns cost, I offered to build him a 10x12 for less $$$ using my lumber.








I used my air dried Red Pine for all of the joists, studs, rafters, and shelf supports. The only big box store lumber was the plywood and a few 12' 2x pieces I used for the top wall plate, and on the front of the shelves. I used these since I didn't have any pieces that long, and they were extras he had saved from the new house build.

[Magicman]

I love it.  Building such buildings actually was my job before I bought my sawmill.  I started using "bandmilled" lumber to save on my costs and then decided that I liked his job better than mine.  Wow, that was 18 years ago.

[Resonator]

Got a cool pic sent to me from my friend the custom fishing rod builder. He made the featured rod on his lathe with Black Walnut, Red Cedar, and some Tiger Maple I had sawn for him. 
8)

[Resonator]

Recently I completed building the custom breakfast nook for my best repeat customer, here's some pics:


 
The quarter-sawn Sugar Maple had very directional grain, run it through the planer one way and it would chip, switch ends and it would cut smooth ribbons. The first log above the stump I cut at 3' to avoid a bend in the tree. These short boards had some twist when drying, but had a nice red color.






Ray fleck, ray fleck, and more ray fleck. After going through all the work of getting the lumber cut, dried, and planed, I made sure to select the best face / grain figure on each board (with as much ray fleck as possible!) The customers wife requested a tung oil finish, which I hadn't used it before, but I really liked how it made the grain "pop".












The finished project in the new house. I had to build it in two separate cabinets, in order to fit through the front door, and then reassemble them into an "L" once inside.
The entire project was built loosely based off a photo of a similar nook the customers wife found online. There were no plans, and everything was built with "eyeball engineering". This included building mock-ups to check bench and table height, and make sure they were happy with it. (Which they were). ;D

[Darrel]

Wozers! That turned out nice!  

[WDH]

Jeremy,

Super Fine!

[chet]

    Very nice work , Jeremy

[Nebraska]

Ditto that looks great.

[stanwelch]

Very nice Jeremy.
 Especially like the quarter sawn with ray fleck.  8)

[Bruno of NH]

Great work