Making trees into wood

At LWBD, weekends usually involve doing stuff on the farm.

Sunday’s job was to complete a track through the Christmas Tree forest, to get better access:

 Ready to work.
At this point, there was a HUGE thunderstorm, and suddenly being in an all-metal digger didn’t seem like such a great plan.

Have coffee and think.
New plan needed.

How about processing some of the blown-down timber? And make the trees into wood.

This is a lovely bit of Elm, which came down in a storm a few winters back, and has been sitting in the yard waiting for something to happen.Just small enough to get into onto the sawmill by hand. Any bigger, and I need the digger, but I’m not going out in that rain…

First cut makes a flat surface. (Not always the deepest)

Once there are two flats, the rest is simple: just keep slicing.

…and slicing…

Done!

Some excellent slabs, ready to be dried a bit more. For the nerdy, these were about 14% moisture on the surface, but nearer 22% on the fresh cuts, and that would warp terribly if I started to make anything from it. So it’s into the office plant room, which is a dry 25-30 degrees, for a few weeks, to get it down to <10 %, which should make it stable for a life indoors.

If you feel like making some trees into wood, then pop over and help out.

And you can take home what you mill.

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