milling thread

[Dave Shepard]

Dutch barn restoration. There are 9 45' timbers in the floor system. This is a traditional recreation of a Dutch barn floor system, with the addition of floor joists and planking in the side aisles.

 

[Ax-Man]

Jay, here are a few pics of one of the benches I have gotten finished. I have got a couple of others but they aren't quite finished and are still in the making and still need to be put together. I hope to start playing around with mortise and tenon joints and start using small logs and limbs to make chairs and maybe some tables.

This bench was made from an American Elm tree, seat and backrest cut with a chainsaw mill. The supports came from a crotch piece from the same tree. I pretty much freehanded that piece with a chainsaw. One leg is a little off as far as being square. That one leg has been a pain since I started this little project.A chainsaw isn't exactly a precision wood cutting tool and takes a little finesse to make joints of any type with it. Doesn't take much to remove too much material.

It has been a good project for practice. I have made stuff like this before in the past but they never came out as good as this one did even though I am not totally happy with it.

 

[Burnham]

That looks nice, Larry. You could really dress it up with bungs to cover the screw heads.

 

[Al Smith]

A thought occured to me about these long beams .A few years ago Rich Dougan AKA Sawking on flea bay was involved in the restoration of a historical covered bridge somewhere in Oregon .

The beams were like 90 feet long of Douglas fir .They were cut with I think an 090 Stihl using a track device donated by some maker of chainsaw mills . There was a vid of it on U-Tube I think .It took like several tanks of gas to just cut one side of that beam plus a considerable amount of time .The method they used was the only option except squaring the log with a broad axe to cut such a long timber .

 

[Ax-Man]

I know. Burnham, I'll see if I can do that. It gutted me to put those lags in like that . I had it put together in a different fashion but the darn thing is so bulky and heavy as I was moving it around one side came apart. So in went the lags for overkill.

 

[MasterBlaster]

Cool bench!!! I like how it's put together!

 

[Al Smith]

Made out of elm it would almost never split .

 

[flushcut]

Good looking bench.

 

[Ax-Man]

I forgot to say thanks to you guys for the compliments. Thanks again. It just came off the second go round on e-bay and I still haven't sold it. I'll have to wait it out till we have our local corn festival. Where I live they have a log home festival which is a big attraction and the road to the festival goes by my house and is busy busy all weekend long with out of towners checking out the festival. Everybody along that road has a garage sale of some type going on. I'll have my little sign out this year.

 

[Dave Shepard]

We've pretty much wrapped up our sawing of repair parts for the barn. I've got plenty of work to do on the stuff inside, so we made a roof to go over the long timbers. Got a good pic of the mill too.

Mini "trusses". Started putting the purlins on:



Finished roof:

 

[MasterBlaster]

I bet you had fun taking those pitchers!!!

 

[Dave Shepard]

Yes, but we weren't set up in the right spot. I wanted to get the whole thing in frame, but my lens isn't wide enough. I think the platform is about 40 feet all the way up.

 

[Burnham]

Nice.

 

[Ax-Man]

Thought I would bring this thread back into the limelight.

Nailing boards or setting up slabbing rails to the top of logs to get that first cut with the Alaskan mill just really isn't for me. It can get to be a little on the frustrating side unless you have alot of time on your hands. I made this set-up a while back that for me works out a little easier especially for the smaller stuff.

I don't exactly what to call this other than some kind of adjustable saw guide. Kind of reminds me of those stocks they used back in colonial times to shame people who had committed petty crimes

Anyway, this is adjustable by adding or subtracting 2x4's or 2x6's. I also made it to mill small logs because I also got the mini Alakan mill works great for that attachment and possibly do some eging with the Beam machine attachment I've had for a long time.

It works out good for what I have been using for but like all things it has it's pro's and con's. It was also easy for me to make and not all that expensive. I can do longer logs if need be by pushing one of those stands back on the 4x4's that are under it.

Here are some pic's showing different ways I have been using it to mill large pieces ,slabs, and a few pieces I wanted to fix that didn't come out good when I tried to freehand them with just a saw.

 

[CurSedVoyce]

Really cool idea Larry!!

 

[MasterBlaster]

Quite inventive!

 

[Porkbrick]

very cool.

 

[Ax-Man]

Last week we had a local festival and the neighbor who ownes property along the road leading to one of the major attractions let me set-up on the side of the road and see if I could sell some of the benches and table I had made with my homemade mill guide along with some chainsaw carving items, along with some odd boards I had cut and some odd pieces of wood from tree we had worked on. I had more stuff I wanted to do and put out but time was short and making money doing my regular work comes first instead of playing around making benches and boards.

The welcome sign was my first time using a router and doing some lettering. It didn't work out as good as I would have liked but that was a learning experience in itself:roll::roll: and finished it anyway. The guy who bought it liked it and it was one of the first things to go.

The whole thing was just a big experiment so to speak to see if I could sell this stuff and to see what would sell good and to test the market so to speak. I had to discount some prices to sell them but all in all I got back most of the money I had put into this milling thing except for my time sharpening saw, sanding and finishing most of the pieces.

I have learned alot about making lumber so to speak when it comes to level and square, drying and different finishes you can put on wood.

What do you guys think of my work any helpful hints or tips would be be appreciated. I know most of you guys aren't carvers but just thought I would throw this up for kicks. I don't consider myself a carver either because the stuff I did was simple and straight forward. You don't see any figures like bears and eagles because I just don't have talent for carving animals.

 

[Dave Shepard]

That is a great solution for the Alaskan mill! I like it.

 

[CurSedVoyce]

That's cool Larry. I can't find the pictures I took of a place we were at that had turtles carved of the stumps left from felling trees. I thought it was an awesome idea. Real simple as well. It looked a lot like carving a mushroom to a degree (well the top of one anyway).

 

[MasterBlaster]

Those things look like they were fun to make!

 

[Ax-Man]

Thanks guys, The only draw back I found with the mill set-up is when using the bigger milling attachment using two slabbing rails is you have to slide the rails under the mill attachment because of the two bar clamps on the saw. A ladder would work better I think because you can hold the ladder with one hand and slide the mill with the other hand. I have a top section from a wooden ladder for doing longer lengths but haven't given it a try on my homemade set-up. Other than that I like it for the wood projects I have done and hopefully for some future projects. Right now I am burnt out on milling but I know the bug will bite again.

 

[Ax-Man]

I can see carving turtles and frogs CurSed, that wouldn't be too hard to translate into piece of wood.

 

[Al Smith]

Milling with a chainsaw is just a hell of a lot of work no matter what method you use . The only real good method I ever saw was a slabbing mill a gent built using a long bar and a large 4 cycle engine with a large sprocket to get the chain speed up .Even at that he likely had about as much money in it as a small bandsaw . It is an option however in lieu of a better method if that's all you have .

 

[Ax-Man]

You are right Al, but it is kind of fun. I have been snoping around the local Craig's list's in our area just for kicks and saw a Woodmiser LT 40 which I think is Dave's machine along with the full hydraulics and a fuel injected 28 hp Honda with very few hours on it along with a Woodmizer kiln for about $20,000. Guy is selling it due to health reasons. This sounds like a deal to me but I don't have that kind of money so it just isn't going to happen. Wished I did have it though because I think it would be a nice side income for my business.