Milling Cherry and Maple on the Beach

Was down at the beach log dump yesterday, sussed out a couple short logs to get set up for today's milling, one initially unknown (later determined to be maple), the other cherry. The cherry was another one of the grafted flowering cherries. The guy who operates the loader there said to me "I figured you might be by today, it's such a nice day". I guess he was saying I'm a fair weather miller, and he would be right!


Fortunately for me, today turned out to be just as nice.



The crew set up the logs for me, both were in the 24"-30" wide range.



First couple slabs off each were promising. The cherry had some interesting burls internal to it, while the 'mystery' log quickly revealed itself to be a very nice white and pink piece of maple. We were cutting mostly to 3" thick.




We quickly ran into some metal on the maple though, I had cut through a nail that was completely grown over. We tried various ways of pulling it out, eventually dug it out, but hit another nail on the next pass. Managed to get that one out too.


Then we hit the mother lode of nails!


(Continued)

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So we did a change of plan, we decided to freehand cut the maple up into blocks that my friend could use for bowl turning. That was a big mistake, we should have stopped after hitting all that metal while slabbing. We wrecked the chains on three saws, and eventually came across this mess. This log must have had a dozen nails in it, some right at the very centre of the log, must have been in there for 40-50 years!


My buddy's small saw had several teeth broken right off.



FINALLY, we called it a day after almost six hours. We had a pretty good pile of cherry, but only a couple pieces of the maple.


Lots of chain sharpening ahead of me before I can go out again!

My friend gave a bowl today before we started milling, it's about 17" in diameter, than he turned from a similar cherry slab I had milled up 2 years ago and given to him. Hopefully some of these cherry slabs will met the same fate in a couple years.



He said it took him about 90 minutes to do. Turners drive me crazy, I have been working on a Japanese stye tool box for nine months and am still not quite finished!

Well it looks like a beautiful day there to be out. Too bad about the maple.

what an awsome place to mill at every time you post pics of milling next to the damn ocean i get a little jealous.

NAILS SUCK!! s

Love it!

Sorry to hear about all the metal! It sure looks like a great fair weather milling day.

Any more trouble from the non milling friendly residents? I hope not.

The pics are different every time and they never get old - please keep em coming!

Old Blue
Job destroying taxation, in....
Kali-bone-ya

Love your pictures. Good enough to frame.

thanks for posting always enjoy your pics an stories!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!