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.

So this week (today) he shows up with 1000 bft of honeylocust, one of my favorite woods, and osage. The biggest honeylocust is 34” x 12’ and 4600 lbs. A couple of them were over 30”...I see some 24” wide honeylocust slabs in the near future ! The osage was smaller, but still nice. I have fallen behind on milling because I am trying to reorganize my wood storage shed. I finished that today and weather permitting will be making lumber from these dudes very soon.

Unusual white oak, very colorful grain and pattern.

I got a decent little stack of 12”-13” wide lumber off that one tree.

A part of a blow down walnut crotch, a tornado ripped it to shreds.

Not a huge pile, but pretty neat. (and free)

More lumber from the same walnut tree, interesting looking book matched lumber. The boards are 12” wide each.

Another smaller walnut crotch from the same property. 24” wide and 36” long

Again, not a big pile…but every one just lovely.

I got a very large hard maple dropped off too.

It was lighting struck and the lightning did me a huge favor and blew a perfect 1/4 out to start milling. The log is over 50” across, too big for my mill. I will have to finish quartering it with a chainsaw.

The 1/4 on the mill is 24” wide. I milled it already but it was nothing super special so no pictures, just old hard maple.

The tree service dropped off several logs 24”-36” diameter. Here are a couple.

I did mill out one of the small maple crotches this morning. The pictures don’t do the figure justice it sure is pretty. Each flitch is 20” wide and 36” long.

Speaking of flitches. The guy who dropped off that load of walnut the tornado destroyed also brought some really short pieces he managed to save (vultures were already there cutting it for firewood). I though maybe these little 3’-4’ pieces would make a neat live edge small table. One idea I had was use 3 (4?) and make a book self/shelving unit of some kind. Stack the flitch shelves in the order they where in the log.

I have nothing against traditional logging (if done properly, selective harvest), don’t get me wrong. I would never chain myself to a tree like what most people think of when they hear “tree hugger”. But somehow I feel if I mill these trees that were going to waste I am filling a little piece of the market and maybe one tree in the woods can stand. If I mill and sell an oak tree from a local town to a local woodworker, that guy will not buy wood from a tree that was harvested from nature some place else. Maybe an odd way to go about saving a tree, but it is the best I can do.

For another example of my love of trees I have access to log family timber full of mighty oaks. I see those trees and remember the time my cousin and I climbed up in the limbs and had a picnic. The nap I took under the tree on a beautiful fall afternoon. The first time I showed my wife the tree and explained that tree was most likely 500 years old. I live in an area that was heavily populated by native Americans (I have dozens of artifacts from the same acreage, arrow heads and such) To think that a man living off the land 400 years ago might have also rested in the shade of the same tree, hunted the squirrels that fed from the fruit of that tree…No amount of money in the world would make me think about cutting that tree down.

I am not going to shove this urban logging thing down your throat. But millions of dollars of lumber is being wasted every day by our cities (your tax money) The whole time the Fed is subsidizing logging companies, yea they are. I will not go into tariffs here on imported wood that is another subject. The flip side of government funding is “Tree Cities USA” in Illinois alone we have $82.4 million dollars on the books for planting trees in urban settings…care to guess how much they have set back for what to do with the 2 trees they cut down for every 1 they plant ? Or for the ones our grandfathers planted ? I will give you a hint $0. The plan is cut them down and burn them.

Finally I am going to get to my point. If you have read this far, thanks. After 5 years of beating my head against the wall I made contact with the right person. The webmaster has some tweaking to do with links and there will be more information soon. But right smack on the DNR page http://dnr.state.il.us/conservation/forestry/urban/ is an attention grabbing “Urban Forest Utilization” NEW.
The link takes you to a listing page that is also a work in progress. That page will provide information to people/municipalities on how and why to further utilize urban logs and has listings for sawmills like mine that will process them.

Basically this is state endorsement of what I do, and promotion through their site .They are working on pamphlets to educate local municipalities on why they should look into further utilization of their urban forests. I am not going to be able to mill every tree that gets removed in the state obviously…but maybe someone can. Now that “urban logging” is recognized and validated on a state governmental level it will bring more guys like myself out of the shadows. I would love to see a coop of sorts, a network of sawyers working together with communities to put these tree to good use. (and get them in the hands of woodworkers instead of piled and burned/ground for mulch/split for firewood)

I have sited this statistic before from The University of Illinois Forestry Dept. on timber acreage.

• Forestland prior to European settlement – 13.8 million acres (40 percent)
• Forestland today – 4.4 million acres (12 percent)
• Illinois ranks 49th among states in percent of land remaining in original vegetation

We have cut alot of trees down in this state. There is real money being spent through “Tree City USA” to replant them in our cities and towns. It would be a shame to see them meet the same fate as the 9.4 million acres from the stats above. If you live in Illinois and care anything about this there is contact information on the link I provided. I don’t see anything but good coming from a note of support for this. If you are a sawyer in Illinois who will help me saw these logs you can be added to the list of sawmills on that page as well.

I know we have jocks from all over the country/world. If any of this blog strikes a cord with you, check with your state see what they are doing. If they are not doing anything…maybe you should. After many efforts (and I am going to throw a pun in here) and walking away feeling I was barking up the wrong tree, one little email paid off. One lady listened. Not only listened to my spiel, but asked questions. That opened a line of communication between us and the result was the pages on the Dept. of Natural Resources I linked and some people in the state capitol scratching their heads on how much more they can do in the way of putting our urban forests to a good use.

Thank you for taking the time to read my blog, and of course I am available to help in any way I can if you have questions. I would love to see something like this in every state. Some are ahead of Illinois, Michigan is one of them http://urbanwood.org/ . Do some checking maybe your state has something like this in place.

I started with 1”x3” white oak I laminated (glued/screwed/plugged) for 3” square base/legs.

I tied them together with a couple shelves. I wanted open shelves to not collect so much dust.

I picked out some 1/4 sawn hackberry 2” thick for the top.

Jointed it and put an ash skirt around it.

Then it was time to add some dog holes. I had some ideas for things that would help me. I like the idea of a bench hook…but it seemed like I would always be bumping into it. So I made one that was movable/removable. 2 actually, one goes in the dog holes on the vice. I made a little adjustable board jack to hold up the middle, seems to work pretty good and its a handy place to keep my extra dogs that I turned from osage.

A closer look at the movable/removable hooks.

I have some lighting issues in my little shop. I took a piece of 1X ash and just turned one end to fit in any dog hole. I can clamp a light (or 2) to the pole for task lighting.

It should work for me. $15 vice (new) from a guy I know, a double handful of screws, some glue and wood other people were going to burn (urban logger, all this wood was headed for the landfill)

EDIT: THERE IS PLANE IRON INFO ADDED AFTER THE KNIFE

I made this for my brother. He is left handed and there is actually a right-left handed sushi knife. He lives on a boat (50’ Hatteras motor yacht) in Tampa Bay.
I started with a piece of wood and tool steel.

I “roughed out” the blank while the iron was relatively soft, it was already tool steel…hardened tool steel is a whole new ball game. Then I heat treated (to 1800 degrees in my forge) quenched it in 22 degree water/salt/ice. I tempered it (reheated it to soften it just a bit) slowly and let it slow cool. Now I have a piece of steel that is hard enough to keep an edge, but not so hard it is brittle.

The steel is mounted in the rough handle with epoxy. Then I move to the wet stones. You cannot use power tools on steel at this point, it will mess up the hardness if you overheat it. I free hand ground this on these stones to get the proper geometry. Tough going, over 2 hours on the stones.

After I get the “shape” right it is time to polish/sharpen. I move to natural water stones. My man made stones (aluminum oxide, silicone oxide) only go to 600-800 grit…I need to go to 8,000. I am about 3000 (?) in this picture. It is already “razor sharp”, note the band aid, one split second loss of concentration and to the bone it went. And I am a long way from as sharp as he wants it.

I am far enough along to finish the handle (HEY woodworking). 2 tone dye on quilted rock maple. You can see my glove, I will not handle this knife from now on without them. It is already that sharp and my hand oils/sweat may rust the blade. It has to be coated with veggy oil from now on in the salt air of the Gulf where it will be going, it’s high carbon steel.

Now I have to strop it with 2 different strops and the final touch newspaper on float glass. When you are using paper to abrade hardened steel you are on the microscopic level. That is what it takes to make things as sharp as that video I posted of me swing a hair at a blade and it cutting clean. He said he wanted a hair splitting sushi knife. Total time 10 hours (?)