got some wood!!

[Canotrouge]

Today I went to p/u some quarter sawn sitka spruce for paddles and gunnel stock, from the guy I mill with! The wood is mostly clear and all in 8/4 for the short pieces, the 3 16'6" are 9/4!!

I'm thinking of changing the way I make my paddles to have amore efficient use of the wood and maybe incorporating other wood into them like red cedar, and some white ash(as wear strips)

I should be busy for a wile...

 

[Mihun09]

nice. We scrape the bottom of the barrel here for anything so good.

 

[Canotrouge]

This is the cream, about 100 bf.... There is much more, but not as wide or as long. There'll be more since we mill pretty much steady from april to september!!

The 9/4 7" by 16'6" will end up in Lorette Manitoba one day!!

 

[Mihun09]

You will need more than 16'6" for the Timber Cruiser inwales.

 

[Canotrouge]

I know that...I'm still on the look out for the right log, and Doug the guy I mill with know about it
But I'm not opposed to have splined inwales....

 

[Mihun09]

Ok, so we get sitka from you and 1x12x20 foot WRC from offshore... then ship it to the middle of nowhere.

 

[Canotrouge]

WRC(western red cedar) from offshore???

 

[Mihun09]

The new member.. offshore, from the pacific northwest

 

[Canotrouge]

offshore That is cool!! Are the price from of offshore good? I need to look into that, I will check up here, I have a local lumber yard/hardware store that stock clear WRC in 2x4... I would rather have it rough and in wider boards, but anyway I will have a look locally and compare prices!!

 

[Mihun09]

For what it is worth, literally, the 16 foot 2x6 WRC I cut up yesterday yielded 20 strips and that works out to $6.23 a strip. The board was $124.

 

[Alan Gage]

Very nice. Good looking stuff.

You say: "the guy I mill with."

Does that mean you share a mill with him, you take him lumber and he mills it for you, or he procures the lumber himself, mills, it, and then you buy it.

Not that it matters, just curious. I think having and operating a small saw mill would be really fun.

Alan

 

[Canotrouge]

Very nice. Good looking stuff.

You say: "the guy I mill with."

Does that mean you share a mill with him, you take him lumber and he mills it for you, or he procures the lumber himself, mills, it, and then you buy it.

Not that it matters, just curious. I think having and operating a small saw mill would be really fun.

Alan

Alan, That is a guy that I bought wood from last year, and wile I was there I offered him my help on the mill that he accepted. So I've been helping him on the mill, that said, I don't operate the mill my self, but everything that need to be done to keep the work flow going smooth. He buys the sitka spruce logs from a logger in Haines Alaska, then brings them to his place where we saw them for different customers, mainly timber framers. Wile we do those orders, some time we get a log that yield amazing wood, that wood is no longer going to the clients, but stays in Doug's stash. But to find a 100 bf of clear vertical green sitka spruce is not as easy as people would think, I'm learning lots and it is a lot of fun, and I get paid for it!!

Cheers

 

[Canotrouge]

For what it is worth, literally, the 16 foot 2x6 WRC I cut up yesterday yielded 20 strips and that works out to $6.23 a strip. The board was $124.

Thank you Mihun for the info, I will look into what they have here in town and report back.

 

[Alan Gage]

I'm learning lots and it is a lot of fun, and I get paid for it!!

Cheers

I think that would be a great experience. There's an interesting fella locally that picked up a portable mill last year and has plans to build himself a small log cabin on some of his land. I offered to help with some of the grunt work this fall just for the opportunity to see how it works up close and get some experience with it. I hope he takes me up on it.

Alan

 

[Canotrouge]

On the mill I'm working on, the grunt work is at a minimal, even more so starting next week, since Doug got a power strip that run the power to activate the hydraulics from boat ends of the mill and an other hydraulic pump to speed up the system, so we will probably be able to go get a few hundred more bf a day with that!! The mill is a woodmizer LT40 gas!! My plan is to mill some posts and beams for my shop next spring, I want to build a timber frame shop!!

 

[Qayaq]

Sawing lumber is a lot of fun. I have a Peterson swing-blade circular mill that I run part time. I mostly cut specialty pieces for log homes and timber framing. There's no money in cutting dimensional lumber that customers can get from the lumber yard, but I cut lots for my own projects. I love the feeling of visualizing what's in a log and then opening it up to reveal what's inside.

Yesterday I cut several 6 inch thick slabs with live edges 12 - 14 inches wide to be used as a front step I'm building for a local cottage owner. I've been scouring my woods for a White Spruce that will yield 20 feet of clear wood that I know is in demand by at least one builder on this site. I've found a couple that have potential and I plan to open them up in the next few weeks and see what I find. I really need to start pruning branches up to 25 feet high now in order to get some clear wood 20 years from now. Hmmmm, I'll be pushing 80 by then. Hopefully I'll still be sawing. How long can you wait Karin?

 

[Canotrouge]

Qayaq, your mill is a "swing blade" type mill right? I have friend from Tasmania that uses one of these back home to do all the wood for his house, they are supposed to be quite fast! if you end up getting a few nice clear board of white spruce, 6/4 or 8/4, 8" and wider, at 6' in length, I would probably get a few of these!! We have white spruce up here, but it is really knotty and spiral grained!

 

[Qayaq]

There are lots of advantages to the swing blade. One of the nicest is that you never get a wavy board.

​I'm going to focus on trying to get some nice clear white spruce boards in the next few weeks. 6 foot lengths should be easier than 20 footers.

 

[Mihun09]

20 foot would be nice, but if I have to do scarfs in the middle I will, so 10's would do if you can find it. The finish milled size for the inwales is 7/8"H x 1 1/4"W, so that would need to be 4 pieces I can mill down to spec. 6 might be better in case I mess up bending one. That would be spiffy if you could find it and I'm fairly certain Doug Ingram would be interested as well if you could get decent lengths. Many builders in the U.S.A. are also having difficulty finding lengths of clear spruce.

If only I was 20 years younger...

 

[Canotrouge]

20 foot would be nice, but if I have to do scarfs in the middle I will, so 10's would do if you can find it. The finish milled size for the inwales is 7/8"H x 1 1/4"W, so that would need to be 4 pieces I can mill down to spec. 6 might be better in case I mess up bending one. That would be spiffy if you could find it and I'm fairly certain Doug Ingram would be interested as well if you could get decent lengths. Many builders in the U.S.A. are also having difficulty finding lengths of clear spruce.

If only I was 20 years younger...

Me to "If only I was 20 years younger...", a lot of things would be different!!