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.

Sawmill Demo at the Farmers Market

On Sunday I gave a sawmill demonstration at the Coventry Regional Farmers Market, which runs from 11:00 am until 2:00 pm every Sunday, spring, summer, and fall, and is reputed to be the most popular farmers market in the state. It's very well run.  It started out as a small scale event, but has been growing steadily over the years, and now draws pretty big crowds.  The atmosphere is like a small agricultural fair, without the cotton candy.  A few years ago they arranged to move the market to the grounds of the Nathan Hale Homestead here in town, which gives them room to handle the crowds, and to hold special events, like a sawmill demonstration.

We set up in the 'Holy Grove', a parcel near South Street that's away from the farmer's booths.  My brother-in-law, Kevin helped as off-bearer, while my wife, Kim, and Ed, a friend visiting for the holiday weekend, helped by handing out pamphlets and answering questions. 

I brought four 8' red oak logs to demonstrate with during the 3 hours that the market is open.  These produced a nice stack of lumber by the end of the day.

Lots of people stopped to watch, many asked questions, and more than a few said they would be getting in touch to schedule the mill for a visit to their logs.

We had put down tarps to collect most of the sawdust.  To clean up, we scooped it into 30 gallon paper 'lawn and leaf' bags.  It took me three trips to get everything back home in my pickup truck.

All in all, time well spent from my perspective, and the market organizers have already asked me to come back next year

Fencing in Columbia

I visited David in Columbia this weekend.  He needs to put up some horse fencing.  He's got some trees and a chainsaw, so he developed a plan to use native lumber.  He took down trees of a variety of species: oak, ash, birch, and hickory, that I recall.  He was primarily interested in 4x4's for posts and 1x6's for fence boards.

Although he had the the logs neatly arranged 'over there',  he wanted the lumber stacked 'over here', in the horse rink area.  So I set up the mill close to where the lumber stack was to be, and Dave used his small tractor to drag logs from the there to here.  He was pretty quick at it, and I rarely had to off-bear a slab or board myself. 

We started at around 9:00 AM on Saturday, working our way through the 8 foot logs we made posts out of, and starting into the 10 foot logs we were making fence boards from.  At about 4:30 PM, we came to what seemed to be a natural stopping point, so we stopped.  It might have been better if we'd worked for another hour.

The pictures above are from Saturday; a pleasant day; not too warm, a bit overcast.  Sunday, it rained.  It rained all day.  Sometimes it was a light mist, other times it was a downpour.  We worked through it regardless.

We started again at about 9:00 AM, and worked until the logs were gone, which took us until about 6:45 PM.  We were two wet and tired people by that time.  The worst of it was not standing out in the rain all day, it was that the sawdust stuck to absolutely everything; most annoyingly the mill in thick layers, and my hands in a thin permanent coating. The picture to the right shows the sawdust encrusted mill on Monday morning, just before I spent about 40 minutes hosing it off, and then another half hour cleaning the cab of my truck.

Mostly Walnut in Stamford

I took the mill to Stamford this past weekend to mill some logs for Peter.  He owns a construction company and a millwork shop.  Due to the construction company, he had equipment to move logs, which was a good thing, because some of them were rather large.  The millwork company gave him a place to use some of the lumber I cut for him.

We started out milling a few tamarack logs, which was a first for me.  Tamarack is a pine tree that looses its needles in the fall.  It saws and looks a lot like pine.

Then we moved on to some of the larger logs.  The log in the first picture measured 36 inches in diameter by 15 feet long.  36 inches is the largest diameter log that my mill is supposed to be able to handle, but that assumes the log is a perfect cylinder.  In the real world, of course, logs are never perfect cylinders, so some trimming by chainsaw was necessary in getting started with this log.  The good news is that we were able to mill this log and made a lot of very nice lumber, including a sizable stack of 24" wide boards.  The bad news was that the log was pine, not walnut as Peter had thought.

The next log was a bit smaller at 31 inches by 8 feet.  But this one was the dark walnut that Peter wanted.  We got some nice wide boards out of this log too.

After logs like those, everything else seemed like an anticlimax.  But, we continued to mill smaller, lower quality logs until all that was left in the log pile was sticks and twigs.

Yet More Oak in Higganum

This past weekend I finally wrapped up the job in Higganum.  Six days total, over 70 logs totaling over 6000 bdft by log scale.

The weather was more cooperative, without even the threat of rain.  We were being bother by bees for much of the time, but no one got stung.

We were short handed this weekend, with only three of us on Saturday and Sunday morning, with a welcome forth hand joining us on Sunday afternoon.  Beams were initially just dumped on the ground to get them off the mill, but were stacked more neatly later.  Smaller lumber went directly into Scott's trailer.

Scott says he may have another job for me in September, somewhere east of the river.

More Oak in Higganum

I worked for Scott in Higganum again this weekend.  Sorry, no pictures.  We got rained out in mid-afternoon on both Saturday and Sunday, but we still managed to mill over 2,000 board feet of logs.

Scott had plenty of helpers on hand to move logs and beams, which was greatly appreciated since I'd had hernia surgery on Monday.  

We've milled about 45 logs so far, but there's still more left.  I'll be going back in two weeks, and hope to be able to finish up at that time.

I'm getting much better at being able to tell white oak from red.

Oak In Higganum

This job was by far my biggest yet, and it's not over by a long shot.  The customer was Scott.  The logs though were on the property of Scott's friend Troy, where the trees were taken down to open up the woods that had closed in since the house was built.

Scott has plans to build a small post & beam building, and was primarily interested in beams and 2 inch thick lumber to be used as flooring.  Some one inch thick lumber was inevitably produced during the milling process as well.

I had visited Scott at the site a month ago before any trees had been turned into logs. We talked about his project, and trees and logs and the site requirements for the sawmill.  I expected to find a fair number of logs lined up when I arrived in Higganum, CT on Saturday morning, but was surprised to find five big piles of big oak logs.  There was no question that this job was going to take more than one weekend.

The milling site was tight, but well organized.  Beams and scrap went to the rear of the mill and into trailers.  Boards were brought forward with the Wood-Mizer board return, on put onto my sawhorses temporarily, and then onto another trailer.  

I measured the logs as they were loaded onto the mill, except for one or two where I forgot.  In two days working 8 to 5, we milled 25 logs which scaled at 2,165 board feet. 

This is the first log pile we tackled.  That's Scott in the center trying to work a log free.  His dad is supervising on the left.  The small Kubota in the background was not used to create these log piles.

We've moved on the second pile on Saturday afternoon.  Here, one of Scott helpers in the red shirt is demonstrating how not to pull a log down off a log pile.

That's better.

The log is safely on the mill's loading arms.

Scott on one of his fine oak logs.

Maple in Andover

I took the sawmill to Andover, Connecticut today, a trip of only 7 miles.  A new winner in the closest customer contest.  George’s story is starting to sound familiar. The lot was cleared for the new house about 20 years ago. At the time there was plenty of sunlight, but trees keep growing, and they tend to lean into the clearing, and therefore toward the house, so arborists are called in to open things up again. 

George and his teenaged son Corey had apparently caught the wood turning bug, and wanted the logs cut in a way that would supply them with raw material for their new hobby.  George wanted beams with the irregularities removed, but some amount of bark left was acceptable. This was an unusual cutting pattern, but made for some fast milling. It also left us with some pretty heavy beams to carry off the mill.

Most of the reasonably sized logs were behind the house, and needed to be brought around to the front. The LogRite Fetching Arch fit the bill perfectly. George and Corey used it with the two man handle to move some of the smaller logs, and with the tow tongue and winch together with their Jeep SUV to move the larger logs. While they moved logs, I ran the mill.

More Oak in Glastonbury

I had a job in Stamford scheduled for this weekend, but the customer canceled and asked to be rescheduled in October. As a result, I was able to return to Bob's orchard in Glastonbury to finish the job started last weekend. And this time I remembered my camera.

Either I was mistaken when I thought we were near the end of the log pile last weekend, or Bob found some more logs somewhere. We milled for almost 5 hours, producing over 700 board feet of mostly 1" lumber. Most of it was oak, but there was some birch, and some other species we couldn't identify. Productivity could have been better, but many of the logs were on the short side, under 8 feet, which slows things down.

Oak in Glastonbury

Today’s job was in Glastonbury. It’s nice to get some jobs closer to home. Bob apparently has many interests. He’s got a property in a residential neighborhood with a fair sized orchard on it, and a big red barn. It’s all very picturesque, but I forgot my camera.

He had some oak logs that he wanted milled into 1” and 2” boards.

After 2 1/2 hours, we were getting close to the end of the log pile when I lost the ability to move the head forward or backward. It didn't take long to trace the cause to the electric motor that drives the head movement. It had seized up, so we were done for the day.

A call to Wood-Mizer on Monday sent a replacement motor heading my way that same day with no questions asked. It arrived on Thursday, which gave me plenty of time to install it before the next weekend's milling.

Maple in Hebron

I milled a couple of maple logs for Joe in Hebron today. A tree at the edge of his property came down on his lawn leaving him with two good sized logs, after he’d cleaned up the rest of the mess. We used the LogRite Fetching Arch with it’s winch and tow tongue option, and the CT Logs to Lumber pickup truck to move the logs up to his driveway where the mill was set up.

Joe’s father and uncle were on hand to help. Joe wanted the logs quartersawn, which is slower than flat sawing, so no one was overworked.

Mostly Pine in Windsor

This weekend I sawed for Mike in Windsor. Mike had about a half dozen pine logs sitting in his back yard, and a few more logs hidden in the weeds at the back of his property. He also had a large piece of equipment that moved logs around with no problem at all.

We got quite a bit of 1” material out of the pine, plus some 3”x5” pieces he wants to use as false beams. We started into one large log that Mike was sure was walnut but turned out to be hickory (I’m pretty sure). Mike had no interest in hickory, so we put that aside. Then we sawed some logs that really were walnut, and got some nice looking boards out of that. We ended up with an oak log which produced decent lumber that was a bit knotty. All in all, over 1,100 board feet of lumber, which should keep Mike busy for a while.

Walnut in Vernon

Sawed a couple of walnut logs in a front yard in Vernon today. At only 8 miles, this was my shortest trip to mill yet. The customer wanted me to saw through and through, rather than risk any possibility of losing usable lumber by squaring up the a cant. The heartwood sure was pretty.

Back in New Canaan

On Sunday and Monday, May 2nd and 3rd, I was back at my New Canaan customer for the third time. They have a lot of trees down, and a barn to rebuild, and we made some good progress in turning the logs into construction material.

There are only a few logs left in the wooded section of the property. We should be able to move those out and get them milled in one more day on site.

Hemlock in Sherman

Today I did a job in Sherman, CT, which is on the western side of the state at the north end of Candlewood Lake. The customer’s house was in one of those lakeside communities where the house lots are small, and the roads are narrow. There was barely room to set up the mill and move the truck out of the way.

He had a number of short hemlock logs from a tree taken down last fall. The tree used to support a clothesline pulley, so we knew there was some metal in one log. We pulled out a hook that was still visible at the surface, and another one nearby that had become completely embedded, but the metal detector said that there was still metal in the log, which we were unable to find, so we eventually sawed around that section. There was also some unanticipated metal in another log that we found with the mill. One medium sized nail that caused the blade to dive about a quarter inch. After digging out the rest of the nail, and changing the blade, we continued sawing without further incident.

We produced a nice stack of lumber in a variety of sizes, which the customer plans to make into furniture. At the end of the day, we had to turn the mill around by hand. This was the first time I’d done this, but it went smoothly enough, and I was soon on my way home.

Spruce in New Cannan

This past weekend featured a large job in New Canaan. The travel distance was 101 miles. The time was just under two hours. I’m glad Connecticut is a small state.

The NYC area was hit by a pretty nasty storm a few weeks ago, and I’ve been getting a fair number of calls from people in Fairfield county Connecticut with trees down. This family had about a dozen good sized spruce trees go down. The one pictured was the only one in their front yard. It was also the biggest.

The landscaping crew brought in to clean things up cut this trunk into 3 logs about 13’ long. I used the LogRite Fetching Arch with the tow ring and the truck to pull the logs into position. Peaveys and Cant Hooks were then enough to move the logs onto the mill’s loading arms. I was assisted in this by a couple of High School age lads.

After the first log was sawn, the boards were trucked around behind the house to a small barn where they would be stacked for drying. We worked out how the lumber stacks would be arranged, and I gave a lesson in how to build a stickered stack of lumber, and went back to sawing. We got though the 2nd an 3rd logs and then called it a day.

On Sunday, I moved the mill behind the house where most of the devastation was. The trees that had gone down back here were smaller, but there were a lot of them; all spruce.

I set up the Fetching Arch in the two-man-handle configuration, and enlisted the lads to help me move a medium sized log to where it could be rolled onto the mill. Those boys were hooked. They took to that arch like ducks to water. I felt like Tom Sawyer. Whenever someone wasn’t on their case to carry boards to the barn, they were running around grabbing logs and moving them into position.

We sawed up a bunch of logs, but there’s a bunch more left. We’ll be going back next weekend, weather permitting.

Hickory in East Haddam

I sawed for a customer, Matt, in East Haddam yesterday. He had one big Hickory log. The loading arms were just barely able to lift the log onto the mill. Hickory can be very tough, and this log did give us some problems. Matt wanted some 22 foot long timbers. Unfortunately, the maximum length my sawmill will cut is only 21 feet. This led to a lot of head-scratching as we figured out how to shift the log back and forth to get the saw all the way through the log. We got there in the end though.

The weather was perfect, 70 degrees and sunny, and Matt's property was very scenic with a white colonial house, a large red barn, and a picturesque pond. It would have been hard not to enjoy the day despite the challenges.

Matt said he’d call me back soon to saw some shorter logs.

First Customer

I sawed for my first paying customer yesterday. She found my website using an internet search. She called and explained that she had one log 7 feet long and 18 inches in diameter, and that she lived in Sandy Hook, which is a part of Newtown.

That's further than I had though I would be traveling with the mill and a pretty small sawing job, but she was very enthusiastic, and didn't bat an eye at my $1/mile one-way travel fee for the 67 mile trip, so what the heck.

I sawed her log into 2 1/2 inch thick slabs to be used for benches. Then she wanted to saw very short logs that had been cut for firewood into "wood cubes". That's not in the Wood-Mizer manual, but we did it.

She invited friends and neighbors over to watch. She says she knows lots of people who she's sure would like to have logs milled. I may have to move to Fairfield county.

The Begining

I found that I needed to put this picture somewhere so that I could use it as part of the blog's header. It was taken the day my sawmill was delivered, so it seems appropriate to put it here at the begining of the blog.