More Maple Milling in the Mountains

[Daninvan]

Finally after more than two months my bowl turning buddy and I made it back to the area in the mountains about 1 1/2 hours from where we live to get some more maple.

One of the reasons that it had taken us so long to get back was that every time we agreed on a day, it would rain. Not a surprise when you are living in a rain forest. We are definitely a couple of fair weather millers though. Anyways, over a couple glasses of local microbrew the evening before we decided to darn the torpedoes and go for it even though rain was forecast the next day.

So we arrived at about 9 AM and started setting up our stuff. There were quite a few heavy looking clouds floating around when we arrived, but no actual rain. The Subaru tank was a trooper, no problems at all as I went through some serious mud and hills to get to the site. My buddy had to leave his car at the bottom of the hill.


We had scoped out a maple log last time we were there. It had some other stuff piled around it, but was pretty easy to access.

We cut a piece about 7' long off the end and used our peeveys to roll it away from the rest of the pile. Was annoyed to discover a big old branch at the one end. All the bark peeled off pretty easily, and I attached my high tech guide board to the log and then laser levelled it. (Not!)

After cutting off the outside piece, we took a slab about 5" thick. I was happy that the saw did not give me any trouble like it did last time where it seemed to go dull for no reason. In fact both saws were real gentlemen today, only had to stop once, and that was to sharpen one of the chains.


The next cut revealed some nice colours, as did the rest of the cuts all the way through.


In the picture above you can see staining has entered the log from the bottom end and travelled several feet up it.

As we got to the middle of the log it was too wide for my 36" bar and we had to trim the log to fit. I think it was about 32" wide there.


So we wound up with 2 slabs that were 5" thick and 4 1/2 slabs that were 2 1/2" thick. The slabs were just under 7' long.

This took us about 3 hours, so we stopped for lunch and sheltered in the Subaru while the skies opened up. The rain stopped quickly and we decided that we had come a long way, and that we needed to make the trip more worthwhile, and so we cut another 4' long chunk off the original log! Of course it was in a bad location right next to a stump and so I had to cut out another cookie behind it in order to give the saw access.

This piece had nice white colour all the way through with no staining, although there was some red/pink around the pith.


Con't . . .

 

[Daninvan]

So while I worked my way through this second piece of the log again using a combination of 5" and 2 1/2" thick slabs, my bowl buddy started to cut up some of the slabs into bowl blanks.


He eventually wound up with 31 nice blanks, after much cajoling and polite Canadian back-and-forth to convince him to cut up more of the slabs. (Here I'll leave these five slabs for you. No, I don't want five slabs, you cut them up for blanks., just leave me those two. Well, I think this one would be better in a flat piece than as a bowl. No, I think it'd be great in a bowl, look at the bit of figure on this end of it. Well I don't think my car can handle the weight of so many blanks. And so on.) He was high grading, but it pays off for him to avoid knots and cracks etc. Here are some of his blanks in the Subaru, I drove them down to his car for him. He has some kind of fancy tool he is practicing with on his lathe that allows him to get two bowls from the thicker slabs.


He insisted on leaving me three slabs, plus a couple of slabs that he ripped down the middle since they were cracked there anyways. Since 7' slabs are too long for me to put in the car, I made him cut one blank off the end of each of these three slabs.


I got all my slabs and gear loaded up into the Subaru, other than the Workmate table, which I just could not make fit, just as the skies opened up again. I left the Workmate table at a neighbour's house, and my buddy is going to go back there again next week to get some more maple and will bring it back for me. Then it was a 90 minute drive through Saturday afternoon traffic in the suburbs of Vancouver to home.


In total we milled up 11 slabs. Despite a bit of rain, it was a great day. The wood was more than decent, and the saws and everything worked great.

Milling season for me is almost over, another couple of weeks and I will be done until the fall. Hope to get out to the beach log dump once or twice more before then.

 

[Nato]

I love the pic of the back of the subaru! Subaru should do a commercial (like this)on how some people really use their car. Sorry but everytime I read about your BOWL buddy it makes me laugh! One question, I see you use those long plastic wedges for your saw kerf. Do they vibrate out when milling? When I used plastic wedges (8 inch) they always backed out and if I drove them snug ( in order to hold) it would lift the slab resulting in a "bannana" type surface. I started using wood wedges and they seem to "bite in" and hold a little better. As always, thanks for the cool pics of your milling day! N8

 

[Daninvan]

Nate,

Thanks for the note. I don't seem to have any trouble with the plastic wedges, I try not to drive them in too deeply though, especially when milling thinner slabs which may be more prone to flexing, as I have wondered about exactly what you mention with the banana effect. I had previously used wedges I made out of locust, which I painted bright green and they worked fine for holding open the kerf when milling. They were not as durable when used for splitting though, and when I bought my 3120's the seller tossed in half a dozen of these plastic wedges which I have been using ever since.

Next time I load up the Subaru I'll take a picture of the rear end hanging down low. One time I parked the back end too far over a curb, after the car was loaded up with slabs the back was resting on the curb. Luckily the scratches I made as I pulled away were on the underside of the bumper so my wife never noticed them!

Dan