He dumped it in the yard in 2 pieces. And it does have strawberries growing on it, huh.

The dude in the picture is my nosey neighbor, he is ring counting it for whatever reason. He is about my size, the big end of the log is 36”. Crooked/nasty/limby/burly chunk of wood, I will see what I can do with it .

I whacked the small end off and threw it on the mill to make some crotch table slabs.

Same piece just flipped over on the mill deck ready to go.

Just that one little piece milled out several interesting 6/4 slabs 27” wide and 4+ feet long…I still have alot of log left.

So I cut one off to mill. I was a little bummed because I see 2 hearts, which usually means less figure/ more bark inclusion…

I had to trim it abit to get it to fit the mill for width (more on that later)

First slab looks decent.

28” wide…not bad for a bandmill that is advertised to make a 24” cut (I made some mods, wider the better in my book)

Then comes the inclusion I knew would be there, not too bad it’s still sound anyway.

They look good in a bookmatch.

Now some may be thinking “Hey Daren, why don’t you lay them end to end to see what they look like ?”...Ok I did that.

The last slice worth saving…that little crotch should make several really cool projects…and there is a heck of alot of just that one log left.

I grade sawed all this out. I am not exaggerating when I say if I cut all the “defect” (any small knots or sapwood) out of this whole pile it would all fit in a 5 gallon bucket !!

A few stragglers, 2 cedar 2 black locust and a birch.

What made my day. 23 walnut logs 8’ long (well over 1000 board feet) delivered.

Back story out of the way I will post pictures of some “trash” I picked up last week. I get my logs from many sources homeowners/municipalities/tree services…I contacted one tree service I had not heard from for awhile. I was paying him a little for logs since he always seemed to have very nice ones, but he stopped coming around. He had found another buyer (sawmill 2 hours south) that was willing to pay more than I. No problem we all have to eat and business is business, glad he is still putting salvaged logs to good use and making a little more money too. I asked if he had anything the bigger mill did not want ? If you have read my last 2 blog entries that figured mulberry and spalted white oak where in his “fire wood pile”, no other mill wanted them so he was going to split them for fire wood to sell. While visiting his pile of discarded logs that others found no use for there was a pile of walnut crotches they had cut off. I asked “What about these ?”. He told me they cut the Y’s as he called them off logs before taking them to the other mill. Since they were too hard to split they would just be pushed into the timber behind his shop to rot. Of course I asked for those and said I had a use for them, which just received a funny look and a shoulder shrug, they followed me home (well he delivered them with the other logs).

I know that was alot of reading for just 3 pictures. Some more of other mens trash milled into 6/4” thick table tops.

This white oak had laid in a back yard of an abandoned farm house and was forgotten about by people for a couple years…mother nature didn’t forget about it, she went to work spalting it. And did a nice job I might add.

So I cut a little deeper.

Flipped it over…and urban logging strikes again. 2 screws, oh well there was plenty of good lumber under them.

Yea those are 21” wide mulberry boards with figure. Kinda weird birdeye/burl clusters, pretty. Mulberry is very pretty anyway. It darkens to the color of aged black cherry as it dries. It is much more attractive dry.

Not a bad stack of 4/4-6/4 and 8/4. Those 8/4×21” x 8’ wet boards were heavy fresh sawn ! I also got a little pile of live edge flitches from the saw down to a cant that I did not take a picture of.

It is so hard to capture what the figure looks like. The sun washed out the color while it was on the mill…and the flash washed it out in this picture. Just gonna have to trust me I guess…it looks better in person.

I built a sturdy frame. The drum is fixed and the table raises to the drum.

This screw raises the bed.

It does a pretty good job, looks like it would sand flat to me with the bed all the way up. I have the wrong paper on in this picture, that is just emery cloth I had handy to see if the worm gear clamps to hold it to the roller was even a good idea.

It will sand 25” wide boards. It is set up right now to sand from 2 1/2”-0” thick, my most common need. If I want to sand thicker I can just add riser blocks under the pillow blocks.

This is how I made the roller. I turned some wood plugs and spaced them on the shaft. The shaft is threaded rod and the wood disks are jam nutted in place.

A test run on a piece of osage orange. I was just trying to see if the drum built up too much heat (something I was worried about using PVC pipe) I figured if anything was going to make it hot that hard osage would…it got warm, but not hot.

If you have ever worked with osage orange you know how hard it is, something like cherry/walnut I could pretty much thrown though the machine.

It did a pretty nice job of finishing.

It is not 100% done yet, but any questions, comments, criticisms are welcome.

You can see I don’t stand the log straight up. I have cut many smaller pieces like this for game/fish mounts for a local taxidermist. I found if I cut them on a angle they do not check and bust open, they dry intact. It does make for a weird edge that needs softened/rounded over, but the plus side they are larger cut on a bias.

Cut 1 3/4” thick. You can see the 24” framing square in a couple of the pics. They are pretty decent size. I will let them dry awhile and make a base for a couple and sell a couple of the slabs to someone else to make whatever they want with theirs.

I really got a great stack of almost perfect cherry boards. I am pleased. (400 bft ? and did not mill them all yet)

The walnut like I said was a little strange, but hey I like strange. I only milled one of those. It was so crooked I had to cut it in short pieces to get anything good. Here is a shot of one of the crotches.

The real reason for this blog entry. The cherries where beauties…this is a beast. I had told the tree service if he was removing any large sycamore I wanted one to 1/4 saw. So he calls “I have a biggy we are taking down, want it?” I asked how big. He said 34” or so. Perfect, that will fit on the mill nicely…
Well he brought 4 logs. The smallest was 34” on the small end. The biggest (in the picture) is 50”. Oh boy, someone has their work cut out for them. That one log weighs 6000 lbs. I have to 1/4 it with my chainsaw to even get it on the mill, not really a fun job in August. Oh well with proper planning/milling I should get some massive 1/4 sawn sycamore boards. Enjoy. I will post pictures of the lumber soon hopefully. I was able to just barely get the little log (not in the picture) on the mill last night. I will be sawing it, weather permitting, early next week.