| Blog series by Daren Nelson | updated 118 days ago | 13 parts | 5697 reads | 161 comments total |
Part 1: Storm damaged tree milling (picture heavy)
I have not milled all the trees that were dropped off here after the severe weather we have been having the last couple weeks (some days I cannot mill because of heavy rain). I thought I would start a blog series about what goes on around here at the mill. I will add to it as notable urban logs come in. All these pictures are stuff I have milled in the last 7 days, weather permitting. Just a few shots of the pieces I found interesting/different. Unusual white oak, very colorful grain and ...
Part 2: Spalting logs, it's just a matter of time.
I think I timed these about right (just shy of 2 years), spalted maple, fresh sawn this morning. In the “group shot” of the 4 bookmatched live edge sets you cannot see the detail, so I took a couple close ups. Really any place on the boards would have made an interesting close up. With a finish that spalt should really be wild looking. 16”-18” wide sawn 5/4”
Part 3: This weeks haul
I hooked up with a new guy. Seems he is contracted to clear some timber for a new housing development. The developer was smart and hired an arborist to remove just some of the trees in an attractive/selective way instead the usual bulldose and pile.Last week he dumped 1000 bft of oak (mostly white) in the yard. Nice size for sawing, average 24”. I milled some of the red oak and it was beautiful. No pictures, you’ll just have to trust me ;) So this week (today) he shows up with...
Part 4: Milling others yard trees (custom sawmilling)
I am so far behind right now I am not milling others logs, I have too many of my own to do. I am just politely turning down the work and hoping not to offend with the explanation I do not have time. I may be all summer getting caught up. I did mill a notable one (4 actually) this morning for an old friend. His father had to remove this cedar tree that was too close to the house and they are planning an addition. The tree had to go. It came here and I milled it for my buddy. He was hoping to &...
Part 5: It's been awhile since my last report.
The logs have slowly trickled in…until this morning, I scored nicely. I have not seen this guy the last couple weeks. He has been bringing me a load once a week, he brought a nice one today . 25 logs 8’-14’ long. The smallest was a cherry just over 12”, most in the 18”-24” range. Cherry, walnut, hickory, red oak, white oak, honeylocust and hard maple. These should keep me out of trouble for a couple days . The walnut is iffy (crooked) the oaks and hickory a...
Part 6: 2 blogs in one week (big log, be careful what you wish for)
Here is a follow up from earlier in the week. I started milling some of the logs from that blog. I currently have others I am getting backed up on (too many oaks and honeylocust) but am low on cherry so I decided to mill some of it. Turned out very nice, small but nice.!!One 12 foot log milled and ready to be moved to the drying stacks 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 s...
Part 7: Still at it
I opened up a pretty large mulberry today and knew on the first cut this was going to be interesting. 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 sta...
Part 8: Mother nature works for me some times
Another log from the same load the “interesting” mulberry came from in my last entry…I thought this looked interesting as well. 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.
Part 9: One mans trash...
Has been my treasure. I got into urban logging for a specific purpose I thought, to utilize wood that I saw going to waste. A lifelong friend of mine and I got back in touch recently after a few years of having drifted apart , work took him out of state. In our conversation he commented that I have always been a “dumpster diver” citing examples from as far back as elementary school. And once he visited my website and read what I was up to he thought it was perfectly fitting having...
Part 10: Busy week...and it's only Monday
Todays haul. These logs came from trees at a warehouse expansion. The company owns many acres and some of it is timbered. They hired a tree service buddy of mine to remove the marketable logs and, well market them. Believe it or not not long ago logs like this would have been just bulldozed (and far too many still are) to make room for “progress”. I will keep this blog entry short but have to explain this tree service is 3rd generation and until we started working together the onl...
Part 11: Fruits of my labor
I showed a pile of walnut logs in my last blog. Now I will show the pile of lumber that came from it. This is the FAS pile. I have another pile that is lower grade. There is 750 bft of just gorgeous lumber here, almost “perfect”. 8”-12” wide and 8’-10’ long boards. 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 !!
Part 12: It's been awhile since my last report (but I came back with pictures)
I like crotches. I like milling them, I like making things with them. Some one dropped off this “crotchy” elm the other day. The butt log is kinda a big devil. 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 advertise...
Part 13: Still milling, just not blogging much...
But I thought I would take the time to show a couple pictures. I got a call from a buddy of mine who takes care of a local cemetery asking if I wanted an ugly log they had been pushing around in the mud for a month doing an expansion. I asked what is it. He said “It’s just an old elm, but it has alot of forks like you like (crotches) and bumps all over it that look like big strawberries with twigs growing out of them (burls)” So maybe my buddies don’t know the terminol...
By subscribing to the RSS feed you will be notified when new entries are posted on this blog.
