Woodworking

Adebisi said:

When was there ever buy canadian?

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Is anything even made in canada?

BrutulTM said:

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Picquic screw drivers. They're pretty nice or as some would say, skookum as Frigg!

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Man, I always lose the screwdriver I need... I can't imagine how pissed off I'd be to lose all of them!

I didn’t think to take pics, but today I tried my hand at milling with a bandsaw on a dolly, pushing it through a log fastened to a tall saw horse. It -worked- but even with a purpose-designed blade for resawing green logs (3 TPI, thin set, hooked to clear the chip), the 3/4 hp motor made it a real chore. Free hand milling with a chainsaw is surprisingly very accurate with minimal practice and a good technique, but my Stihl 261 gets fucking heavy after 5-10 minutes. I was hoping the bandsaw would be more sustainable but it’s too inefficient to be practical.

Tomorrow I’m gonna take a few hours and build a simple chainsaw mill. I’ll take pics of the result at least.

Captain Suave said:

This guy's channel is great. He has some land out in the wilderness and on a series of extended vacations built a pretty decent log cabin and bunch of furniture and craft items, basically all by hand with self-made tools (less the chainsaws, obviously).

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That's exactly where I learned to do the free hand milling technique. I'm still using a cross cut chain (I ordered a couple ripping chains from granberg tonight) so my slabs aren't as pretty as those, but they're pretty uniform. I'll grab a picture tomorrow.

For my pine slabs/posts I use a tape measure to locate the edge of a full 4x4 post on the log and drive a 3" screw about an inch into the log. Then I hook my chalk line over the screw and walk to the other end, locate the edge of the 4x4 post on that end, and snap the line. Finally, I roll the chalk line back up and remove the screw. I initially make a shallow first pass that goes over the chalk line then make progressively deeper passes using only the tip of the bar and paying careful attention to my form and maintaining the bar perpendicular to the ground. For a 7 ft long 25" diameter log it takes me about 10 minutes (I haven't actually timed it but it feels longer than 5 and shorter than 15) to get all the way through. Of course this is 3 minutes of cutting and 7 minutes of me shaking my arms, groaning, and generally wondering if a fence is actually necessary or important. My first slabs I had the log on the ground and kept dipping my chain in the [very sandy] dirt, instantly and frustratingly dulling it. I eventually wised up and started using a thick slab as a cutting bench so I can plunge without worry of getting the chain in the dirt.

Free hand milling isn't be too bad for making slabs, but I'm looking to make a few dozen fence posts for the perimeter of a 5 acre property. That makes setting up what is essentially a jig for milling (chainsaw mill/sled) worth the effort to me. I'm sure I could eventually get on his level where I could mill for longer than 5-10 minute stretches, but I'm trying to finish milling these fence posts sometime this year!

Edit: I forgot to mention that the shavings produced using this technique are super long, way different than cross cutting. A couple of times I've been very close to fully separating a slab from the log and started using more than the tip of the bar and packed the saw so full of long shavings that it jammed. I've got a Stihl MS261 (coincidentally I think the same saw he had in that video) which is a 50cc engine. I've been saving up some new tool money for a few months now and may end up getting an 80cc saw for milling. Before I pull the trigger I want to spend more time milling and woodworking in general.

Edit2: I'm watching the video again to refresh my memory. He does mention the long shavings, and then he talks about using bungee cord as a guide. I initially tried using masonry string and after cutting it a couple times decided to switch to a chalk line. I've practiced enough now that I might be able to use the string again, but it's not obvious to me that the string would be any quicker than marking with a chalk line.

Kovaks said:

I have a couple oaks on the new property that have rot and need to come down, they jave long strait sections with no branches and I really want to mill them to slabs and dry them, let me know how it goes.

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After watching the vid above and sleeping on it, I’ve decided I just need to suck it up and free hand and not bother with the chainsaw mill. I’d forgotten that Advoko (the Russian lawyer in the bush craft vid) said his experience with his chainsaw milling jig was pretty much the same as mine with my bandsaw on a dolly (it works, but it’s slow and dulls your chain quickly). It’d be nice to have a less physically demanding method, but I could use the exercise anyway. To me, the appeal of the chainsaw mill was efficiency (in the form of being able to mill more posts in the same period of time), but the disadvantages don’t seem to outweigh the advantages, especially given that I’ll get stronger and more adapted to holding the chainsaw as I continue to practice.

As promised, here’s pics from the first full 7’ rip I did this afternoon (on a slab already cut at 4” thick:




I started the timer after I took the screw out and had marked the chalk line.

BrutulTM said:

Looks good. Feel free to mail me those shavings to use as fireplace kindling.

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You’ll have to fish those out of the chicken manure compost pile but I’ll be making more soon! I’m about to hit up google maps to estimate how many posts I’ll need and use working towards that number to keep me motivated. I’m gonna be fucking sore tomorrow.

Edit: These are from today. I’d moved bigger slabs to the driveway for bandsaw on a dolly milling.



These are what I’ll be working through the rest of the day (I started them a couple months ago).


This is my cutting slab setup. You can see the stakes with screws on either end to hold the logs. The heavy logs take some work to get onto the slab but it’s a helluva lot better than burying the nose of the bar in the dirt every time I accidentally penetrate through.

Captain Suave said:

What part of the country are you in? If you're got moisture and/or termites, using that untreated softwood will just have you doing this all again in a couple years. My great-grandfather was a cattle rancher and I've set my fair share of posts on the family land. You don't want to be doing that shit any more often than you have to. (We were lucky enough to have a supply of osage orange and those will outlive the post-digger. The homestead fence was fir, but those were put in concrete. DIY anti-rot treatments don't work, IMO.)

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North central Florida. It’s humid here but the sand drains so well that fence posts last longer than you’d think. I put a new 6” post so I could hang a gate that opens to the back of my property. The 4” post I took out to was no worse for wear and at least 15 years old. The top was weathered but the buried part could’ve been from a month ago.