Great Day at Beach, Slightly Less Great Wood Though

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Daninvan

ArboristSite Operative
Joined
Oct 31, 2005
Messages
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Location
Vancouver BC
Best day of the year so far without a doubt. My 11th day milling this winter. Sunny, cool to start but warmed up nicely, and a perfect breeze that blew the sawdust and fumes away, but was not so strong it was chilly or caused eyes to water. These panorama shots always seem to turn out a couple shades too dark. Probably my own fault as my camera battery was dead so had to fall back on the phone camera.
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I arrived a bit later than usual this morning and the city crew was having a coffee break, so I snapped a couple photos from a different perspective than normal. This first one shows the edge of the log dump in the foreground (people are always doing odd things with the logs, no idea why that one is on end) with the cutting area being the other pile slightly off to the distance between two of the smaller trees. This is why I have to rely on the city crew to set the logs up for me in the cutting area as cutting is not permitted in the log dump itself. I think they are trying to contain the mess and the noise, which is not unreasonable.
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The next shot is looking down the beach to the west, the very light coloured mountains in the distance are on Vancouver Island.
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Today's subject was yet another cherry. Also a small piece of figured maple.
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Got the bark off and milled the first cut. You can see still lots of sapwood, but some nice colour showing through. Probably should have made that initial cut a couple inches deeper, but still looking promising.
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Second cut was less exciting than I had hoped. The log had some small rot at the left end, apparently it ran deeper and was wider than I had realized. This has happened to me with several logs this year, I obviously need to get a bit better at judging this before I spend a lot of time milling a log.
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I noticed after the first two cuts that the saw required a lot of pushing, even though I had just sharpened it. I figured the rakers needed a touch up as I had not filed them at all since last summer. It did not seem to help though after I did so and resharpened, I guess I will have to get the DAF out and see what they are at.

I did one more cut just to see, things continued to get worse, so I stopped at this point and turned to the maple.
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I also noticed that with the Granberg mill, that when I am cutting on the bottom half of the log the edge of the log sticks out and prevents the skid plate from contacting the log. The post does not slide very well at all on the sharp edge of the log, it turns out to be a lot of work.

I freehand cut the maple piece in half, then used the mill to slab out two pieces from each of the halves. The figure is nice and my friend the turner will probably like them.
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Wound up with three so-so slabs of cherry and 4 nice bowl blanks of maple. Definitely got my daily dose of vitamin D for the first time in several months!
 
Another shot of one of the maple pieces
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And by the end, some puffy clouds had rolled in but it was still gorgeous.
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You never know what is inside the log until you slice it open. That cherry sure looked promising, and particularly with the crotch section. I see some birdseye in that maple!:msp_w00t:

I WISH I had a site like that where someone would bring the wood and set it up for me, and your setting is fantastic.
 
Hi Dan, I don't know how you can get any milling done with the scenery? :msp_thumbup:

Re: I noticed after the first two cuts that the saw required a lot of pushing, even though I had just sharpened it. I figured the rakers needed a touch up as I had not filed them at all since last summer. It did not seem to help though after I did so and resharpened, I guess I will have to get the DAF out and see what they are at.

Wow - the benefits of softer woods, I have to touch the rakers about evert 3-4 cutter touch ups if I want to optimize the cutting speed.

Keep posting them pics
Bob
 
I had not filed them at all since last summer

I thought that might give you a chuckle! I find that filing the rakers to 6.5 degrees tends to make them a bit grabby for me, so I usually let them get down a ways before I refile them. Obviously I have left this one way too long, and should probably get in the habit of touching them up every few sharpenings as you do.

I may mill again tomorrow, as the weather looks good, but my back is a bit stiff now so will likely wait until next week rather than risk another more serious back injury.
 
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