Daily Blog

As you can see in the photo below summer is on the horizon and the forest is once again green and showing signs of life. I didn't take this photo but it is one of my favorites.

The past few weeks here at the sawmill have been pretty slow. I will explain more on that tomorrow but I have decided to show more of my work/life with you. I am going to commit myself to make one blog entry a day on this site. In some cases it will be behind the scenes of an accompanying video and in some it will stand alone. I have wanted to do this for a while now and hopefully you will get something out of it. I have enabled the comment feature here on the blog so you can comment just like you do on my videos. Tomorrow will be June 1st, 2018 and will also be the start of my daily blog. In the next few weeks I will be sharing on here a lot of content that never makes it to You-Tube. I hope you will join me in this journey and more importantly get something out of it for your own tool box.

Cya tomorrow,

Nathan,

Rain Delay/New Blades Coming to the Sawmill.

This blog entry comes to you from a rainy day here in the Tennessee mountains. I had planned on a lot of saw-milling this week but the weather has not cooperated. After Mondays sawing video we have been in another torrential down pour. As soon as the weather improves I will be back on the mill. I have a nice White Oak loaded on the Wood-Mizer as soon as I get some good weather. That log is a good candidate for quarter sawing which I will document via video and on this blog. I hope to perform a good presentation on how I not only quarter saw a log, but the things I look for when determining if a log should be sawed in that matter. After that timber is done I will move on to the eight Black Walnut logs waiting behind.

My current and only profile blade I run on my sawmill is the 7 degree Wood-Mizer double hard blades. I have used that blade profile straight out of the gate when I purchased my sawmill in 2011. That blade has been a work horse for me and has always performed well any of the species of woods we have here in Tennessee. I have recently became interested in the Turbo 7 blade that WM is now offering. This blade is advertised with very good abilities which might out perform my current blade. It is touted to be very effective when sawing White Oak which is a species that I come across on my WM weekly. The following text is from WM web site about the blade:

Developed on exotic hardwoods in South America, the Wood-Mizer Turbo 7 blade’s unique, aggressive profile has established itself in the industry for sawing white oak, hickory, ash, hard maple and more. With increased air flow and higher tooth penetration while sawing hardwoods, the Turbo 7 degree profile is tried, tested, and proven by high production, high horsepower, and high feed rate saw-milling operations throughout the world.Available in SilverTip, DoubleHard, and BiMetal material, Turbo 7 blades provide maximum run time and cut quality no matter what species is being sawn.

The Turbo blades should arrive today. I will use the blades as soon as I am back to sawing on the White Oak and Walnut. I purchased five of these to try out which should make for a good comparison to what I am using now. This will also probably result in a comparison video in future content both on the blog and my You-Tube channel.

Look for more blog entries in the future as I am going to attempt to increase my output of content on both You-Tube,Instagram and here. Also if you are on Instagram give me a follow on there. I am using their story feature on that platform which I have been getting good feedback on so far.

OTW

Georgia Sawing Project 2018

Good evening OTW community. I have had a lot on my plate the last few days and spent the last week after returning from Georgia taking care of some matters than needed attention here at the sawmill. I wanted to share some photos from the sawing event in Georgia that I attended last weekend that did not make it to the YouTube video. If you haven't seen the video yet I encourage you to take a look if you have time.

This event is a yearly gathering of Forestry Forum members that get together and share knowledge and saw logs. Although it may seem like a big gathering of men playing with big boy toys this is meant to be an educational experience. I myself learned a lot in the two days I was there and will pass that on to my viewers in future videos and on this blog.

Jake Dean, whom hosted the event at his sawmill business headquarters had a very professional well thought out set up. He had a workshop that was dedicated to sharpening blades and his chainsaws. Here are a few stacks of blades ready to be sharpened. These stacks were around 5 feet tall.

Here is Danny Hamsley (WDH) explaining the process of quarter sawing and it's benefits. Danny operates a Wood-Mizer LT40 and a Nyle Kiln (same model I run) in South Georgia. He is a retired forester and a wealth of knowledge. We have become great friends in the past few years. I think a lot of this man, he has a passion for timber that I hope to achieve one day.

This is Jake's bread and butter, the LT70. He actually has two of these mills. This one stays at the business and the other one is placed about a hour away at a larger sawmill that contacts him for sawing. On the loading arms is the Sycamore that was quarter sawed.

The first cut on the Sycamore revealed some spalting This log had been in Jake's yard for about 2 years.

Here is the result of quarter sawing the Sycamore. These boards were cut at

5/4 thickness.

Some of the boards had both quarter sawn characteristics and spalting.

Jake used a method called reverse roll quarter sawing for this log. I hope to master that method and show it in a future video.

One of the many things I was impressed with was Jake's work flow. He had plenty of dry storage for lumber.

This is 1mbf of quarter sawn white oak brought by a customer for drying. Jake also had a large kiln that is capable of drying up to 4 thousand board feet.

This is Robert Milton demonstrating the 20in Jointer on some oak. This machine was made in Italy and had a spiral cutter head. It retails for about 10k.

This is the view from the sawmill looking towards Jake's home. He gets to live right in the middle of this wonderful set up. He is truly living the dream.

Jake and Robert using the 24in planer for the first time. This unit like the Jointer is also manufactured in Italy with a similar price tag.

A few things here in closing. I am going to be sawing tomorrow (April 23) and will be filming the days work. Also I am going to begin this week to get more blog post out there to you all.

Link to the video that accompanies this post:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C1CwEzvdOps

Thanks for reading this evenings blog.

Nathan,