First day milling

[lnxfergy]

Well, the weather and my schedule finally cooperated and I was able to mill my first log today. Spent about a two and half hours between cutting and dragging stuff back and forth to the garage. I got 4 slabs of 6/4 Red Oak about 11" wide on average and 7 ft long. I've been lurking on this site for a while and have picked up a lot of information from you guys - Thanks!

-Fergs

First cut done, now onto making boards:

The boards up against the garage:

My stihl 038 and small log mill:

 

[CaseyForrest]

Looks good and Welcome! Youve come to the right place to get learned.

 

[dustytools]

Nice pics Inxfergy! Welcome to the site.

 

[urbanlumberinc]

Nice! Now the fun is all done, you gotta stack and sticker that wood properly asap or you might as well have spent the time splitting firewood. If I could go back to when I first started milling and do things over, Id have done a nicer job of stacking and stickering my lumber. Had I done things right from the get go, I'd have alot more lumber to show for my effort, and alot less sawdust.

 

[lnxfergy]

Yeah, it is stacked, stickered, weighted and covered (top is covered, sides are open to the wind). I did that right after taking the pictures against the wall (but forgot to take pictures of it stickered).

The logs have been down since the fall, so my big worry is that I don't get a ton of sticker shadow as I have read quite a few sources saying that logs sitting around tend to be more prone to sticker shadow.

-Fergs

 

[stonykill]

looks good. That sure doesn't look like a back yard in Albany.

 

[woodshop]

The logs have been down since the fall, so my big worry is that I don't get a ton of sticker shadow as I have read quite a few sources saying that logs sitting around tend to be more prone to sticker shadow.
-Fergs

Welcome to the site and milling. That's interesting, I never heard that about "sticker shadow" and downed logs. If you're referring to sticker stain, where you sometimes get a discolored area on the board where the sticker was, that's more a function of the sticker and the drying location etc. If you don't use clean very dry stickers, and/or your stickered pile doesn't get enough air, then yes you might get sticker stain. A downed log, one that has been down for only a year or two, unless it gets full of bugs or starts rotting quickly, will not be much different in the middle of the log than one just cut from a milling standpoint. Of course lots of variables here... that's just a generalization. Some trees, smaller dia say less than 18" do get tougher to mill after they have been down for a while and they start to dry out.