Tractors and wood! Show your pics

[hunt4570]

^^^^
That is nice. I envy those who have sawmills. It was on my list at one time, but I doubt that it will ever happen.

A sawmill has been on my list for 20 or 30 years, never had all the other components all at the same time to go with it.. trees, tractor, time, money yada yada.. Finally got them all lined up last year, and now I'm losing the strength to do it! I just cut for myself so there's no real push to get stuff done so its not to bad. Would not want to have to do it for a living at this stage of my life though.

 

[Sawyer Rob]

Thing I hate about milling doubles, is all the extra sawdust you have to clean out from under the mill... When I do it, it's usually with "shorts", to speed up making stickers,

You can cut out a lot of them fast!

SR

 

[hunt4570]

Thing I hate about milling doubles, is all the extra sawdust you have to clean out from under the mill... When I do it, it's usually with "shorts", to speed up making stickers,

You can cut out a lot of them fast!

SR

Yeah, I cut a bunch of stickers the other day too, and some more skid making lumber, need to got out there and cut them to useable length now..

 

[DingDangKid]

I need to start taking some pictures. The EAB is starting to kill trees around my place. This last weekend we put the ones aimed at my house and two of the neighbor's places on to the ground. Ended up with around 700BF of board and batten siding and at least 2 cords of wood.

 

[Jstpssng]

I need to start taking some pictures. The EAB is starting to kill trees around my place. This last weekend we put the ones aimed at my house and two of the neighbor's places on to the ground. Ended up with around 700BF of board and batten siding and at least 2 cords of wood.

May I ask where you are located? The borer is just starting to appear in this state, coming in from Canada and New Hampshire on opposite ends of the state.

 

[DingDangKid]

May I ask where you are located? The borer is just starting to appear in this state, coming in from Canada and New Hampshire on opposite ends of the state.

I'm in North Central PA, about 15 miles south of the NY border. I haven't seen any trees come down yet due to EAB's but it won't be long till they do. Quite a few of the trees's that we dropped had the tops split out of them. All of them had bark that looked like this.


(not mine, found on google)

 

[BrokenTrack]

Way back, when we starting our homestead, we also considered getting a mill, but chose instead to have a local guy with one come into cut our logs.
Well, after tailing boards for a couple of days , I decided that he can have the mill; and if and when we need more lumber, I will pay him to saw.
Just not worth the initial expense let alone the noise and dust.
We have had him back a handful of times in the past 30 years and it was totally worth it.
To each their own.

I am in a strange spot because I understand both concepts.

When I need to do a lot of sawing, I have paid people to come in and custom saw, and I think it was well worth it, but as I said, those people are all out of the business now.

Myself, I rather despise sawing as I think it is incredibly boring. I typically got something better to do with my time then babysit a sawmill, but it is nice having them around. I try and make the drudgery of sawing somewhat tolerable by seeing how many 2x4's I can get out of a log, or seeing how much quality I can get, but let's face it, after about the fifth log there is not much a person can do to make the job interesting.

We (as a family) got a few sawmill kicking around:

A 1900 era circular sawmill
A few bandsaw sawmills
A chainsaw sawmill
A Shingle Mill (if I can call that a sawmill)

The shingle mill we never use. It is far too dangerous. We almost put vinyl siding on the building it is housed in, but I thought that was pretty sacrilegious, so we ended up splitting the difference and BUYING the cedar shingles to side the building. Thanks Maibec! (LOL)

One thing I do like about sawing lumber with my own mill though, is making my own clapboards. It really is fast, saves a lot of money, and does not use much wood.

 

[BrokenTrack]

Last year I had a 90 year old Tiny House that had been vacant for 11 years, and so I took some logs that did not make the commercial grade, and so in 5 weeks time, my father and I fixed that house up and my family ended up living in it for a year. That was nice because for $1700 in expenses (everything from wiring to drywall) we fixed what was a $40,000 house, into one that was $80,000, and so where in the word could I do that working a real job? As much as I hated that Norwood Sawmill, the silly thing did enable me to make $7660 a week. yes that is in net worth and not cash, but still, I am worth more because I had the sawmill.

Another time I like having my own sawmills is for blowdowns.

Last year I had a nice tree that blew down in the windstorm, so I grabbed my tractor and log trailer, tossed on my chainsaw, and then backed down beside the tree. I limbed it, bucked it into lengths. Then I put the logs on the log trailer, then drove beside my sawmill. I fired that up, sawed the logs into lumber, and two hours later I had (34) 2x4's from what would have been an otherwise wasted tree...in 2 hours time.

So there are times it is nice to have a sawmill, but as others have said, you can go down to the neighbor that has one, and buy a few boards too.

As I said, I see both sides.

 

[hunt4570]

I am in a strange spot because I understand both concepts.

When I need to do a lot of sawing, I have paid people to come in and custom saw, and I think it was well worth it, but as I said, those people are all out of the business now.

Myself, I rather despise sawing as I think it is incredibly boring. I typically got something better to do with my time then babysit a sawmill, but it is nice having them around. I try and make the drudgery of sawing somewhat tolerable by seeing how many 2x4's I can get out of a log, or seeing how much quality I can get, but let's face it, after about the fifth log there is not much a person can do to make the job interesting.

We (as a family) got a few sawmill kicking around:

A 1900 era circular sawmill
A few bandsaw sawmills
A chainsaw sawmill
A Shingle Mill (if I can call that a sawmill)

The shingle mill we never use. It is far too dangerous. We almost put vinyl siding on the building it is housed in, but I thought that was pretty sacrilegious, so we ended up splitting the difference and BUYING the cedar shingles to side the building. Thanks Maibec! (LOL)

One thing I do like about sawing lumber with my own mill though, is making my own clapboards. It really is fast, saves a lot of money, and does not use much wood.

So what do you consider "clapboards" … horizontal siding? and how do you go about doing that and do you taper them?

 

[gladehound]

Sorry to disrupt the Mill talk, but I just got a nice chunk of white oak (17ft and nearly 2ft diameter) and I'm going to make a staircase out of it that goes to the treehouse I'm building with my kids. Any advice on what to treat it with to keep it from decaying?