More Beach Milling

[Daninvan]

Got down to the beach this morning, the day after halloween. Simply a beautiful morning, clear and crisp and hardly anyone down there but me and my chainsaw(s)! If you look closely though, you will see spent fireworks in the sand on the left of the panorama. Here in Vancouver, halloween is the big night for fireworks, not Canada Day or New Years Day. Don't know why that is, maybe British heritage and Guy Fawkes, etc? It's been that way since way before I was a kid in the 60's. Lots of neighbours get together and buy the fireworks and shoot them off in the lane, parks, etc. Someone had a good show here last night, and unfortunately left all the garbage to show for it.

I was poking around the pile, I spotted this very nasty looking piece of metal embedded in what might be a maple tree.

Some good sized cookies, might be cherry. The log behind is birch.

As I was contemplating the morning, and the logs, a gaggle of geese flew by.

I also noticed someone is building a monster house on the hill right behind the beach. Frankly, I am surprised that houses were not built there 80 or 90 years ago, the location is stunning and it is right in the city. Anyways, I can foresee complaints about noise arising once the house gets finished and occupied.

This was the subject of today's milling, a piece of elm about 6' long and 30" wide.

I decided to mill it about 3" thick as I had thought it would make nice legs for something. I normally mill 2 1/2" or so, and find that just a bit too thin to get legs out of, especially if I need to straighten out some grain runout. This log was a good width, my mill will do about 32" wide now. You can also see that there was some badness going on at the top of the log. Luckily it was not sand, just dirt and rotten wood. Unfortunately it was a lot worse in the next cut, went almost halfway down the log.

The big crack kind of took the wind out of my sails. I settled for just three slabs today. Some kayakers in the background were enjoying the nice day and the calm waters.

Unlike most elm that I mill, this one did not have a bad smell at all while I was milling it. I did notice in the van on the way home that it had a very mild sweet barnyardy smell, but not bad at all. As I had milled to 3", I found the slabs were too much for me to lift, so I ripped the slabs lengthways. I figured I am going to make them into legs anyways.

I never like to leave a log only part milled, but in this case the split was just too nasty to justify spending any more time on it.

 

[mtngun]

Great pics. Not a bad view as cities go.

 

[caspa]

Awesome stuff. Thanks for the pics.

I found your beach on google earth, such a nice place to be able to mill.

 

[StevenBiars]

I went to Vancouver, BC back in 2003 when I was 18. It was my first trip outside of the states, and quite possibly one of the most beautiful places I've ever seen. The border crossing that I went through is right on Semiahmoo Bay / Boundary Bay, and I ended up getting spooking the mounties by walking to the water and watching (and photographing) the whales that were quite prevalent that day. The two things I remember most about Vancouver was:

1.) There were Starbucks everywhere, and I enjoyed the mall. When I was in Seattle, it was cheaper to eat at Starbucks than to cook, so I frequented SBUX often: View attachment 205328

2.) I got lost driving around, because I didn't have a GPS and I thought it would be fun to explore the countryside. I remember driving on this ridge of sorts and it overlooked a large river or possibly part of the bay, and there were logs / log rafts as far as I could see floating on the water.

The one thing I could have done without was the gigantic pile of manure near the "Canada Welcomes You" sign. If I'm not mistaken, there was a cattle field on one side of the road and a massive greenhouse complex on the other. Good times. On a side note, all that hair dye caught up with me, and I'm all but bald now. When I would travel internationally (often alone visiting friends or with my friends who were exchange students), I would follow Western European trends and try to blend in as an international, because it was safer than traveling as a lone American. Back then I could speak German fluently, thanks to one of those friends.

Beautiful slabs, regardless of the splotch.

 

[Daninvan]

I found your beach on google earth, such a nice place to be able to mill.

Thanks Caspa, never been to Durban, but nearly made it in 1983. I'm sure very different now, I've heard it is a lovely place and the beaches are wonderful.

As for Starbucks Steven, you are right, they are everywhere. Vancouver and Portland are the closest major cities to Seattle (Seattle is roughly in the middle between Portland and Vancouver BC), so we were thoroughly and early on colonized by Starbucks! Another reason is that Vancouver doesn't have much big box retail or many malls in the city, so the Starbucks (and almost all retail and restaurants) are all right on the street. Thus I think they are more visible than they are in other places.

The logs you saw floating in the water were likely log booms in the Fraser river waiting to be processed by the saw mills. It's very common here still, much cheaper to float them in from remote locations than truck them. I was up the Fraser in a boat a couple years ago, you are right they go on for miles, I could smell the red cedar in them as we went past.

Sorry about the pile of manure! I don't remember ever seeing that, you may have just been unlucky with a farmer getting ready to spread it on his fields.

 

[Old Blue]

Thanks for the Daninvan report.

And especially all the great pics. Please keep em coming. Hopefully the new homeowners wont be pricks.

Did you get some of your wood storage issues sorted out? Hope so !

Old Blue
Mercilessly overtaxed and punishingly over regulated in
Kali-bone-ya

 

[Burlhunter13]

Those cookies you cut in the photos have some beautiful spalting! Would make a killer guitar top if it had been ripped into boards. Thanks for sharing!

 

[BobL]

Lotsa nice travel memories kick in whenever I see those beach milling pics.

 

[Daninvan]

Did you get some of your wood storage issues sorted out? Hope so !

Sort of, the house was sold, then the deal fell through, so it's still on the market. I really have no idea when something might happen now, so I did locate a workshop co-op kind of place downtown. I think I will move my stuff there, but it could be six months before anything happens. So basically I just decided to be ready for a move. I did get rid of most of my pile of dry wood that was in the garage. It was a good exercise, really forced me to cull the less desirable stuff. I still have a ton of stuff air drying in my own backyard though!


Those cherry cookies (which I did not cut, someone else did) were extremely soft. I think they were too far gone to be of any use.

I forgot to mention that there was a piece of horsechestnut (think buckeye) and another piece of maple (no metal in this one!), both similar diameter to the elm I did mill. They city guys asked if I wanted them, I said no thanks, and they seemed disappointed! They tossed them in the red bin that you see in one of the photos, off to the chipper for hog fuel I guess. Last year I probably would have said yes.