Just a few logs to work on...this is the way that the septic contractor left them. Were I to do this again, I would have insisted on the logs being supported up off the ground by some scrap branches and that they be sorted by species. There actually were enough “too-small to mill” logs in the pile to handle this! It would have been easier to process the lumber through the mill and a bit more organized--which is to my liking, if you know me well. In the background of the second shot, you can see the back of the house and the end of the building where my office will be located. (immediately behind the pile of logs)

This shot was taken early in the day...we started at 7:30a. One of my coworkers, Wendell Richardson (also a hobbyist woodworker) volunteered to help out, and I’m glad he did. This was back-breaking work and I doubt that the sawyer and I alone would have been able to finish in one day without a third person's assistance. This was particularly true as the 6, 8 and 10 quarter slices we took from some of the logs were extraordinarily heavy, being thick, wet, green wood. On the mill in this picture is a large and beautiful Walnut crotch.

As you can see, we had to “take a little bit off the sides” to get that Walnut crotch through the machine...it was big! The flitches that were cut should turn out beautifully once they are dried. One of the pictures below will show you what I mean.

The Woodmizer Super Hydraulic that Gene uses saved a lot of work in that it could easily lift and manipulate the logs without human exertion. Each log was brought onto the machine and then squared into “cants” by cutting, rotating, cutting, etc. With the cants flat surfaces, the individual boards could then be cut quickly and stacked.

This is a good example of a cant ready to mill into lumber. This began as one of the mid-sized Yellow Poplar logs.

Every moments of rest that could be had was a valuable thing. The day was very hot, very humid and the sun was beating down. You can see from this angle that we just had to roll the logs up to the machine and then the sawyer would lift them up and cut. Of course, we had to grab each board as they came off and move them out of the way! It was also necessary to remove huge quantities of sawdust from the back side of the mill...an easy job with the loader on my Kubota compact tractor. (And I got to sit down for a few minutes...)

Here's the flitches from that Walnut crotch in an earlier picture. Prior to stacking and stickering them, I decided to wash them down to see the grain...and it’s truly beautiful. Wendell and I are already dreaming up projects that take advantage of these incredible boards.

It would have been preferential to be able to stack and sticker the lumber as it came off the mill, but the drying lumber needed to be stacked in exactly the same spot that the logs were located. So we unfortunately had to stack everything off to the side until the cutting was done.

Stacking with stickers is important for air drying lumber. Stickers are thin boards, in this case about 1" thick and 1 /12" wide spaced about 24" apart. The stacks have a PT 4"x4" leveled base with stickers to separate the new lumber from the PT lumber. A layer of landscape cloth went down on the bare ground to keep down weeds and dirt. This is the first stack is is entirely Black Walnut at about 8' lengths.

Stacking everything up was quite a bit of work, too. Remember, this lumber is green, wet and heavy. I built a sloped “roof” on the two larger piles using waney material and a securely fastened tarp. Water just runs off. A similar cover for the smaller pile was created after these pictures were taken.

Once the lumber has air dried for an acceptable period of time, it will be brought into the shop to stablize at a lower MC and then be milled as needed.

Wane, wane...go away...ahm. Well, this is what firewood on the hoof looks like after a lumber milling session. It’s amazing just how much is left over after the process. ’Guess I should sharpen up those chainsaw blades and get to work!