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.