10-19-2022, 03:17 AM
I mentioned in the trailer thread that I'm doing some urban saw milling, and rescuing some nice cypress from the firewood pile. Tree was standing dead on township reserve, above a public walkway, so the town paid a tree crew to piece it down. Deal was the homeowner that backed onto the reserve could keep the firewood, and there was quite literally tons of that. Got talking to homeowner and crew foreman, and said if they left some logs we could mill them on site. I'd get a share of the lumber, the tree crew had less work because they didn't have to cut everything into firewood rounds, so they agreed. Been putzing with this in spare time over the last week.
[attachment=44759]
This is a 4" thick live edge slab. The mill can only make 6" cuts, but you can saw most of a log, then flip it over and place it on another partly cut log and saw the other side. To the right there is a part sawed log (that's now been wrangled up to be sawed next, and a smaller previous 3" slab.
[attachment=44761]
A view of the site, check the size of the surviving trees behind the mill. They are probably ~90 years old? Monterrey cypress grows fast in our climate, and being an exotic import there is no restriction on cutting it. It's getting less common as they old farm shelter belts have been taken out and not replaced, but there is still some left. Check the tire swing for scale, that's a tractor tire hanging there.
[attachment=44762]
And a load on my little trailer to drag home. We measure wood by the cubic meter here, it's the same idea as bd/ft, but a "cube" is a 1 meter volume. Roughly 424 bd/ft. I haven't measured accurately, and there are some shorter boards in the load, but it's a bit over a Cube. It's technically overweight as the trailer isn't braked, but the hitch and trailer are rated for more, and it was only a 1/2 mile trip across town, so no problem.
[attachment=44760]
The stump in the background is the tree that was taken down. We are dealing with the logs from above that. As it was a "hazard removal " job, they simply took the tree down to where it wasn't a danger any more. That stump can rot in place, they have planted some new native species around it, and it can house critters until it turns into compost. Homeowner has several years of firewood, and the mill can't handle that sort of beast anyway.
[attachment=44759]
This is a 4" thick live edge slab. The mill can only make 6" cuts, but you can saw most of a log, then flip it over and place it on another partly cut log and saw the other side. To the right there is a part sawed log (that's now been wrangled up to be sawed next, and a smaller previous 3" slab.
[attachment=44761]
A view of the site, check the size of the surviving trees behind the mill. They are probably ~90 years old? Monterrey cypress grows fast in our climate, and being an exotic import there is no restriction on cutting it. It's getting less common as they old farm shelter belts have been taken out and not replaced, but there is still some left. Check the tire swing for scale, that's a tractor tire hanging there.
[attachment=44762]
And a load on my little trailer to drag home. We measure wood by the cubic meter here, it's the same idea as bd/ft, but a "cube" is a 1 meter volume. Roughly 424 bd/ft. I haven't measured accurately, and there are some shorter boards in the load, but it's a bit over a Cube. It's technically overweight as the trailer isn't braked, but the hitch and trailer are rated for more, and it was only a 1/2 mile trip across town, so no problem.
[attachment=44760]
The stump in the background is the tree that was taken down. We are dealing with the logs from above that. As it was a "hazard removal " job, they simply took the tree down to where it wasn't a danger any more. That stump can rot in place, they have planted some new native species around it, and it can house critters until it turns into compost. Homeowner has several years of firewood, and the mill can't handle that sort of beast anyway.