a little cold weather milling

mikeb1079 · Nov 27, 2010

ah, a nice 4 day weekend. finally some time to do some milling. it was 18 degrees f this morning when i left the house. i really wanted to mill the honeylocust log that i picked up last weekend as i hadn't milled any before and i was keen to see what it looked like. i had a walnut log that's been at my brothers for awhile so i thought i'd try that one too. both are about 8' and around 20" at the butt.

since baileys has my ripping chain on backorder, and thus i don't have any fresh chain, i decided to try some stihl rsc chain. not good. yes i stays sharp longer but it cuts WAY rougher. i knew it would be worse than milling chain but i guess i figured it wouldn't be this much worse. on the plus side that honeylocust looks amazing:

nice grain, cool orange color when freshly cut. i also found some cool crotch figure which this photo doesn't do justice to:

it's very hard (had a hell of a time getting my duplex nails back out that i use to set up my guide rail) and very very heavy. here's all the locust slabs, try finding 20" figured and bookmatched honeylocust slabs at your local lumberyard. :laugh:

on to the walnut:

here's a close up of some crotch figure of both species after a couple passes with the hand planer (powered):

all in all a really nice day. i'm bummed that i'll have to do so much planing to remove those deep gouges left by the stihl bucking chain, but live and learn. i usually leave the live edge on the slabs because i never feel like taking the time to make a proper cant. the advantage is time savings in the short run, it took me about 4 hrs to mill both logs. glad to be able to do some milling again. :cheers:

TreeWinder · Nov 27, 2010

Good looking wood, figure looks nice.

DRB · Nov 27, 2010

Nice looking wood.

Cold weather milling 18F? I was out a 0F last week camera did not like it so I have no pics.

Thanks for posting.

mtngun · Nov 27, 2010

Awesome wood, I'm jealous of you guys with the hardwoods.

Thanks for the pics.

BobL · Nov 27, 2010

That sure is some nice wood there Mike

mikeb1079 said:
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i'm bummed that i'll have to do so much planing to remove those deep gouges left by the stihl bucking chain, but live and learn.
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It's interesting to see the cut was going pretty smoothly up until the green line.

Can you think of anything that happened at this point? Were you maybe pushing harder at this point? Pushing harder causes the cutter to take a bigger bite and on bucking chain it causes more sideways cutting.

The only other thing I can think of is that the log is a bit wider at this point and you hit some resonance point between chain speed and cutting width. Like this: Same saw, same mill, same chain (but with 2 stroke file touchup), same species of tree - but log on right is about 30% wider.

mikeb1079 · Nov 27, 2010

It's interesting to see the cut was going pretty smoothly up until the green line.

yeah bob i noticed this too, on several boards actually. i was trying to pay attention and feel when the saw would start to vibe but i wasn't able to be too scientific about it. i think you're on to something though in that as i was milling i think i was bearing down a bit too hard. usually it's pretty easy for me to listen/feel when the saw is in it's power band, but with this bucking chain it behaved very differently. i think the smoother areas are where i used very light pressure.

i was thinking that maybe i'd try to use stihl rsc chain and then gradually file it back to 5 or 10 degrees as i know some guys do this, but it doesn't seem worth mucking up all those boards until you get the top plate angle you want. or maybe i just need more practice with the rsc chain?

i feel like the chain maybe cut a little faster (might just be my imagination) than my usual woodland pro 33rp and it may stay sharper longer but i don't think it's worth it. you take what is already a fairly large loss to sawdust and just make it worse. anyways, thanks for the replies. :rockn: and it's always a nice day to mill.