Milling weekend with mystery tree

[Coralillo Lo Pro]

i will get a more powerful saw, just not sure when or what. been waiting for a really good deal to pop up.

Honestly I think if this forever predicted recession finally arrives, and it's a doozy, there are going to be so many big saw deals it will be crazy. Just a ton of COVID money went into people getting into chainsaw milling, many of whom won't stick and sell their gear. The slab market is already next to saturated. Personal use/woodworking and dimensional lumber making will be the only reason to keep doing it for most folks. So as a money maker, chainsaw milling alone is questionable to me. All comes down to what kind of value you create with it. Lumber is definitely valuable, but bandsaw mills seem better suited to that (yet oddly all the small bandsaw mills around here are producing slabs rather than lumber). Most all my value is created through my woodworking. I at times envy folks with big country properties and space for all the logs and big milling equipment they want. But I realize I'm not competing with them and my location and portability and approach is my strength. In an urban environment, people really buy in to the idea of salvaging trees that would otherwise go to the landfill, and homeowners are happy if they have to cut down a tree or lose one in a storm, it doesn't go to waste. The down side to this work is you run into a hell of a lot more metal in yard trees than you do milling in Montana.

 

[cluelessmontana]

20" LP chains are dirt cheap on ebay. 5 for $38, or 9.5 cents per link https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_fr...75.m570.l1311&_nkw=3/8+lp+.050+chain&_sacat=0

i can't find any in higher sizes for a reasonable price, i guess you have to make your own

 

[Coralillo Lo Pro]

20" LP chains are dirt cheap on ebay. 5 for $38, or 9.5 cents per link https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_trksid=p2047675.m570.l1311&_nkw=3/8+lp+.050+chain&_sacat=0

i can't find any in higher sizes for a reasonable price, i guess you have to make your own

I got one of those cheap 20" chains. Used it for a bit on the cottonwood job. Worked great. Is the benefit of the G777 mill, you can get 20"LP ripping chains dirt cheap. I've never nailed down if there's a liability issue companies are terrified about in the US, but lo pro is offered strictly 20" and less as far as bars, chain, and tiny saw lo pro sprockets. Lo pro has been a "make your own" deal for decades in the US for folks milling with it - make your own chain loops, make your own sprockets (most DIY folks machine down an 8 pin .404 sprocket to 1.670" diameter to create a large saw 8 tooth 3/8LP sprocket), and get 3/8LP sprocket noses to put on regular .050 bars. I was mildly interested for years but no one used it I knew of, no one had good info on it, and it was impossible to get a whole bar/chain/sprocket setup to mill with. Then I discovered Chainsawbars in the UK last year and their free shipping to the US and everything changed.

 

[cluelessmontana]

how long do you need to let these huge thick slabs dry before they are of any use for furniture making

 

[Coralillo Lo Pro]

how long do you need to let these huge thick slabs dry before they are of any use for furniture making

Inch of thickness per year is the air drying standard. Since Texas is obscenely hot in summer, I generally regard 2" slabs as ready to work after a year. If I mill something 3-4" thick that I plan to resaw in half, I'll let it dry for a year and resaw it and see if it wants to move any after that. Mesquite I can work green, because it is literally the most dimensionally stable wood in the world and barely shrinks or moves at all while drying. Depends a lot on the dimensional stability of the wood, I study up on every wood I work with.

 

[chunky]

Think I know why the new .404 chain didn't mill faster. I was trimming some of the slabs with my Big Foot saw which was bogging down some and I realized it's because there's so much water in this cottonwood. The sawdust is really clumpy and doesn't clear well. I figured there wouldn't be any downside to milling particularly wet trees - I mean how hard is it to cut water lol - but hadn't thought about the effect it would have on the sawdust/chips. That's where the clearing ability of .404 (and skip) is offset by the sheer volume of wet sawdust .404 creates. And why lo pro worked so well, because it creates so much less.

I milled a big cottonwood last year and had the same problems with it. I put it mostly off as being a newby on my chin sharpening so bought a brand new 404 and I wasn't any faster than the old one.
I finally come to the same conclusion that it was just from the log holding so much water, I could actually see the chains slinging out the water.

 

[unclemoustache]

San Antonio and Montana in the same thread. I’m originally from Montana, and my brother is currently in SA. You might have seen him. Used to be King William for a promo at the fair.



But the powers that be made him stop for some unknown reason.

Anyway, here in the midwest we got lots of pecan- big, straight, and huge.
Not as much cottonwood as MT, but some.
Lots of Tree of Hell (heaven is not where Ailanthus came from!). I haven’t milled any of it, but maybe I should try a log.
Gobs of oak, walnut, ash, cherry, maple, hickory, etc. it’s tree heaven compared to MT which has so few varieties.

But I’m heading up to Billings for a week tomorrow morning. My other sibs will be there, but not “King William”. Moron wants to stay home instead of getting together with the family one last time.

 

[Coralillo Lo Pro]

San Antonio and Montana in the same thread. I’m originally from Montana, and my brother is currently in SA. You might have seen him. Used to be King William for a promo at the fair.

My wife grew up here, I've only been here full time about six years or so. Will see if she recognizes him. Yeah, I love the increase in variety once you get NE of Texas into Arkansas, Tennessee, Missouri. Visited my sister in Nashville last year and city workers were cutting down dying/dead ash right and left in the larger wooded parks, I was like, ahhh, all that's going to waste. Had forgotten about the ailanthus part of this thread, seems like one of those woods fun to mess with when you don't have much else to mill but I can see if you have a rich variety it'd be about the last thing you got around to trying. I really distrust those trees with huge volumetric shrinkage, even if the radial/tangential shrinkage ratio isn't that bad. Successful drying of them is such a PITA. Flat sawn red oak drives me insane, it seems to never ever stop moving.
I was happy to get the sycamore I'm working on. Just got the starter repaired on my lo pro saw so can get back to finishing it. One of the only straight trees to be found in these parts of any size aside from the occasional giant straight pecan. No low major limbs, was just 11' or so of straight trunk to the first limb, tree service wasted the bottom 2' felling it so I have a 9' log but I didn't really need any of its flare of the base nor the extra length.
Family seems to always keep drifting apart. Shame (well sometimes it's a good thing lol). My wife's father came from a tight family in Iowa, they barely see each other at all anymore. My Dad never kept up with his relatives much after leaving Pennsylvania for Florida after college, his side of the family the joke is the only time anyone gets together is to "match em, hatch em, and dispatch em".