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.