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.