Daninvan
ArboristSite Operative
My bowl buddy and I headed out into the mountains this morning to pick up some maple. This trip was exclusively for bowl blanks for him as I have no room to stack up any more wood in my yard. It was also the last milling of the 'season', which for us runs from September to May. The city log dump at the beach was shut down last week, so we are done now until September.
Heading east I had this great view of some mountains near Chilliwack BC peeking out of the clouds. Unfortunately it is difficult while driving to take a picture thru the windshield with the cell phone that really captures it properly.
Could not have asked for a nicer day, clouds kept the sun off of us, but there was no rain. I'm guessing it was around 70 degrees or so. T shirt milling was a nice change from the usual checked flannel hoser jacket with a safety raincoat!
Our first log was a short piece off the end of a log we had milled last time. We had to settle for just this short length as the rest of the log was somewhat knotty and for bowl blanks my bowl buddy is getting pretty particular, otherwise there is too much splitting.
Next we picked everything up and moved across the property to a promising looking log with no knots. Unfortunately it did not live up to its promise, we cut it into several pieces looking for clear wood, and each piece had ring shake and bad splitting.
Close up of the badness going on in this log. (Sorry about my gloved finger hanging over the lens.) I suppose we could have cut one slab from the top that might have been check free, but my buddy convinced himself it wouldn't be thick enough so we didn't bother with it.
So we abandoned that log with some regrets, and turned our attention to one that was sticking out of a nearby pile at an odd angle. We had not been too keen on this log as it was smaller in diameter than the other two, and it was also badly twisting/spiraling the whole length of the log.
It actually yielded some nice wood despite our initial skepticism. We cut two sections out of it, one about 8' and the other about 6'. We have milled a slab off the longer of the two below, with the other piece waiting behind it. My buddy was not too worried about the twisting, as the effect is minimal in short piece like a bowl blank.
I did something very unusual for me this time. I left a couple big slabs. We boxed the heart on these two logs since my buddy did not want any pith or any of the coloured wood near the pith. It kind of hurt me, but I left two 7" thick slabs. My brain says they would have cracked and the wood was twisted anyways, but my heart still hurts a bit for leaving them.
We wound up with 19 bowl blanks for my buddy. They were all 7", 6" or 5 1/2" thick. (OK, I took one short piece of roughly 4x6!)
The saws worked great. My buddy did all the bucking with his Stihl and we milled with my 2 3120s both with 36" bars. Neither of us sharpened or had any whiff of a mechanical problem. I had a new Oregon bar and a new Granberg chain in one of the mills and wow, was it cutting well. I should have bought a new bar years ago!
Heading east I had this great view of some mountains near Chilliwack BC peeking out of the clouds. Unfortunately it is difficult while driving to take a picture thru the windshield with the cell phone that really captures it properly.
Could not have asked for a nicer day, clouds kept the sun off of us, but there was no rain. I'm guessing it was around 70 degrees or so. T shirt milling was a nice change from the usual checked flannel hoser jacket with a safety raincoat!
Our first log was a short piece off the end of a log we had milled last time. We had to settle for just this short length as the rest of the log was somewhat knotty and for bowl blanks my bowl buddy is getting pretty particular, otherwise there is too much splitting.
Next we picked everything up and moved across the property to a promising looking log with no knots. Unfortunately it did not live up to its promise, we cut it into several pieces looking for clear wood, and each piece had ring shake and bad splitting.
Close up of the badness going on in this log. (Sorry about my gloved finger hanging over the lens.) I suppose we could have cut one slab from the top that might have been check free, but my buddy convinced himself it wouldn't be thick enough so we didn't bother with it.
So we abandoned that log with some regrets, and turned our attention to one that was sticking out of a nearby pile at an odd angle. We had not been too keen on this log as it was smaller in diameter than the other two, and it was also badly twisting/spiraling the whole length of the log.
It actually yielded some nice wood despite our initial skepticism. We cut two sections out of it, one about 8' and the other about 6'. We have milled a slab off the longer of the two below, with the other piece waiting behind it. My buddy was not too worried about the twisting, as the effect is minimal in short piece like a bowl blank.
I did something very unusual for me this time. I left a couple big slabs. We boxed the heart on these two logs since my buddy did not want any pith or any of the coloured wood near the pith. It kind of hurt me, but I left two 7" thick slabs. My brain says they would have cracked and the wood was twisted anyways, but my heart still hurts a bit for leaving them.
We wound up with 19 bowl blanks for my buddy. They were all 7", 6" or 5 1/2" thick. (OK, I took one short piece of roughly 4x6!)
The saws worked great. My buddy did all the bucking with his Stihl and we milled with my 2 3120s both with 36" bars. Neither of us sharpened or had any whiff of a mechanical problem. I had a new Oregon bar and a new Granberg chain in one of the mills and wow, was it cutting well. I should have bought a new bar years ago!
