More Milling

Had a couple more milling sessions recently.

Some friends joined me one brisk morning for a maple crotch, an enormous and ancient red cedar stump/burl, and a short piece of maple with quilting in it. Unfortunately this day went badly and ended early, as both maples were punky/rotten/blue stained, and the cedar was too deeply fissured to yield anything decent.

Subsequently I went back and took a look at a large piece of yellow cedar that had obviously been cut down ages ago, eventually drifted ashore locally, and had lain on the beach for several months.  After a minor string of bad luck with rotten logs recently, I was a bit reluctant to go at it since it struck me as being kind of marginal. Twisted, cracked, weathered, full of sand, etc. Despite this, it contained some very promising looking sections.

While the log was indeed full of sand and incredibly tough on my chain, I wound up getting five nice slabs from it, all quarter sawn or rift sawn. While there are some cracks, I have no doubt that I will still have a lot of very fine material once it all dries.

Sometimes it does pay to take a chance!

Some BIG Milling

Scored this big maple log last week. 9' long, 3 1/2' wide at the narrow end. Probably the widest log I have ever attempted.

Unfortunately it was totally punky, my friend and I did not get anything from it. Which was a shame as there was some beautiful quilting in some areas.

But it was a darn fun day!

We did pick up a few pieces of cherry though. 3' across, but only about 2' long, with the graft union in them, it was a flowering cherry.

The new saw was cutting well, we used the 5' bar.

Back in the Milling Saddle!

It has been an eventful couple of week since the loss of the 2100s. As mentioned, I picked up a pair of 3120s and a pair of 390s in Victoria, along with a trove of spare parts.

I am on the trail of some new cylinders and pistons for the 2100, if I can get them repaired, I will wind up with seven big chainsaws. 

I took the 3120s into the shop on Monday for tune ups as they had not been run in 2+ years. I was in kind of a rush as I had a long standing plan with my friend Pete who lives in the Okanagan to do some milling on Thur/Fri at the beach.

I picked one of them up on Wed afternoon, the other needed some oiler parts. At the same time I dropped off the 390s for their going-over. 

The bad luck started immediately thereafter when I tried to mount the 3120 to my homebrew mill which had previous been driven by the 2100. Turns out the 3120 is bigger than the 2100, and interfered with one of the threaded rods which was threaded into a hole in the bar. So a long story, and a long cold dark evening, but I had to redrill and rethread a new hole in the bar, I lost about 1 1/2" of cut width, and then I had to change the mill itself since the threaded rods it mounts on were now closer together.

So on the chilly Thursday morning we selected a couple short pieces of horse chestnut and an elm crotch to work on. The chainsaw gods were continuing to conspire against me though. The saw  troubles started immediately and I did not put saw to wood until about 1 o’clock.  This included a 3120 problem, problems with my last functioning 2100, and eventually a desperate run to the shop to fix the 3120. Luckily it was an easy fix and I was also able to pick up one of the 390s which was now ready. I eventually got the 390 into action and started milling up the horse chestnut, wound up taking ten slabs 2 ½” thick off the two logs. My buddy was working away on the elm.

Two small horse chestnut logs

Elm crotch

Friday morning we started in on a log that was covered in burls. It might be maple, but we are not sure. Again, a lot of planning and set up required to get the best cuts, but I eventually started taking off slabs. Soon the oiler adjustment screw fell out of the 390 and it wouldn’t oil any more. So I switched back to the 3120. That was the end of my saw troubles, but now it was time for my mill to act up. Turns out the last minute mods I made to accommodate the threaded rods being moved closer together were a bit weak and allowed the mill to flex, causing it to dive and jam in the wood. My buddy's saw refused to start for most of the day on Friday as well. Finally by Friday afternoon we had two saws in action, all the log set up and trimming was done, and we were able to make some good progress.

 Burly Mystery log

At the end of the day on Friday, in addition to the ten shortish horse chestnut slabs, we drove away with ten 10’ elm slabs at about 1 ¼” thick, and eight 10’ maple? burl slabs, plus a bunch of burls and shorter pieces of the elm.

My share of the loot

I went home, showered, had dinner, then slept for 11 hours! Can’t wait till next time!

 End of the day, beach in the shade, the 'banks' of Spanish Banks visible. 

Tough place to work!

Husky 2100 - RIP

It seems that my recent milling marathon in New Westminster described in my last post was tough on more than just my lower back. Both of my Husky 2100 saws that I used on that adventure have been pronounced DOA at the mechanic's shop.

They told me that the saws were starved for oil in the mix, and that I have damaged the pistons and the cylinders by running too lean. New pistons can be purchased for these old-timers, but new cylinder heads cannot. So I am done.

I checked the 2 stroke oil the shop had recommended I use. It came with a convenient measure for 1 US gallon / 4.5 litres. Unfortunately the measure was 100:1!!  So no wonder. I can't understand why the manufacturer would recommend 100:1, and why the chainsaw shop would suggest that brand to me. I also can't understand why I didn't read the fine print on the oil containers more carefully!

Luckily, I hit the jackpot. A guy I know from a chainsaw milling forum that I participate in turned me on to a fellow in Victoria who was selling four older (not as old as mine though) Husky saws, two 3120's that are larger than the 2100, and two 390's that are slightly smaller. Plus he had a couple 'parts saws', and a ton of accessories, including bars, chain, mufflers, air filters, etc. In fact he was a very nice retired logger who had done a lot of milling at the end of his logging career. They have seen some use, but looked to be in good shape, better than my old saws were. A quick day trip to sunny Victoria via ferry and I came home with my car loaded with the loot.I'll go through it over the next week.

 Coming Out of Active Pass, Vancouver in Distance

In other news, I pulled a load of wood out of my kiln this week. Pictured is a piece of 'fiddleback catalpa' that was in there. Who knew that catalpa had fiddleback? Who even knew there was catalpa?! This chainsaw milling gig sure turns up some quirky stuff!

In the bad news department, my neighbour whose garage I use for woody activities has listed his house for sale. It appears the luxury of a second shop is nearly done, and I will shortly have to make some tough decisions on what to keep and what to move along.

A week of Milling

I spent three straight days this week at a wood chipping yard in New Westminster, milling up three western red cedar logs and one spalted maple log. I know I am not the speediest guy at the best of times (just ask the guys on my hockey team), and I guess the same applies to my milling!

I went out the week before and sussed it out, as mentioned in my last post. So I showed up 7 AM on Monday all ready to go, but apparently my contact had fallen off a chipping machine on Friday, and was still in the hospital. In fact he remained in the hospital the entire week with a fractured skull and bleeding in his brain. It was really an awful thing. Fortunately he will recover, he had not fallen into the chipper, but onto the ground beside it, probably a good 8 or 10 feet.

The Chipping Machine

So the mood at the site was somber. Pretty rough guys, colleagues of his, were nearly in tears talking about what had happened. Not to mention the place was swarming with WorkSafe folks. Since the machine he fell off was immediately beside where I was working, I couldn't run the mill while they were there. That really hit my productivity for the first couple days.

Meanwhile, a constant array of trucks were arriving and dumping various wood waste. This was my favourite below, a steaming pile of ground up Christmas trees that smelled great! My least favourite was a huge truck full of sawdust which the wind blew right towards me. I had to run like mad to get out out of the dust cloud when he dumped it.

Despite my first impressions of how horrid and industrial this place was, it actually kind of grew on me. Tugboats were going up and down the Fraser river, the local rapid transit trains would shoot by silently through the trees, and the occasional float plane would buzz overhead. The guys who worked there were very helpful and interested in what I was doing. And the weather was decent. For February. The world kind of slowed down for a few days.

So, on to the wood. WRC is of about zero interest to cabinetmakers. But in this case I was milling it up for a company who sells the slabs on line.

Second WRC Log

Nice colours showing on the end of the maple log!

Note the nasty split in it. I subsequently rotated the log 90 degrees (by hand) so that the split would be captured in a single slab, rather than affecting most of the slabs.

By the end of the third day I had 13 WRC slabs and six maple slabs. I milled them all to 3 1/4" thick, and most were 12' long.

At that point I had had enough and I called it done! I had touched up the chain several times, enough so that the rakers needed filing again. Also two of my saws need to go to the shop for tune ups, they kept stalling on me.

Wood Cutting

Up the Sunshine Coast to get some arbutus with the IP folks, unfortunately it turned out to be fir. That was a drag since while arbutus is a super cabinet wood, fir is not a desirable cabinet wood! Especially this one, which while large appeared to be second growth with fairly wide growth rings. Good for 2x4's I suppose.

This thing had washed up in a winter storm 3 years ago and still had a huge root ball on it.

 

We got the root ball off, which was an an adventure. Several of us slipped on the slimy rock on the beach and hurt our dignities. A chainsaw bar bar got bent, the root ball made a huge crash as it fell back, then it slid down the rocks and almost right into the sea. Exciting!

The root kind of looks like a giant octopus or something just waiting there!

Then the cutting proceeded. Only took off a couple slabs, but they were a ton of work. Luckily lots of helpers were there so they were doing most of the pushing!

I had spent the better part of the day filing and setting the rakers the day before, I am pretty sure that everything was tickety-boo with the chains. I had noticed this toughness with large old floaters before, I am not really sure why they are such beasts.

Anyways, next up are some western red cedar and a large maple all salvaged from a property in town and sent out to a local chipping yard.  I get to mill up what I can, and what I don't use, well you don't want to know! (Hint: they are in a chipping yard . . .) The ambiance is totally opposite my usual pristine beach milling site, it's a filthy dirty noisy heavy industrial site. They have several huge and noisy machines that chew up old pallets and scrap lumber and unwanted trees etc. The place is like something out of some kind of apocalyptic movie. It's littered with debris and mud and garbage. I am sure no-one will even notice my chainsaws' noise above the rest of the din.

Chainsaw Rakers

Well I spent the better part of four hours on Saturday sharpening the chains on my two 36" bars, getting ready for Monday's trip to Sechelt. Normally it takes only a couple of hours to prepare for each cutting session.

This time took longer because in addition to sharpening, I had to file down the rakers. This is an extremely tedious procedure, but needs to be done every 3-4 sharpenings else the teeth cannot 'bite' into the wood when cutting. I use a Dremel drill to hog each raker down to close to where it should be, and then use a file and a raker guide to get it bang on. I don't like the Dremel for sharpening the teeth though, I can't control it as well as I can a file.

I use ripping chain for cutting slabs. The main difference between ripping and normal chainsaw chain is the angle of the teeth. Ripping chains are normally filed to between zero and ten degrees, while a typical chainsaw chain used for bucking firewood say, is filed to about 30 degrees.

When a chainsaw is ripping, ie cutting a slab, it is effectively cutting end grain for the whole cut. And the saw's throttle is kept wide open for the whole cut, which may last five or ten minutes. So milling is about the hardest use a chainsaw can be put to in wood!

And of course there are many different types of ripping chain. I use two types, the subject of this particular blog entry is a bit unusual, it has two types of teeth on it, regular cutting/clearing teeth, and scoring teeth that have no top on them, they just score the wood to make it easier for the regular teeth. It's kind of hard to see the difference in the picture below, check out the top view in this link for more details.  Ripping Chain

I like this chain for a couple of reasons, I find it cuts a bit more smoothly than a chain with all regular teeth, and it allows the motor to maintain higher RPMs while cutting.  On the downside I do find it a bit fussier (ie dulls more quickly) and perhaps a bit slower. Of course, how sharp a chain is is way more important than anything else.

The picture shows the angle of a regular tooth in green and a scoring tooth in red. If you put your protractor to the screen you will find that the scoring tooth raker has an angle of about 9 degrees whereas the regular tooth is about 6 degrees. The cutting tooth raker is bang on, but the scoring tooth raker may be a touch aggressive.

Of course the whole measuring system falls apart quite quickly if the teeth are not a consistent height. And there is an element of 'eyeballing' that comes into play in the camera angle and in drawing the lines. Not to mention that the bar the teeth are sitting on has a slight curve in it.

I'll talk a bit more about tooth height in a future entry. Consistent tooth height is critical for several reasons.