I've Retired.

I turned 60 last year, and have decided to retire from the sawmill business. CT Logs To Lumber, LLC is no longer making new milling appointments. Thank you for your past support.

Business Going Full Time

So, obviously, my enthusiasm for posting about nearly every milling job has dropped off in the past few months.  I thought that it was all getting a bit repetitive.  But I don't intend to give up on the blog altogether. The nature of the posts will probably continue to evolve over time.

The big news prompting this post is my decision to quit my 'day job' and make CT Logs To Lumber, LLC a full time business.  Here we go!

I've been more successful running the business as a 'weekends only' operation in 2010 than I had hoped.  My first job came in March, and I milled on 42 days after that, not counting my day at the Coventry Farmer's Market. By the beginning of September, I had a waiting list of customers that would take me until after Thanksgiving to work my way through.

At this point I started to have discussions with my wife about bringing my career as a computer programmer to an end, and starting to run the sawmill business full time.  She wasn't very hard to convince.  In early October I told my boss that I would be leaving at the end of the year.  The move from the high tech world to running a sawmill left many of my coworkers scratching their heads.  My last day at work was actually December 29th.  The full time business is off and running.

Ash, Oak, and Birch in Andover

I took a weekend off to make sure that I would be able to attend a family get-together last Sunday. But this past weekend I was 'on the road again'.

I didn't have to go very far though, just to Andover, near the Hebron line, about 10 miles.

Jeff and Karen have very a attractive house with a fairly new addition on a back lot.  Jeff is doing the stone facade that you can see between the garage doors himself.  The upper area will be next year's project.

Jeff had about 14 logs that were a couple of years old.  He had an idea that something could be done with them, but didn't know what until he happened to see me at the Coventry Farmer's Market back in early September.

The logs were ash, oak, and one birch.  The ash logs had developed some pretty big splits, which came close to dividing the logs into halves or quarters.  But, the logs were big enough that they still produces a lot of usable lumber.  The oak and birch survived the wait in better shape, and also gave us some nice boards.

It was a beautiful fall day to work outside.  Several friends and neighbors stopped by to watch or help.  We finished up well before we ran out of sunlight, and I left Jeff and Karen with a larger pile of lumber than they expected, which they still weren't sure what they were going to do with.

More Maple in Middletown

I returned to Justin's house in Middletown on Sunday to finish up the remains of the maple tree that had been in his front yard.  There were 3 logs that we hadn't been able to get to on my first visit. 

The lumber we had created the last time I was here was neatly sticker-stacked at the end of the driveway, with the top covered by a blue top, but with the sides open to allow for air-flow.  A nice job of green lumber stacking.

The slabs and scraps from the milling had been piled at the edge of the lawn near the road.  Justin told me they disappeared into neighbors wood piles within a day or two.

The smaller logs on the menu for this day gave us a lot less trouble than the monsters we had tackled before.  In two hours we had a fresh stack of boards and a new pile of slabs and scraps. 

Once again, I forgot to take pictures.  I need to work on that.

Oak, Maple, and More in Coventry

I milled for a neighbor on Saturday, just a few houses down the street.  It was so close that I walked home for lunch.  It will be hard for someone to top this in the 'closest customer' contest.

Chris was the first person I ever handed a CT Logs To Lumber business card to.  Back in December, my next door neighbor was selling Christmas trees from a small stand.  Chris came to take a look, and spotted my sawmill.  I happened to be outside, and he introduced himself and told me that he had some logs that needed sawing.  I explained that I wasn't in business quite yet.  After sprinting to the house and back to fetch a business card, I suggested that he call me in the spring.  He called in late August, and I put him into the schedule.

Chris has a few acres behind his house that he has been clearing as he finds time. He had 11 logs between 8 and 9 feet long that had accumulated as part of this process.  Fortunately, the logs had been moved to a single location.  Unfortunately, this location was not chosen based on how easy it would be to roll them onto a sawmill.  But it wasn't that bad.  Each log needed to be rotated 90 degrees, and rolled about 20 feet to get onto the loading arms.

One unusual aspect of this job is that I worked alone.  Chris got me set up, and then left for work.  He returned when I was almost done with the second-to-last log.  I found that working alone is a lot more work that working with an off-bearer.

Maple in Middletown

On Saturday, I made a call on Justin and Tisha in Middletown.  They had a large maple tree taken down in their front yard recently, and didn't want to see all that good wood end up as firewood.

The arborists left them with two large irregularly shaped trunk sections in their front yard, and three smaller pieces along-side their driveway in back. 

The trunk sections were only about 6' long, but they were 36" or more in at least one cross-section.

Since they were not even close to being round, they could not be rolled even with my biggest cant hook, so I used the clamp to pull them onto the loading arms. But getting them loaded was only the first of the challenges.  Getting a big log down to a manageable size requires a lot of turning while whittling away at the outside.  Somewhat counter intuitively, short logs can be harder to turn than longer ones, and the lumpiness of the logs certainly didn't help matters.  The chainsaws were put to use several times, trimming away sections of the logs to allow the saw head to complete a cut.

Though it was a lot of work, we did prevail in the end, and made a nice stack of 1" and 2" boards.  Unfortunately, milling the two trunk sections took until rather late in the day, so a return trip will be needed to take care of the smaller logs.

Pine in Shelton

The customer I had lined up for this past weekend canceled late in the week.  I contacted several people on my wait-list, but all had other plans.  This was somewhat disappointing, but there's no shortage of chores to do around the homestead.  So, on Saturday afternoon I found myself up the driveway with my tractor burying a couple of boulders that had been poking up and threatening the undercarriages of all passing vehicles.  When I got back to the house, there was a message from Win in Shelton.

Win had had some large pine trees taken down and wanted to know about the possibility of turning the logs into lumber.  I called him back, and we discussed the broad outlines of the proposition.  I told him that due to the cancellation, I could come to Shelton the next day.  I explained that otherwise I wouldn't be able to get to him until sometime in November.  Win said that he would get back to me soon, and sure enough called back a short time later to say that he and his wife would like me to come visit them the next day.

Although I had my doubts once or twice, my GPS led me unerringly to Win's driveway only a few minutes after 9:00 AM.

Win had a nice stack of pine logs piled up.  Unfortunately, space was a little tight, and I wasn't able to get the mill positioned directly in front of the pile.  So instead we set the mill up at 90 degrees, and Win was able to spin the logs and push them onto the mill's loading arms with his small tractor.  Most of the logs were big enough that they would have been difficult to reposition by hand.

A short time after arriving on site, we started turning logs into lumber.  Win and Patty mostly wanted 2 1/2" thick boards that would eventually be used in one capacity or another in their soon-to-be summer kitchen.  They were both above average off-bearers, who quickly learned how to take slabs and boards away without slowing me down.

We finished up at around 5:00 PM, with 7 billable hours of milling time, having worked our way through 10 logs that scaled out at 1,775 board feet. That works out to just over 250 board feet per hour, which is pretty good productivity, especially considering that we hit metal a couple of times.