Last Milling Until September - Cherry and Cypress

[Daninvan]

Down to the city log dump with a friend today. My daughter took my camera for a school project so I only have crappy phone pictures.

We've had a mini heat wave recently, it was probably over 20 degrees C today. By far the warmest milling day so far. Unfortunately the heat wave also trapped a lot of pollution over the city. The haze to the east was so bad that it obscured the downtown core.


The prevailing winds blow onshore (to the east) so all the pollution heads overland, while out west towards the ocean it was a gorgeous day.


I neglected to take a before shot of the cypress, but we got 5 slabs that were 2 1/2" thick out of it. I was really happy with the slabs, they were mostly pretty clear and the colour was perfect, just a touch of pink in them and they also have a delicious smell to them. The saw cut through the cpress like butter, I was very happy with the performance.


The cherry bark was a lot of work to get off before milling. Luckily my friend did most of the hard work on it.


The cherry was a lot harder going with the mill than the cypress was. No surprise there I guess. While the mill moved smoothly down the cypress log, it kept grabbing on the cherry log. A sharpening helped somewhat, but it was still grabby. This chain is at its end of life, the teeth are down to maybe 1/4" long, so it is now officially retired.

We wound up with four cherry slabs, we milled them a tiny bit thicker at 3" as my friend is going to use the cherry for turning bowls and platters. He will cut it up into bowl blanks at home. The grain was surprisingly good and clear despite the log being gnarly and having some rot on one side.


It remained a beautiful day the whole time, we were done in about three hours. The tide went out and lots of people were out there with their dogs and kids.


One lady decided to set up her chair for sunbathing quite close to us. Not sure why with the beach being a couple miles long she set up so close to the guys with chainsaws. This picture also shows the haze over downtown.


The city closes the log dump to chainsawing in May, as there are too many other people using the beach as the weather gets better. So this will probably be my last time until the city reopens it to milling in the fall. This was my second most active milling year, I have slabs drying in my backyard from 20 logs that I milled this season. I actualy milled more logs than that, but some I don't take any wood for myself, like today's cherry. I probably milled close to 30 logs since the middle of September.

 

[SDB777]

Well I'm going to go through withdrawals until you get back at it!!

Maybe you'll find another 'honey-hole' and get to do some warm weather milling? Just won't have the view.....





Scott (nice milling) B

 

[flashhole]

Very nice. I get to travel to Vancouver in two weeks for a Symposium. I hope all the pollution is gone by the time I get there. I will be in the downtown area.

 

[mrector]

Daninvan,

Thanks for all your great threads over the years. I totally have enjoyed your pictures of your milling.

I Joined recently and spent around 2 days looking at your past threads. Really, thanks so much please post more. Surely you have some " off time" milling you do?
Mikey

 

[tilenick]

This may be a dumb question, but, what's a log dump?

 

[flashhole]

It's a public toilet for logs. Some have a 25 cent fee to use the facilities. They are starting to show up all across Europe on street corners as public service stations. Gotta love progress.

 

[Daninvan]

This may be a dumb question, but, what's a log dump?

It is where the city dumps all the trees that they cut down on city property like parks, boulevards, schools, etc. The way it works here is that branches and smaller pieces get chipped on the spot or bucked up by the crews and left where the tree falls for people to use as firewood. The larger pieces, mostly trunks, get hauled down to the log dump, where logs that float in on the water are also brought. The city sorts them and sends the commercially valuable ones (basically larger softwood logs that have escaped from log booms which are of no intereset to me anyways) to a mill, with the rest some are set up for people to buck into firewood (skinner softwood logs from booms), but most of them are chipped for hog fuel. I mill up a miniscule number of logs relative to how many pass through the log dump. I am sure that most decent size towns have a similar place where they take downed trees to.

I might have posted this photo already, but it is a couple months worth of junk that piled up in the log dump earlier this year. The better logs for the mill were already pulled out. These were all destined for the chipper, and is what I root through looking for stuff to mill before they are chipped. The ones that have a mark on them were destined for an artist whose uses them for who-knows-what. But at least they are not wasted.



I do the occasional bit of "off season" milling, but since I have easy access to so much wood during the "season", it needs to be pretty tempting to get me out. I will make a special trip for arbutus or old growth yellow cedar. One problem is that I have never needed to develop a network of contacts that would alert me to available logs in different places. Plus I have discovered that people in the city do not take kindly to the noise of milling being done on the boulevard in front of their house/apartment!

 

[BobL]

Nice pics as usual Dan!

Down to the city log dump with a friend today. My daughter took my camera for a school project so I only have crappy phone pictures.
We've had a mini heat wave recently, it was probably over 20 degrees C today. .

Yesterday we had our lowest max so far this fall (18ºC) but next week it will be back to mid 20's and we had about 4" of badly need rain this week.

I really need to get back to some milling as the pile at the milling yard has grown quite big, mainly short stuff but that's alright as we have plenty of long. I did go down there last week to drop off some stickers that were cluttering my home shop and picked up a slab of Tuart I milled in 2007 to make some blacksmithing hammer handles out of but that is as far as I have got.

Currently I'm resurfacing an oregon kitchen bench top I should have attended to years ago. The kitchen is 19 years old and we were going to go for a complete renovation but have decide to eek a few more years out of it yet. Being soft, the oregon was pretty beat up and dented with lots of black marks but half an hour with a belt sander and the same again with an ROS and the top has come up OK. We have purchased a new oven and cooktop, and the cupboard doors will re-paint. The floor will need to be resealed but we will get someone in for that.

View attachment 294733

 

[lazyguy]

beautiful

I love you're counter top.

I'd just be afraid of water damage.
What do you seal it with??

My uncle has a nice wooden one in a bathroom. I can't remember what type of wood.

I have 4 high inpact members in my house hold.
Wife and 3 kids. And, I don't know who's harder on things?

Ex: I caught my 13 year old daughter, standing on a frisbee upside down, with her feet together, basicly grinding it into the fake wood floor.
When I got after her, her response was, well the dog's made a few scratches with their nails so what's it matter.
My question to her was when are you going to learn to take better care of things. After you ruin the new floor?

Maybe someday they will learn to appreciate nice things
But until then I'm not going to spend my time redoing the kitchen!

Until then I'll have to be satisfied looking at yourse'

Dave S.

 

[Daninvan]

I really need to get back to some milling . . .

Looking forward to seeing the pictures - You should get out of the kitchen and get to the log yard while your weather is still good!

 

[BobL]

I love you're counter top.
I'd just be afraid of water damage.
What do you seal it with??

Thanks.
It's sealed with 4 coats of 2 pack polyurethane floor board sealer.
It will easily cope with water and other liquids and is hard but has enough flexibility to cope with small objects being dropped onto and heavier objects being dragged across it.
A close inspection of the old surface (last recoated nearly 10 years ago) showed thousands of little dimples and scratches.
What it can't cope with is things like a large sharp knife or fry pan being dropped onto it. These "accidents" penetrated the surface coating and eventually made black stains. I got most of these out with the belt sander but the rest are now sealed underneath the new coat and are part of the other "features"

Looking forward to seeing the pictures - You should get out of the kitchen and get to the log yard while your weather is still good!

I should definitely get out of the kitchen. Winter (when it's not raining) is ideal milling weather here. Sunny with highs of 18ºC and lows of 6ºC and a decent breeze to blow the dust and exhaust away.

 

[abbott295]

"One lady decided to set up her chair for sunbathing quite close to us. Not sure why with the beach being a couple miles long she set up so close to the guys with chainsaws. This picture also shows the haze over downtown."

Maybe she thinks guys with chainsaws are sexy?

 

[Daninvan]

Maybe she thinks guys with chainsaws are sexy?

Well I would like to think so! But more likely she is either partly deaf or not playing with a full deck. Lucky for her I was not using my 2100s, they are a lot louder.