Lost my pet milling area, but got a good load of boards anyway

[Ivan H.]

After a long absence from the woods, I was finally able to take a day off and head to my favorite milling patch, the clearcut/slash-burn that went wrong and resulted in 20+ acres of blow downs. I was greeted by the message in the picture below.

State regs prohibit amateur woodcutting in an area where there is a timber sale, so my favorite milling patch is now off limits to me. Darned ! ! ! But, at least now the state is salvaging the blow downs instead of burning them like they did last year.

Fortunately, I had skidded out several logs last fall, and stashed them where I hoped no one would find them. Firewood cutters had "stole" one of my stashes, but a few smaller logs survived. They seemed to be out of the marked sale area, and there were no markings on "my" logs, so I figured I had a right to utilize them, since, after all, I had done all the hard work of limbing, bucking, and skidding them, prior to the timber sale.

And the nice thing was, I could back right up to them. This pair of 12 foot douglas fir were quickly turned into flatsawn slabs.

BTW, the little blue flowers in the foreground are camas, a native wildflower that was an important food for the Nez Perce natives who called this place their home before it was stolen from them.

Then I moved to the other stash where I milled a 12 footer and a 10 footer. Once again, I could drive right up to the logs. The logs had already been limbed so I could get right to work sawing boards.

This is one of the few pictures that does justice to the steep terrain. This is very typical for my area. Also note the so-called road.

Look ma, no support boards at the ends ! ! ! Once in a great while, when a log is very straight, I can get away with skipping the end boards and instead, just screwing the guide board directly to the top of the log. That saves quite a bit of set-up time.

By noon I had cut up all the logs in my stash, and had 16 good slabs, as well as a little firewood. That is a new personal record for me. Usually I work hard to get 12 slabs in a full day's CSMing. Having the logs already prepped and in a clear space that I could drive right up to really made a difference.

That looks like a pretty good salvage operation

 

[Brmorgan]

Just noticed - the bumper on your work truck looks a lot like mine. I bet the rest is in better shape though. Wouldn't take much!

 

[mtngun]

That bumper was tore up pulling other vehicles out of the snow and other vehicles pulling my truck out of the snow. Funny you should mention the bumper because I just finished building a new one.

It's a challenge to keep that old truck running. It's "only" used for woodcutting and plowing snow, but both of those activities are a matter of life and death up here, and both are hard on trucks.

The truck has been in the shop for a while getting the new bumper and other TLC, but now it's time to get serious about laying in some firewood.