Daninvan
ArboristSite Operative
My bowl turning buddy and I got wind through a mutual friend of a property his family had owned for nearly 50 years. It was a couple hours east of us and was being cleared in preparation for subdividing into lots.
Professional loggers had already come through and take all the commercially valuable Douglas fir and red cedar. Also a specialty wood firm had been through and high graded all the big leaf maple, taking the lower sections of any trees for the curly figure.
So our friend had invited us to come to his property and take as much of the remaining maple as we wanted.
We didn't know quite what to expect, but once we got there we quickly realized that all that milling at the beach made us pretty soft and spoiled! The place was super mucky, hilly, and they had a bunch of slash piles that were burning so there was drifting smoke everywhere. Very post apocalyptic, plus we had to carry everything in and out on a hilly and wet logging path. Plus the logs were in piles and no friendly guy with a loader to set them up nicely for us!
The area where we decided to mill was on the top of a knoll and was quite open and the ground was probably the firmest of anywhere on the entire property. There were three maple logs of interest there, although we only managed to get to two of them, since we didn't actually start cutting until 10:30. They were the log in the foreground, and the log two behind it, with the whiteish bark and the moss on the top.
It was impossible to mill the logs in the piles without moving them first, so we started by cutting out some cookies for my bowl buddy to cut into blanks. This time he was looking for 6-7" deep blanks that he could use to make salad bowls. Unfortunately the log in the background had a crack that telegraphed along as we cut out cookies. We gave up after 6 or so, and he salvaged the most he could with the cracked pieces.
While he cookied away, I started working on the foreground log. I cut a 5' section out of it and rolled it out to where I could cut it without interference from the pile. I guess the log had been cut down a while ago as it had some stain coming in from the end. But it was still nice and clear material and the stain was not unattractive. I peeled off 4 slabs 3" thick in fairly short order. Only saw problem we had all day was that I had to stop to tighten the chain a couple of times. Hardly a big deal, but a bit strange since the chain had already been used, and big leaf maple is not an especially hard wood.
After the hassle of carrying all our gear in, we quickly realized as the slabs and bowl blanks began to accumulate that we had a real problem of how to carry everything back to the van. It was gong to take a long time and be an awful lot of work. Fortunately, there were still a couple workers on the site, one guy in particular who was monitoring the burning slash piles to make sure they did not get out of hand. And he had a pickup truck. So we approached him and he readily agreed to carry it all back for us at the end of the day.
All in all, we did not get as much wood as we had expected. The travel time, the set up time, and the extra work required to get the logs out of the pile all cut into the actual milling time. Not to mention that it started to rain about an hour before we were planning to leave so we cut it short and left early.
But now we know where the place is and what to expect so we plan to go back again in a couple weeks.
Professional loggers had already come through and take all the commercially valuable Douglas fir and red cedar. Also a specialty wood firm had been through and high graded all the big leaf maple, taking the lower sections of any trees for the curly figure.
So our friend had invited us to come to his property and take as much of the remaining maple as we wanted.
We didn't know quite what to expect, but once we got there we quickly realized that all that milling at the beach made us pretty soft and spoiled! The place was super mucky, hilly, and they had a bunch of slash piles that were burning so there was drifting smoke everywhere. Very post apocalyptic, plus we had to carry everything in and out on a hilly and wet logging path. Plus the logs were in piles and no friendly guy with a loader to set them up nicely for us!
The area where we decided to mill was on the top of a knoll and was quite open and the ground was probably the firmest of anywhere on the entire property. There were three maple logs of interest there, although we only managed to get to two of them, since we didn't actually start cutting until 10:30. They were the log in the foreground, and the log two behind it, with the whiteish bark and the moss on the top.
It was impossible to mill the logs in the piles without moving them first, so we started by cutting out some cookies for my bowl buddy to cut into blanks. This time he was looking for 6-7" deep blanks that he could use to make salad bowls. Unfortunately the log in the background had a crack that telegraphed along as we cut out cookies. We gave up after 6 or so, and he salvaged the most he could with the cracked pieces.
While he cookied away, I started working on the foreground log. I cut a 5' section out of it and rolled it out to where I could cut it without interference from the pile. I guess the log had been cut down a while ago as it had some stain coming in from the end. But it was still nice and clear material and the stain was not unattractive. I peeled off 4 slabs 3" thick in fairly short order. Only saw problem we had all day was that I had to stop to tighten the chain a couple of times. Hardly a big deal, but a bit strange since the chain had already been used, and big leaf maple is not an especially hard wood.
After the hassle of carrying all our gear in, we quickly realized as the slabs and bowl blanks began to accumulate that we had a real problem of how to carry everything back to the van. It was gong to take a long time and be an awful lot of work. Fortunately, there were still a couple workers on the site, one guy in particular who was monitoring the burning slash piles to make sure they did not get out of hand. And he had a pickup truck. So we approached him and he readily agreed to carry it all back for us at the end of the day.
All in all, we did not get as much wood as we had expected. The travel time, the set up time, and the extra work required to get the logs out of the pile all cut into the actual milling time. Not to mention that it started to rain about an hour before we were planning to leave so we cut it short and left early.
But now we know where the place is and what to expect so we plan to go back again in a couple weeks.
Nice pics -
