Woodworking

I made decent progress today. I couldn’t bring myself to square up the round edges since it takes just as much time to mill off the unneeded wood and is purely aesthetic. In classic woodworking fashion, I’m gonna put the good face towards the road and the ugly face towards the house/back of the property (or “against the wall” as the saying goes).

lurkingdirk said:

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My dad's saying was "Damn, cut it twice and it's still too short."

Starting to bring down this black walnut. This is gonna keep me busy for a few weeks but definitely gonna be worth it.

lurkingdirk said:

That's gorgeous. Hope you have a way to mill it.

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I am sure gonna try.

lurkingdirk said:

Make sure you set it up to dry right. Don't let it warp. The colours in that are beautiful. Whatever you do with it will be great.

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I am hoping to get enough lumber out of it to build custom nightstands for my room, and then one for each of the kids - heirlooms they can pass down to their grandchildren.

I dunno what the fuck I'm doing with this though. Picked up a chainsaw for the first time today and kinda winging it. That log was from the first branch I took off to minimize breakage when I fell the tree. It was 20 feet long and I couldn't move it myself, so bucked it where it fell.

The other reason for doing it this way is to learn as I go. If I fuck up one branch, it doesn't ruin the whole tree. I've got a lot of tree to go.



My plan as it stands is to try to preserve that trunk, and any pieces like the one above, mill it with the saw into 2" slabs and find somewhere to let it dry for a year or so. Not really sure how to do all that, so I'll take all the advice I can find.

Got a mill on the Husqvarna in the back of the truck there. Should be wide enough, considering the inch or so of white wood I'll be trimming off anyway. And yeah, rip chain is the next thing on the list, but I've got a couple weeks before I'm gonna need it anyway. Biggest problem I think I'm gonna have is hauling that trunk back up the hill to flat ground. Probably just have to roll it a foot at a time with some chocks.

Only got the one branch down and cut up tonight, mostly firewood. But, had to break in the saw and all that, so should go a bit quicker now. I aint in no rush, just trying to get this monster down safely without wasting much of it or taking down any adjacent trees, or ruining the fence.

Cutlery said:

Got a mill on the Husqvarna in the back of the truck there. Should be wide enough, considering the inch or so of white wood I'll be trimming off anyway. And yeah, rip chain is the next thing on the list, but I've got a couple weeks before I'm gonna need it anyway. Biggest problem I think I'm gonna have is hauling that trunk back up the hill to flat ground. Probably just have to roll it a foot at a time with some chocks.

Only got the one branch down and cut up tonight, mostly firewood. But, had to break in the saw and all that, so should go a bit quicker now. I aint in no rush, just trying to get this monster down safely without wasting much of it or taking down any adjacent trees, or ruining the fence.

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The 2 loops I ordered from granberg are on a 4-5 week back order I’ve got a couple worn out chains that I’m gonna pop a link out of and convert to a ripping chain this weekend.

Dandai said:

The 2 loops I ordered from granberg are on a 4-5 week back order I’ve got a couple worn out chains that I’m gonna pop a link out of and convert to a ripping chain this weekend.

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Yeah, I saw Granberg was super fucked on order time a few weeks ago when I bought this shit. Decided to go with a model I found at fleet farm, figured that's probably better than Amazon shit. In any case, it's not like I'm building a log home or anything, so it doesn't need to be perfect, just good enough.

I went on a deep dive on Alaskan mills awhile ago, one guy said he saw no benefit to switching to a ripping chain, one guy had to sharpen his chain after every other cut, so it sounds like really no matter what you do it's probably gonna work, just varying amounts of effort.

Cutlery said:

Yeah, I saw Granberg was super fucked on order time a few weeks ago when I bought this shit. Decided to go with a model I found at fleet farm, figured that's probably better than Amazon shit. In any case, it's not like I'm building a log home or anything, so it doesn't need to be perfect, just good enough.

I went on a deep dive on Alaskan mills awhile ago, one guy said he saw no benefit to switching to a ripping chain, one guy had to sharpen his chain after every other cut, so it sounds like really no matter what you do it's probably gonna work, just varying amounts of effort.

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I haven’t tried a ripping chain yet, but a new sharp cross cut chain makes for pretty quick milling work.

Well, that tree is kicking my ass. Also, black walnut heartwood is hard as fucking rocks.

I decided to trim off everything I can reach with a ladder. Good call, because a lot of the branches near the ground are 20' long and weigh more than I can move myself. So, I trimmed out all the shit to the rear and right of that picture that was less than 15' off the ground without much trouble. But that cocksucker on the left...holy fuckballs. it goes up pretty far, so wasn't able to prune any of the branches from the ground, pole saw wouldn't reach. So I just decided to notch it and take it down all at once. After it started dropping, it became immediately obvious that the limbs were too long on that side, and it fell into the fir trees I have behind it. The cocksucking branch had a fucking Y right at the top and it nestled right into the trunk of one. So I've got this giant ass fucking limb stuck, leaning directly into a 40' pine and no good courses of action.

Tried to get my truck into the backyard...can't, due to the layout. Lawn mower didn't have enough oomph to pull it. So, got a couple 10k lb tow straps and a come-along (best $30 I ever spent) and literally pulled that branch fucking 90 degrees before it broke. So fucking exhausted from doing all that shit by hand (Not getting me up on a ladder with a chainsaw), but the rest of the tree standing goes pretty much straight up now and it should come down real easy (i hope) Just need to buck all the shit that's now littering the yard and get that shit stacked up before I drop the tree and make another giant mess.

But, good call for the back yard - I might even be able to grow some grass there now. Didn't realize how much area that tree covered.