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.