Well, I finally got a portable bandsaw miller out here to saw my whack of 1500 bd-ft of mostly chestnut oak and a little black cherry. It kicked my butt bad, and I still have to stack and sticker about 1/3 of the total. I have dreams of using it for a small barn/hay storage/sheep shelter, nothing fancy. I got about 30 4x4's from 8-16 ft long and the rest was milled 4/4 random width. Here's one teaser picture. I really didn't have time to take very many in the heat of the action. I'll take a few more tomorrow when wife and I are stacking.
Can't buy something like that at Home Depot! Man that's veneer grade. Awesome! I'm planning to hire a guy with an LT70 this summer. With everything that came down in this last wind storm and before that I just can't keep up with the Alaskan mill.
BTW, This was a "test run" of milling some dead standing chestnut oak to see if it was worth doing more. Right now I probably have an additional 2,000-2,500 bf-ft of this same stuff standing on the stump. Apparently, something went through and killed a whole bunch of them a few years ago. The forester couldn't tell, since they had been dead too long when I had him out here. So, this means I have plenty more felling, trimming of the firewood, skidding and eventually milling to do. Honestly, it's more than I can handle as a 50 y.o. weekend warrior, so, in the future, if any of you ever want to come out and help, I would be very happy. I could pay in firewood and/or lumber, whatever you want. dgeesaman The Wood Wolverine , etc.
A little quarter sawn grain. Ignore the perpendicular saw marks. The sawyer was really conscientious and would be appalled at me showing this to you, but I couldn't resist the gorgeous ray fleck pattern.
That's a beautiful slab!! Sounds like you should invest in your own band mill. You have the wood to justify, and use for all the lumber... Being that my only full days off are sundays, my opportunities are very limited. My honey-do list is off the charts right now.
Wife and I put in a little stacking time tonight. Between the muggy weather and our general states of exhaustion from yesterday, we couldn't quite finish. Probably about 200 more bd-ft left for tomorrow. Here's the 4/4 stack so far.
Over the last 8 or so years, I've worked with 3 different sawyers. The first two were very good and very fast and charged by the hour, but both eventually retired. Friday was the first time I worked with the third guy. He's very, very good and takes a lot of pride in his work so he is a little slower. However, he charges by the bd-ft. There are lots of other variables, e.g. quartersawing takes a lot more time than flat, grade or flitch sawing, can you find friends to help you or do you need to hire help to offbear, it's more efficient to saw thousands of bd-ft than one or two trees/logs. In the end, I've wound up paying anywhere from $0.25 to $0.60 / bd-ft. I've got a local guy who will kiln for $0.27 / bd-ft. So, with a little bit of patience and whole lot of sweat equity, I can get my lumber for less than $0.75 / bd-ft.
Glad to hear that you are still keeping busy in your retirement! You never work a day if it's something you love. As far as milling, I don't think I'll be doing another whack until next Spring. Summer is too hot for me and Fall is archery hunting season. So, I probably won't be dropping any more trees until January at the earliest. YES, I have thought about buying a mill MANY, MANY times. However, it never makes sense. I'm so spoiled by seeing how fast and efficient a fully hydraulic mill works, and those get really pricey really quickly. It just makes more sense to throw down a couple hundred bucks once or twice a year to hire a miller than $20-50K. Maybe when I finally retire and have time to mill regularly I could justify the cost.
Really nice boards. I don't think we have chestnut oak around here, and that color is absolutely amazing.
O.K., here's some more pictures of the finished stacks. I still need to pick up a few more roofing panels to cover it all. FWIW, I'll be switching to metal rather than plastic panels. Should have done that years ago. I'll also pick up some more blocks to weigh down the top of the pile on the side with the longer boards. We also had one cherry tree in the mix that yielded several nice boards from the main trunk, but the crotch was really spectacular. It gave about seven 4/4 boards with 24-30+" of figured grain and only a modest amount of ingrown bark. Phew! Now I've got to get to work on splitting and stack all those firewood rounds in the third picture. It's to be close to 2 cord.
My dear wife still has the itch to move so I need to get on the ball! Mike, I'm not noticing any end grain sealer?
