Busy last 2 months! (pic heavy)

[qbilder]

Went north to Ohio in May, and have been cutting lots of wood. I first started with clearing a ravine outlet so my old man could dam it up for a pond. It was almost all red oaks & poplars. I milled the poplars into framing lumber so I could build a kiln for the wood I was going to be milling in coming weeks. Never got any good pics while building, but here's the pics of the kiln:

Used a Menards 70 pint DH

Stack of quarter sawn hard maple and burl


Obviously not going to be all that efficient but is doing the job surprisingly well. I stacked another two maple trees worth of lumber after the pic. Humidity inside began at 95% & after two weeks was 50%. Got plenty more work to do to it in the way of insulating & heat & air movement. Will learn a little with every load & hopefully eventually get it working the way I want. I figured hard maple would be a "soft start" learning tool. The wood will be used for billiard cues.

 

[qbilder]

The first tree I cut for lumber was a hard maple. I have been eye balling the tree for years, waiting for a good time to cut it. It was very tall & straight with no major taper for a few logs.

I got several nice 8-10 ft. logs before branching & a lot of shorter 4-5 ft. logs between branches. A pleasant surprise was finding heaving fiddleback curl in every single log. It even extended out into the tiniest of twigs. The entire tree was figured.


Next on the list was a giant maple burl. It was a root ball that had a lot of above ground wood exposed. If I didn't cut the tree, I'd have never believed it was maple.




Got 12 2" thick slabs from this baby!!! It was a chore getting it out of the woods. We were deep in and atop a ridge line. Worth the effort.

 

[qbilder]

Next was a dead down chestnut oak relatively close to the mill set-up. It still had bark & the butt log was suspended above ground so I cut it. Got three 8' logs & still 3 more to cut yet. Is there any wood in America that's prettier than quartered chestnut oak?
My brother in front of the butt log. That's granny's (mom) ATV. Yes, it is too small but it did the job. I should have took mine on the trip.

At the mill. One log loaded on mill, one of ground, & one still on the "skidder".

Cuts:

 

[qbilder]

Other notables were a birdseye maple tree that turned out to have relatively weak eye figure but incredible tight fiddleback figure. Here's one of the logs. Will post pics of the wood in a bit when I get them sorted.


The other was an old rotten chestnut oak. It was crazy curly & had fence in the butt log. The only issue with that is that the property has been in the family since white folks took it from the natives, and none of the old timers knew of an fence on the property. The old township trustee, my dad's cousin, has hunted the forest for 70 yrs & never seen fence up on the ridge. My dad has hunted the same area for 60 yrs. & said the same. A little history on the property is that my family has been there since the war of independence, before Ohio was Ohio. The first 2 land owner names in the area are both direct relatives. At some point before 70yrs ago, but after the advent of wire fence, somebody apparently had pasture that ended at the peak of the ridge. Will post pics of that wood once sorted. It was only rotted through the sap, with rock solid heart. The fence left blue/black stain, and combined with the quarter rays & curly figure, made for some spectacular lumber!!! I'm going to use it to build some family heirlooms.....and a gun cabinet for me.

Lastly is a big white oak that used to be a shade tree for livestock, in the bottom of the hollow. It's been dead standing for decades. My uncle downed it about 10 yrs ago & it fell on him, driving him into the creek bottom. Lucky he survived. Regardless, I used my 084 to quarter the giant log to fit my mill. We drug out the quarters & milled it all. I was a lil disappointed with it as it never had the typically heavy medullary rays on the quarter face, but was colorful & full of character. And it smelled like whiskey :msp_wink:
Uncle Tony looking over the tree that almost killed him. That's the second log up, still almost 30" diameter.

Cousin Jimmy posing with his coffee. That old Ford behind him is how we drug the oak.

The wood. All pics are of the second log. The butt log was quartered to fit & sawn into dimensioned lumber.



And that's about it. I cut lots of sassafras, some walnut, red oak, & a few other odds & ends, but never took pics.

 

[flashhole]

Very nice, is that your mill? It would be a long haul from New Mexico.

What part of Ohio?

Sharing rep coming your way.

 

[flashhole]

Does the kiln have doors on both sides?

 

[Nato]

Wow! Very cool. I would love to have access to some great lumber and land like that. Your very fortunate. I remember seeing some of your cues before. Great stuff.I would love to see some pics from this lumber when its all done.

 

[qbilder]

Yes, it's my mill. I haul it up there to mill maple. It has an axle assembly but the tires are too small for me to trust, so I load it on a single axle flip bed trailer for long hauls. I cut in Ross & Vinton co. near Chillicothe.

The kiln only has the two doors on the front, which open 4'. It's 8' wide, 8' tall (not counting the roof arch), and 12' long. My plan was to have the doors span the long face of the building and a single sloped roof. My uncle the carpenter had other plans, and the result was a doll house instead of a kiln The first several days of running, it pumped water out of the outlet hose pretty steadily, and inside the kiln felt like a sauna. Within a couple weeks, it felt much drier, though still rather warm, and not quite as much water being pumped out. According to a formula I borrowed from the forestry dept., the last time I had checked the wood it was at 8.9%mc. This calculation weighs relative humidity inside the chamber against the temperature. However, the DH was still pumping water so I left it going. When it doesn't exhaust water any longer, then I suppose the wood is pretty dry. I'm just fine with 8.9%, but drier is ok too.

I coated the kiln with oil based barn paint, and was able to get my shingles for cheap at the local lumber yard because they were broken bundles. It's nothing more than an OSB box with shingles & a plywood floor. It's sealed up inside with expanding foam and silicone. My biggest expense was the plywood & OSB board. I have a few hundred in materials, and 200 in the DH. If it effectively dries all that fiddleback maple and burl, then it was well worth it.

 

[qbilder]

Wow! Very cool. I would love to have access to some great lumber and land like that. Your very fortunate. I remember seeing some of your cues before. Great stuff.I would love to see some pics from this lumber when its all done.

Thank you. Yes I have been very blessed. With all the family in the area, I have several hundreds of acres of heavy wooded forest to pick from. Everybody supports it, too. They all love seeing the milled lumber. Of course I share generously, allowing anybody to have anything they want, as well as mill anything they want milled. I am not one to waste or neglect, but I had to quit milling because I was running out of time, and ended up cutting up numerous logs of maple, oak, sassafras, & cherry for fire wood. Broke my heart to do it but it was kind of like having a belly full of steak & letting the dog eat the rest of the baked potato :msp_biggrin: I have a new favorite wood, though. Chestnut oak is the miller's dream. It's always figured, often curly, brown like walnut, hard like white oak, and incredibly stable. Not a single board came off the mill with stress. Every one was flat & straight. It was unlike any wood I ever cut before.

 

[mad murdock]

The mill head and saw looks like a linn lumber mill, did you build it from their parts? Looks like it is dialed in well, some nice cuts on those slabs!! Thanks for sharing your adventure

 

[TPA]

Hands down best milling thread in a long time.

 

[BobL]

Obviously not going to be all that efficient but is doing the job surprisingly well. I stacked another two maple trees worth of lumber after the pic. Humidity inside began at 95% & after two weeks was 50%. Got plenty more work to do to it in the way of insulating & heat & air movement. Will learn a little with every load & hopefully eventually get it working the way I want. I figured hard maple would be a "soft start" learning tool. The wood will be used for billiard cues.

Where are the RH measurements taken? to be representative you need to be measuring in the middle of the stack.
Have you done any MC measurements?
One thing worth doing is removing a piece of wood from the middle of the stack and taking 1/8" off the thickness so it can be easily removed and replaced. Then you can use an MC to test wood in the middle of the stack.
The first thing I would add is some significant air recirculation otherwise the wood on the outside will be drying much faster than the inside.
Kilns need a lot of recirc air to dry timber evenly when higher temps are used but maybe not so much if a dehumidifier is used.

 

[qbilder]

I never built the mill. Bought it off a fellow in Michigan. It cuts great & has been very dependable. The only issue I have had was the water drip tank dry rotted in the desert heat and cracked, so I removed it. I haven't used a drip system for a couple years now & don't seem to notice any difference in blade life. I think I finally wore out one of the blade guide bearings, though it still cuts straight & smooth.

Bob, you have brought up some valid concerns. I do have a box fan to circulate air & it does fairly well, but only time will tell if it's enough. The kiln was/is an expensive experiment for me to learn from. Hopefully I can get it all figured out before my hair is gone :msp_scared: The humidity reading is taken at the DH. The nuts & bolts of the logic seem simple enough. But again, I have a lot to learn.

 

[tilenick]

Great pics of the wood. I also have family down there, just outside Londonderry. Lots of beautiful woods down there.makes me want to get a mill.
Thanks.

 

[jnl502]

I agree, one of the best treads in a while. It makes me wonder if not much milling going on or nobody is taking the time to post their endevers. Allthough I can,t say much as I have not been doing any milling myself. I had to rebuild the muffleron my 930 J-red and took pictures of the reworked muffler then just quit working on it.

You have a nice looking mill there and the kilt shed looks great.

 

[IanB22]

Beautiful, really nice and a thread I will be coming back too. This was all one session? Looks like a few weeks worth of work if not a month?

How long were you up in Ohio? Looks like it was all time well spent though!

Ian

 

[qbilder]

Yes, it was a span of almost two months. Lots of fun & lots of work. Other than the days I went fishing, I was in the woods or at the mill at daylight every day. Most of the wood is still in Ohio. I brought back some chestnut oak & sassafras but left the rest there to dry. The stuff I brought back was pretty dry already from being dead logs. Once the oak acclimates, I plan to build a gun cabinet with it.

 

[qbilder]

Learned some valuable lessons on this trip. First was that I will likely never cut in the summer again, especially oak. Not only was it annoying being wet all day every day from sweat & humidity, but the bugs begin trying to invade the wood before it's even off the mill. I'm not sure which bugs they were. They were kind of like a wasp/fly that looked like they were stinging the wood as they laid eggs. Never seen that before, but again I never cut green wood in the summer. Another thing was the maple. That stuff would stain within hours! I literally off loaded the mill & stacked in the kiln, and i'm still a wee-bit worried about stain.

A peculiar thing, something I have noticed before, was that certain areas generate awesome maple while others generate horrible maple. Every maple I cut on one hill side was full of mineral stain, and had a fast growth rate. On another hill side, I cut as many maples & every single one was tight grain, small heart, & clean. I figured out that I could cut a 3"-5" sapling near a tree I was interested in and it would look pretty much exactly the way the large tree would look. I only got to try it a couple times but both times were dead accurate. It's something I will remember & utilize in the future. I also think I have a peg on how to identify curly maple trees before felling/milling. The bark tells the story, but I need to cut some more to be certain.

On to the oaks. As I mentioned, chestnut oak is crazy pretty & a superior log to mill. No stress at all in any of the logs I milled. Red oak was horribly stressed. White oak had it's moments. Chestnut oak was like milling plastic. The comparison of the three is in quarter sawn fashion. I don't care much for plain sawed oak so I don't cut it that way. Chestnut oak is by far the more attractive of the three as well.

Hickory was not the bear to mill that I have read about. It cut about like oak, and the logs I milled had little stress. It was pignut and pretty with browns & tans. Hard stuff!!! Sassafras cut very easily & showed almost no stress. It was fun to cut because it looks like white oak but smells awesome! Unfortunately I was milling all dead trees & much had sap rot that went too deep for good lumber. I cut some wrinkled cherry logs but they will have to wait til winter before I mill them. I did mill a few small walnut logs. The lumber had tiny sap & was black, nothing like walnut that grows in the open. And that's pretty much it. My next excursion will be in winter. I'll cut those cherry logs, some more maple, chestnut oak, and going to try some ash & giant burly silver maple.

 

[flashhole]

Man I hear you about the bugs and the sweat. Give me the cooler seasons any time. I just spent a week in Yuma, AZ where the average daytime temperature was 106! But it's a dry heat ... bull **** ... it's hot. I actually got rained on one day and all that did was bump up the humidity to make the heat index even hotter.

Good information on the different species of trees and good luck on your next milling adventure and thanks for sharing.