First time milling (with actual pics this time)

[htpd43]

I thnk i fixed the problem and the pics worked in a test thread. so here goes again. sorry for those of you who read this before. if you're lookin - thanks. these were all taken with my brothers phone or mine. so the quality is ok.
Lou

Hi everybody.
I was unable to post for 2 months so im posting this short story of my first time milling last month. i hope you enjoy the pics.

So I got this trailer last year with the intentions of using to haul firewood with. I bought stake pockets and will, at some point, weld them on. I have stacked firewood on it and strapped it down with no problems. I have done most of my own cutting, but every once in a while it's already done and all I have to do is pick it up. Then I started seeing some milling pictures and videos on this site and I am dying to try it. I've been trying to get some wood from a few tree companies in the area but they usually tell me they have tons and then never follow through with letting me have it. I've been able to score some nice cedar and I think I finally managed to get one of the guys in the area to give me a steady supply of whatever he takes down. The first tree I got from him is this pin oak.
Yesterday I went and met with him and the guy was nice enough to load it with a crane. He even told me that if I was willing to help him load in the future I could just drive the truck home and unload rather than having to use the trailer.
So I got loaded up and went on my way. My 25 minute ride home turned into about 4 hours becasue, of course, I really loaded the trailer and managed to get a flat on the way home. The truck jack was not strong enough to lift the trailer with the weight so I had to call a tow truck. The driver was able to get the flat bed under the stands at the back of the tilt bed. Between that and a jack we were able to get the old tire off and put a new one on. of course I live in a hilly area and no matter which route I take it means coming up a hill but some are easier to climb than others. With my 92 1500 chevy short bed pulling this load there were a few spots that I thought I was not gonna make it over, but I did. I got myself about 500 feet from my driveway when the rim came off the hub in the middle of a 90 degree curve. It's a dayton style rim and the rim got damaged.
I thought i was done for but some of my neighbors stopped and with a team effort, I was able to get the good rubber from the damaged rim onto the old rim with the flat. I finally got the trailer off of the road and onto the property.
What should have taken me 1 1/2-2 hr to get to the wood and back turned into 6 hours of frustration.
I still dont know how bad I hurt the hub/brake assembly on the side that hit ground but the plus side is that I got to take home two clear pieces of pin oak and two knotty ones. I still haven't gotten a chance to see if the knotty ones are worth doing anything with.
I can't wait to get started with milling. I am working towards a decent mill that a novice can use, but i don't know if I want to wait that long to start. I've been thinking about getting an alaskan mill to get my feet wet with.

i'm sure that i will get ribbed for this but i already know i overloaded the trailer and don't plan on doing it again. i did check tire pressure and i made sure the brakes were working before i got the trailer on pavement. i later found that the tubeless tire that went flat had a tube in it.

 

[htpd43]

Hi again

It took me forever to finally get the pictures uploaded on to the site. But in that time I got the wood offloaded and was able to borrow an alaskan mill from a friend. I am entirely new to milling, but i do have other woodworking experience -both carpentry and firewood (felling, limbing and bucking).

Since I have never milled before I was not sure exactly what to expect. I have been reading and viewing posts on the internet - especiall on this forum where milling seems to be big. I think that the setup that my friend gave me was not right - it took about four hours to cut 3 slabs yesterday. I know that chainsaw milling is not fast, but i was expecting quicker. I was pretty discouraged at the end of the day. I did check a few youtube videos last night and searched for people milling oak. They seemed to get through it way quicker than I did. I know that every tree and every type of wood is different as are different saws etc. but the videos led me to believe that my friends gear was not functioning the way it was supposed to. It could have been as simple as a chain that was too dull - thats my guess anyway. So I'm not gonna give up! I think i will be buying my own mill and using my 056 (coincidentally he let me borrow the mill on his 056). I think I will invest in a narrow kerf bar/chain setup before I tackle it again.
Thanks for checking out my post. I am sure that I'll get ribbed for overloading the trailer and for the way I milled the oak, but I am open to any suggestions on the milling (I'm going to be getting a heavier trailer- to avoid any more mishaps).
Lou

 

[htpd43]

 

[htpd43]

i previewed them all and everything looked good. i'm keeping my fingers crossed.
the end.

 

[mtngun]

Posts #1 and #2 look great, thank you very much.

Post #3 is blank ?????

Thank you for your persistence. I hope the milling is going smoother than the posting.

 

[Brownpot Deaton]

dont mean to steal thread,

but thought id share some images of my first milling session with my t-wolf modified ms880...(60" bar with 8 pin sprocket..what a beast!!!!!!)...oh yeah..probably the biggest pecan i've ever seen down here...

didn't get to finish do to weather and miss counting of my chain, but going again this weekend....

 

[Brownpot Deaton]

links to some video..short..landowner was filming..get some better ones next time..
.http://s571.photobucket.com/albums/ss152/buckdeaton/big%20pecan%20tree%20milling%20ms880/?action=view&current=millingpecan021-1.flv

http://s571.photobucket.com/albums/ss152/buckdeaton/big%20pecan%20tree%20milling%20ms880/?action=view&current=millingpecan020-1.flv

http://s571.photobucket.com/albums/ss152/buckdeaton/big%20pecan%20tree%20milling%20ms880/?action=view&current=millingpecan017-1.flv

comments/suggestions welcome, as long as you're not being jerk about it..lol

 

[BobL]

Great sawdust flow. Looks like really satisfying cutting speed too

But - I don't know how you or your cutting buddy can have your head that close to the powerhead with out muffs on and some kind of a face shield. I'm using both earplugs and muffs with my 880. When you get to my age I kick myself for not protecting my ears better when I was younger.

 

[Brownpot Deaton]

haha..nah, your right bobl, especially wit the muffler modded. we had those little squishy ones in our ears, rated at 32 dB, and the dust didn't get really into my face as bad as i thouht..probably buy a clear shield for that tho.

 

[htpd43]

This time I tried windows live

i thought i'd try one more idea. i modified the pics with windows live instead of picasa (they were all over 300kb). all my other posts used pics that i had resized using picasa. so now they all come out small - i need to find a better way to do this.
here goes the first try with live gallery

 

[htpd43]

the last few

sorry to those of you that had to suffer through the pictureless posts.
lou

 

[mtngun]

Thanks for figuring out your picture puzzle. 300kb limit, eh ?

I see you are still nudging the limit despite the tiny pictures.

I suggest -- and BMorgan may have a different opinion -- scaling the pics to 800 pixel wide. An 800 pixel wide photo can easily be "optimized" to 100kb or less using a photo editor. I appreciate the optimized photos because my satellite connection is ho-hum and has a strict bandwidth quota. It can take 5 minutes to load a thread with lots of 300kb pics -- like this thread.

I use GIMP graphics editor because it is free, however, it does have a learning curve. Other graphics editors have similar capabilities, so use whichever program you prefer, but I do recommend getting and using a graphics editor. There are several free ones out there and you probably already have one installed on your PC.

The basic procedure is to load the picture into GIMP, "crop" the photo, "scale" to 800 pixel wide, "save as" a jpeg while setting the "optimization" to 50%. The exact commands vary from one program to the next, but they all have similar functions.

Then I email the optimized pics to my photobucket account. Copy and paste photobucket's image tag into this forum. That's it ! ! !

There are other ways to get the job done, but that's how I do it. Perhaps other members will chime in with their favorite tricks.

Getting back to the subject of milling ....... any particular reason you made a cant ? Most of us mill live-edge slabs, then edge the slabs later. Nothing wrong with a cant except it takes longer to set up with an Alaskan.

 

[Brmorgan]

I suggest -- and BMorgan may have a different opinion -- scaling the pics to 800 pixel wide. An 800 pixel wide photo can easily be "optimized" to 100kb or less using a photo editor. I appreciate the optimized photos because my satellite connection is ho-hum and has a strict bandwidth quota. It can take 5 minutes to load a thread with lots of 300kb pics -- like this thread.

Hey, I'm not that bad, am I? 800 is a decent size. Just to give a perspective of why I personally prefer 1024 though - the little 200 X 150 px images a couple posts previous are about 1.5" X 2" on my 19" monitor with the screen resolution I usually use, whereas they would be probably twice the size if my screen res was 800X600 and would take up much more of the desktop space as a percentage. Either way, I'm really surprised that a 200 X 150 image would come anywhere near 300KB even without compression - but that is the key factor in determining the filesize, not necessarily the resolution of the file. There are other factors such as the content of the photo - a picture that has a large percentage of a single color, like the blue sky, and with relatively little other subject matter can be very highly compressed, whereas a picture with a lot of varied color, such as a picture of a forest etc., sometimes can't hardly be compressed at all without significant quality loss.

Back on-topic though, that's some very nice Oak. Should get some interesting pieces out of those crotch areas, for sure. Makin' me jealous. The only thing I hate about Oak is the friggin' smell when it's green or even just wet. Almost makes me nauseous.

 

[htpd43]

Getting back to the subject of milling ....... any particular reason you made a cant ? Most of us mill live-edge slabs, then edge the slabs later. Nothing wrong with a cant except it takes longer to set up with an Alaskan.

I had to go to work so I'm gonna try and answer this with my phone. If what I'm seeing in the first and third pics of the post titled the last few is what your question is reffering to then it's actually not a cant. Its hard to tell because of the rediculously small pics but all I did was knock the flare off of the butt end to make it easier to set up the ladder. Then I started ripping the slabs (like the one I'm holding up) into 1 1/2" x whatever the width is x 8 1/2'. I am a rookie but I believe what I was doing was flat sawing those boards? There is still bark on the remainder of the log and I am milling live edge boards. Hope that answers you question. Lou

 

[htpd43]

The only thing I hate about Oak is the friggin' smell when it's green or even just wet. Almost makes me nauseous.

Seems like that last post went ok with the phone so I think ill try another. I grew up in an area that was probably 80 percent pin oak. It has a destinct odor any time its not freshly cut. This time was the worst ever. While I was milling you could smell fresh oak but the ends literally smelled like crap. Like real crap. It was foul. But it looks good.
Thanks guys for checkin out the post and for the info/advice on the picture settings.
Lou

 

[mtngun]

OK, thanks for explaining the non-cant. I should have looked more closely.

BTW, in the time it took me to read the new replies and type this response (2 - 3 minutes), my PC still hasn't finished downloading this thread.

 

[820wards]

Hey, I'm not that bad, am I? 800 is a decent size. Just to give a perspective of why I personally prefer 1024 though - the little 200 X 150 px images a couple posts previous are about 1.5" X 2" on my 19" monitor with the screen resolution I usually use, whereas they would be probably twice the size if my screen res was 800X600 and would take up much more of the desktop space as a percentage. Either way, I'm really surprised that a 200 X 150 image would come anywhere near 300KB even without compression - but that is the key factor in determining the filesize, not necessarily the resolution of the file. There are other factors such as the content of the photo - a picture that has a large percentage of a single color, like the blue sky, and with relatively little other subject matter can be very highly compressed, whereas a picture with a lot of varied color, such as a picture of a forest etc., sometimes can't hardly be compressed at all without significant quality loss.

Back on-topic though, that's some very nice Oak. Should get some interesting pieces out of those crotch areas, for sure. Makin' me jealous. The only thing I hate about Oak is the friggin' smell when it's green or even just wet. Almost makes me nauseous.

Set your pictures at 72dpi when you re-size them.
jerry-