hardest way to get 4x4s ,waste 2 days and make a mess

That's a cool set-up unclefess if I was a neighbor I'd be over there helping out.

 

you would be welcome ,we always have extra snacks

 

Yep, them slickers want the country feel- but none of the inconveniences, so by the time they are through all ya got left is another suburb .

 

I always liked sawing lumber, though it seemed way too many times I was on the wrong end of the sawmill (hauling off the wood and not the sawyer). It always played a game where I tried to get the most wood out of a log. It was interesting to see how your decisions could really gain or lose boards. Ultimately it got boring if you had a week of rain and all you could do was saw lumber, but I have built a ton of stuff with my own wood!

 

I know what you mean. I have been blessed beyond measure. My house is not great, and it has been worse. I actually started with a 24 x 24 garage and lived out of that before adding on, and adding on, and adding on. Not all of it, but the vast majority of it has been with wood from my own woodlot and sawn right here on the sawmills. When I wanted 8 x 8 hand cut beams for the framing inside my home, I actually chopped them by axe. They look like authentic hand hewn beams because they are.

I started out in 1993 with 576 square feet and people laughed, now I have a 4000 square foot house, completely paid off, along with my cars and equipment and people aren't laughing anymore, especially upon retiring at 42 years old. It is no secret, clean living (no smoking, drinking, drugs), a lot of hard work, always paying off the bills, staying out of debt, and just working with what I got. Rough lumber is not easy to work with. There is a lot of planing, squaring, moving and tweaking to get the wood to the same point where you could buy it from a lumber yard, but you pay for that convenience too.

Its kind of like growing up on the farm here. Fresh eggs, lamb, beef, milk, butter and vegetables was something we had everyday, and still do. Today people call it homesteading, but growing up we just called it being poor. The older I get the more I realize I am not poor at all. In fact, when it is all said and done, and the coffin goes in the ground, its the farmer who is the richest man of all. That applies to firewood too.

 

I spent quite a bit of time "eyeing" all the pretty mills at the fair Monday. How did you decide on the size & brand?
Very nice set up there unclefess!

 

it belongs to a friend ,he used to have a smaller hudson bandmill and a lucas mill ,he sold them and got this one recently

 

here is a shot of the old mill ,and some lumber

 

some of the lumber being put to use

 

I second that bert!