And here’s more of it loaded in my truck…

And a closeup of the mesquite…

Here’s a closeup of the maple burl I found in the pile…

It’s the best Craig’s List score I’ve ever found! Only one problem, it’s not even close to April 1st… and I can’t wait till then to post an April Fool joke. No, I didn’t find this great looking wood in a free Craig’s List posting. (I do look several times a day in case a deal like this does come along.)

A customer who’s ordered several gunstocks visited and dropped off the wood to use for the next batch of gunstocks. I can’t decide which would look better, the quilted maple laminated with bicote or the quilted maple laminated with the zircote? The olive burl is especially fantastic! I strained a muscle moving the chunk of Texas Ebony to my wood storage room.

The screw driver in this slab has 8 inches of surface exposed. The blade just missed it…. Hitting that would have made my metal detector go off… Each time it goes off it costs me $25.00 for a new blade. This cherry tree is a nice average size tree and the screwdriver was in the center at the first crotch.

I didn’t saw this log. I traded a couple of gunstock blanks for several nice cherry slabs. There’s some other metal hiding in the slabs somewhere. You can see black stains on several places at the butt end of the log. I’m going to cut out parts for some Maloof style low back dining chairs from this cherry log.

This chunk of walnut is going to make a couple of nice bowls. When I have a stressful day, I take a chunk of green wood and it’s restful and relaxing to watch the ribbons of green wood shoot off the wood.

I made sure to get a good selection of crotches and limb sections that should have some interesting grain patterns when they are turned. I’ve still got a lot of chunks of walnut if anyone close to East Tennessee wants some.

I put one of my stocks at the end of the log and you can see it in both photographs. It’s 30” in length. The owner of this log saw my Timberking 1220 sawmill next to my house and a few logs. He stopped and asked if I would haul it off for him! Will I ever. This may be the most figured maple I’ve ever cut. Opening a log like this is like digging for buried treasure…

The walnut trees are in a back yard and down a steep hill. I cut the logs 10’ long to make them lighter so we could pull them up the hill slung under my log arch. It took a couple of tries to get the heaviest butt log up the hill, but we didn’t spin the wheels too bad. The walnut is a beautiful dark chocolate color. This was a yard tree with lots of Sunlight so the sapwood is a little thicker than it would be if the tree had grown slower under the shade in a forest. Here’s what it looks like trying to pry up the back end so I can get the front safety chain attached. If the log is a few feet longer, it balances and it’s easy to latch the safety chain.

This next photo shows the top of the tree. There’s a couple of 12” diameter logs left to pick up. The bottom tree had a huge fork that’s going to be some serious flame grain. I should be able to get enough figured wood from this crotch to cut seats and backs for two Maloof style rocking chairs! Yep, I’m slabbing all three trees 2 1/4” thick and they should make a lot of rocking chairs. I’m going to take most of the large limbs to the woodworking shop at the Senior Citizens center.

The last photo shows the other walnut tree where the butt was cut from the stump. I’ve got permission to use a backhoe and dig up the stumps. The tree service that dropped them left enough wood on the root ball to make gunstocks from them too. Anybody in East Tennessee that has a backhoe and wants to trade some digging time for a gunstock or even a rocking chair, send me a PM and let’s go digg!

This log is also too big to bring home today. I hate to leave it while I’m finishing the big log arch, but I don’t think very many people around here have any way to move it… I’ll post some pictures when I get a chance to saw these logs into lumber. The maple should have something over 1000 bft of lumber and all the walnut logs should have about the same amount of finished lumber.

This maple tree was planted when my 2 story farm house was built sometime around the turn of the century. It has been in decline for a while now and broken or rotten limbs are nothing new. I made a blog post a while back about the trees in my yard that would one day become lumber for gunstocks and furniture. I’ve removed the broken limb and smoothed the cut as best I can. After the stores open today, I’ll go to the nursery and get something to cover the wound. But, to get to solid wood, I may have to remove two more limbs that are attached to this portion of the maple tree. It’s about 32” in diameter and the log will be over 16’ long when it’s cut. The tree is gnarly and twisted, so the wood inside will be spectacular. You can see from the ripples just under the bark that some portion of the tree will be tiger maple. There’s also some ambrosia beetle damage, so the colors in the main trunk my also add to it’s natural beauty.

I’ll have to wait till the tree is milled before I see how much figure will be in the wood. The tree is spectacular and provides shade for my front yard. The trees around my house keep my home at least 10 degrees cooler than the surrounding field. I sure hate to lose it, but time and gravity are just not anyone’s friend…

The tree with the broken limb is right above the gas can on the maple log I found listed on Craig’s List yesterday. My 2 story farm house is right behind the trees. You can see how big this tree is in relation to my house. The wind storm we had a few days ago, dropped the small maple I have behind my SUV, on a fence and the farm owner wanted it removed. I was going to carve a thumbhole stock for a Ruger 10/22 today, but it looks like it will be a late afternoon project or I’ll have to put it off till tomorrow.

I’ve cut the limbs into chunks to make bowls and rolling pins from some of the wood, but I’ve got more bowl blanks here than I’ll ever be able to use. Anyone who is close to East Tennessee is welcome to have some of this beautiful wood. I’m sure there will be a lot more available before I am finished cleaning up my front yard.

I had a windstorm about 10 years ago take down 3 of the big maples and at that time I didn’t have any woodworking tools or any way to get the logs sawed into lumber. The only chunk I was able to save is a 3’ square block from one of the trees. I have used parts of it to make small items and the grain is fantastic. I’m hoping this tree will be just as beautiful. I may cut it into flooring to replace the damaged pine floors in the farmhouse instead of making gunstocks or rocking chairs from it. Too bad I won’t be able to show Dr. A.D. Miller, who built this house, and was the first to live in it, floors made from the wood of the maples he planted when he had the home built. I’ve cut poplar from trees on the property to make siding to replace the rotten siding on the house too. I’m sure he would be pleased to see how his trees are being used to bring his home to its original beauty.

http://www.sawmillmag.com

This months topic is the Sawmill Shootout with reviews of the mills competing and the results. Remember this shootouts mills and sawyers are professionals and the mills are set up as perfect as possible. Your results in production may be much less.

The walnut strip is 11 3/4” in length, 3 5/8” tall and 1 7/8” wide. It could be used for a tea candle holder, or a clock face could be inletted into the face, or it could be cut into 1/4” thick sections to carve pistol grips. If anyone has other ideas, I’m open to suggestions.

The end grain walnut log section is 12” in diameter and 1 1/2” thick. The log it was cut from was only 2’ long, so it wasn’t big enough to do much with. I cut a few 2” sections to see if they would dry without cracking and I kept a 16” section to use at my sawmill for a stool. This disc looks like it would make a great end grain cutting board, or it could be a candle base for a large candle, or a clock face could be installed and it could be a wall hanging. Again, any ideas will be appreciated.

The red lines show the horizontal saw cuts to divide the log into cants. The green lines are the saw cuts to saw the cants into quartersawn & riff sawn lumber. Each slab is numbered in the order I removed them from the log. This isn’t the ideal way to quartersaw lumber, but was the only practical way to cut this large log on a manual sawmill and get the most 8” or wider quartersawn boards. I also marked each section as R-Riff sawn or Q-Quartersawn so you can see where the growth rings show on the end of the board. A lot of the riff sawn boards show a riff sawn pattern on one side and a quartersawn pattern on the other.

The log is 38” in diameter at the widest point, before I attacked the wide parts with my chainsaw, and 9’ 6” long. My log deck will handle a 20’ log, but I have no interest in sawing a log 38” in diameter and 20’ long. The weight is just too much. Looks like I’m going to cut my larger logs to 10’ 6” from now on.

After I got the log loaded, which was an adventure too, I raised the saw head to it’s highest position and then adjusted the blade to take the widest cut possible. I took off an 8” slab (slab 1) and stacked it by the mill. Then I dropped the head down another 8” and took off a huge slab. (Slab 2) It must have weighed 600 to 800 lbs. I slid it sideways and used my log arch to pick it up and set it beside the mill with the other slab. Then I used my engine hoist to flip the 1/2 log, dropped the head again and took off another slab. (slab 3) This slab was thicker because the log wasn’t as rounded on this end and I could take a deeper cut. The fatter slab on top would have hit the drive belt if I’d gone deeper. Remember, my Timberking 1220 is a manual sawmill and there are no hydraulics to help load logs & cants. I used a log arch and an engine hoist to load and turn the logs. I plan to build a saw shed over my sawmill and put a steel beam down the length of the log deck where I’ll attach a pulley and use my electric winch to load and turn logs.

After making my cants, I cut the center slab into two cants, removed a 4” x 8” beam with the pith centered and cut the two cants into quartersawn lumber. (slab 4 & 5) Then I put the other cants back on the log deck and cut them into quartersawn lumber. I would have cut this log like the diagram shows on the Woodmizer site, or quartered it and put a 45 degree jig under the pointy end and cut all quartersawn lumber, but my saw head wouldn’t do it with a log this big. If the log was slightly larger, I would have split it into two cants before I started and if it was slightly smaller I would have used the Woodmizer method. I haven’t measured the amount of riff and quartersawn lumber I ended up with, but my narrowest board is 8” wide.
Any riff sawn board smaller than that or that was mostly sapwood got cut into stickers.

I’m making this series of blog posts for everyone who’d like to own their own sawmill and who would like some information about how to operate a manual mill and the equipment needed to transport, load, and turn big logs.

Here’s a closer look at the boards on the top of the stack. There were 5 boards cut from the top and bottom of the log that were riff sawn and the rest were quartersawn with beautiful flecks in the wood. I ended up with 10 riff sawn boards and 20 quartersawn boards. The riff sawn boards from the top and bottom of the 1/2 log were from 10 to 15 inches wide and the quartersawn boards were from 20 to 24” wide.

About 1/2 of the riff sawn boards show quartersawn flecks on one side and straight grain on the other.

20 boards in this stack look like this closeup. Waiting for them to dry teaches patience… Or so they say. I hate to wait, but the wait will be worth it.

My neighbor across the road lives in a log home that was built in the eary 1800’s. The original kitchen was a fireplace in the center of the house. It was an open walkway between two big rooms. Later they built a kitchen in a separate building behind the main house.

After it was spread open enough with the maple wedge. I put a scissors jack in the split and forced the log into two big slices. It’s a small log, only a little over 4’, but it should make a good supply of quarter sawn flat boards. You can see the sycamore log laying in the background.

The split is 36” long and each half is 24” wide. I should get 3 or 4 quartersawn boards at least 20” wide. I’ll know tomorrow when I saw again.

Here’s the other two red oak logs that will be quartersawn. They are just over 30” wide, so they’ll saw without splitting them first.

It was almost 100 degrees here today. The only way I could stay cool was to freeze bottles of water and take frequent water breaks in the shade. It was hot work, swinging a sledge hammer and splitting this log. I sure hope the wood is worth the effort.

I cut the shoulders from the legs, leaving a 2 1/4” tenon. Then used the cut off pieces of leg material to make a jig to cut the matching mortise. First I drill out some of the waste material with a spade bit, then use a sharp chisel to square up the mortise.

The jig makes it easy to keep the sides of the mortise square. Sometimes I use a router with a pattern bit to cut the mortise. This slab was a little too soft to cut with a router, so I used a chisel.

The mortise was too easy to cut in the soft wood, so I filled the soft parts with a mixture of West System 3 epoxy and acetone (15% by weight) The thinned epoxy fills punky wood and makes a firm surface. Here’s the mortise before I stabilized the wood.

It only took about 1/2 a day to make this bench.

I don’t have a bobcat or a backhoe to load logs… so, I had to wrestle them on the trailer. One item I did get to help load logs was a 3000 lb electric winch. Only one problem with it today. The battery was discharged! I had to use my back up plan. A manual winch. I used two 4” X 5” maple beams as loading ramps. The Y shaped crotch of walnut wouldn’t roll up the ramps so I wrapped a line from the trailer, under the log, and over the top. A few hand cranks with the manual winch and the log was loaded! I rolled the smaller logs up the ramp using a cant hook.

I’ve only got a single axel trailer, so I limited my load to 3 logs, 12” long.

Look at the grain in this board! I love opening a log, it’s like digging for buried treasure! Some logs have rotten centers or metal in them. This one was clean! After all it costs a new blade anytime there is a problem with the sawmill.

The black walnut in the log, looks great. Here’s a photo where the wood is still wet after sawing. Look close and the grain almost moves like wind through a wheat field.

Another closeup so you can see just how beautiful this log is and how wide the plank is:

One more photo showing the next log in the stack. I keep the flitch stacked and stickered so that later when the wood is dry, I can use the lumber to make custom gunstocks.

Look close and you can see the welds I made… Woops, they are all hidden under things or in shadows. Some of the welds are not too pretty, so when I get better I’ll show them. My next project will be a log arch to move logs from my woodlot to the sawmill. A 35” X 16’ log weighs about 3500 lbs and isn’t easy to move safely. But that same log, cut into lumber will result in close to 1000 bft of lumber for me to use for projects to post here on Lumberjocks.

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And now for the finished rifle! A Remington 600 Mohawk in .222 Remington. Left side view.

And the right side of the rifle. The customer finished the rifle and it’s ready to take to the shooting range.

The second rifle stock the same customer finished was this project:

Here’s the finished rifle. A Remington 660 and the finish and checkering is fantastic!

The view from the bottom showing how straight the laminate is.

Both rifles together:

And the Remington 660 with two original Remington Magnum rifles. Remington used birch and walnut for the laminate and if you look close at the two bottom rifles, you can see where Remington pieced together the walnut sections from narrow stock.

Look how gnarly this one is. The log isn’t tall, but it’s thick. About 35” in diameter. It’s the smallest of the 6 trees. Here are three more on the other side of the yard.

This walnut isn’t sick or dying. It’s in it’s prime and would make a great sawlog, it’s huge and will be the last to cut because it adds so much to the yard.

Here’s what the back of the property looks like, the ridge has at least 50 trees from on end to the other. Poplar, red oak, white oak, walnut, black cherry, pine and a few other species are present.

Here’s a close up of one of the bigger poplar trees in the picture above.

If you look close at the base of the tree you can see my .22 squirrel rifle. I put it there for a size comparison.

Now you can get an idea of how big these trees are. I’ll have to split or quarter most of them to get them on my sawmill. Several of them have 3 – 16’ sawlogs in them.

This double sycamore is in the middle of the hay field. And next to it is this huge walnut.

I’m going to be taking down a few of these trees. The gnarly, bent, dying and sick ones. The strong, healthy, beautiful ones will get more light and produce more seeds. I’ll have lumber pictures soon and a review of my Timberking 1220

Ok, one last problem, the instructions say, “Set up your sawmill on reasonably level ground.” Hey, this is East Tennessee, I’m not sure there is any level ground outside of a basketball court anywhere around here. Anyway, I got everything bolted together and the log deck level and I set up the mill in a temporary spot where I can cut some of my locust trees so I can make a base for the mill that won’t rot and won’t cost $50 to $100 in treated pine at the local hardware store. Here’s where it’s sitting now. In my back yard with the sun going down. It’s going to rain tomorrow, so It’s early next week before I can run my new sawmill and see how it works. None of the problems and troubles I had today were the fault of the manufacture. So far, I’ve not found anything about the mill I don’t like. And yes, I wish I’d bought the trailer package. But, I didn’t have the extra $1000 and I don’t intend to move the mill after I get a level place to put it. The Timberking 1220 is covered and when the rain stops in a day or two, I’ll cut some slabs from some locust trees and square up some locust 6X6’s to start building a shed for my saw.

Look at that big oak on the right side of the photo below. It’s at least 5’ in diameter and it’s huge! I’ve got a dozen white oaks that big in my woods. My 2 story farmhouse needs new floors! I’ll have to quarter a tree this size to saw logs from it, so… Wonder how long it will take to saw up 3200 bft of quarter sawn white oak?

I flattened and sized two two boards to make the back support and the shelf. Then I cut a dado in the mounting board to match the thickness of the shelf. A quick splash of glue and 3 wood screws, and two 90 degree triangles for support and it was ready to mount.

After using it for a few weeks, I don’t know how I ever got along without it before. I’m going to make a few more to put in other places around the kitchen where I have empty wall space. A circular shelf with sides at 90 degrees to each other will make a great shelves for the ends of my cabinets.

Oh, that’s one other problem that I caused myself… At the last remodel, I just repainted the cabinets to save money, One of the drawers was missing, so I took a wild cherry cutoff and made a replacement drawer. I didn’t have the heart to paint over the beautiful grain, so I rubbed in a couple of coats of tung oil and waxed the face plate. Now every time I get out a fork or spoon, I see the contrast between the beautiful drawer and the rest of the cabinets. I don’t know how much longer I can stand looking at the white cabinets…

The framing is 2X4 white pine, floors are made from 1” white oak, the outside siding is 1” white pine with 1” poplar over the pine. After the insulation is installed the inside will be covered with plywood. The supports are made from log sections of black locust. I’ll have more photos when it’s finished. The design is early American chicken coop…

Hal