Reflections of a fledgeling sawmiller.
Things are really ramping up nicely at the mill. My first goal is to mill shelves for the house. I want lots of nice chunky floating shelves. So far we have 2x12 red oak slabs, and some 1.5x11.5 black walnut slabs cut. This week have 2 nice white oak logs that will be milled up. These will take the longest to dry so if I can get 15 or 20 cut up and stacked/stickered I can get them to the kiln. The kiln is only about 2 miles from where I work so that is convenient. After that it is time to mill some Ash for trim (the 4 white ended logs in the foreground). This is starting to get addicting, I see so many possibilities.
The System:
It is a bit of a grind getting things going and getting a system dialed so you are not tripping over your own waste and product. I have a rack for the cast offs and slabs I will not be using. It is not huge and 4 or 5 hours of milling will fill it up quickly. From the rack I take it to a staging area out of the way that friends and acquaintances can come cut it up for firewood (more on that later). As far as product is concerned I want to take it directly off the mill and put it directly on pallets. The fewer number of times I have to touch it the less work it will be. So ample stickers and a pallet system. Still in the works but I have a good plan.
Helpers:
It also helps that I have a few buddies who are very interested in help with milling, because it is significantly easier with 2 people. So I am going to ride that wave until it crashes. I know eventually the thrill will wear off for these people. The idea is to continue to groom new folks into the fold. I know many like minded people who would come out a handful of times for a nice payout in castoffs. The beauty of this is there is always plenty of decent wood that comes off the mill that might not suit my purposes but would be perfectly fine for someone else's projects. It is great to see a newbies eyes light up when you slice open a log and all the beauty is exposed. You can see the wheels turning in there head about the possibilities of this 1x15 slab that just peeled off the log. I hope these cast offs will keep my helpers happy.
Waste:
It does not take long for waste slabs to pile up. I have a list of 15-20 people lined up waiting to come pick this up for firewood. As mentioned earlier I have a staging area for these slabs to be stored until someone can come pick them up. I want to make this as easy as possible so this area is right by the front gate just next to the road. They can park right next to it. I think I will do the chainsawing. It takes nothing to run a saw through these piles every 16 inches to make nice fire length wood. The last people who came just left it in pickup truck bed lengths to saw it up later, works for me! I think I will insist on doing the majority of the sawing. It is scary watching some people handle chainsaws, last thing I need is for somone to bury one in there calf. Sawdust!!! Holy crap this thing makes some sawdust! I don't have a great idea for the sawdust other than tossing it over the edge. I need to google some ideas about what to do with sawdust.
Last thing is about snow and the melting there of. Man, I don't know how you guys up north do it. Snow leaves a MESS as it slowly melts. When it rains here it is muddy for a day then things dry up. This snow has the road a mudy mess, has my mill area a muddy mess. I guess that is why they call it mud season, cause it is muddy for a month huh? RANT OVER!
Thanks for listening. Any ideas, comments or tips are welcome. Have a great day!
