There are boring days on the hill, days that drag along as nothing out of the normal happens......but every once in a while there is a day to live for. I needed some extra logs cut and had a portable saw mill come to house. Why, would someone get excited about this? Well, I grew up on a sawmill as my grand father and his brother had a mill along with a planing mill back in the 60's. There is nothing like the smell of hemlock being cut into boards in the morning or the sound of a steam engine huffing and puffing as the logs pass thru the saw blade.....the whole thing is amazing to me.......so this day was going to be a good one.
The mill I grew up on was about 200 yards long and near 60 feet wide, this one in on a trailer....not a double wide....just a trailer.....a one man mill of all things. He dropped the trailer, leveled it using auto controls and we were ready to rumble.
I marked each piece with a black magic marker so the sawyer didn't have to think about it. There pieces were left over from the trees we set on the second floor back in August and will be part of the UT bar. The sawmill back in those days was a 60 inch blade, today it's more like a bandsaw.....
He set the saw to the height I had marked, then moved the blade to the other end and found the center and took a reading there....
This little simple gauge showed him exactly where the center of both ends were.......because a tree doesn't grow straight........
He needs to adjust the height of the small end by using the silver looking adjusters. He can from his seat move the end of the log near the blade higher so that the center of both ends are the same.......now that is cool.
With this control panel he doesn't have to run around checking everything, it was like watching someone playing a video game.
Once we finished with the 10 cedar logs it was time to cut some bigger ones, these logs were to be used in the place of the cedar tree, but thank goodness we found those cedar trees. Now we are going to use the to make panels for the billard room.
The bobcat, not to be confused with boobcathy was a great tool in moving not only the logs but everything....
Once the center is located on both ends, it was time to start cut by just cutting off about an inch at a time....
After getting a flat spot, he marked an inch and a quarter down the log to speed up the process.
I was having a great time helping out with the process that was for sure and it was funny because two of the amigos kept trying to handle the side cut as they came off the mill...I would yell...."Ningún no yo, que deseo hacer esto" and they would put the side cut down an smile at me. Since some of the logs were 20-26 inches in diameter that made some boards 24 inches across.......which is rare to see these days.
As the days wore on the pile of saw dust kept getting higher, we will mix this in with the mulch and recycle the waste material......
WHAT A GREAT DAY
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