Mountain Lane Homesteaders

Finding out what it meant for me to be head sawyer was a little like finding out what it means to be a parent. You read books and listen to lessons learned already by others who have gone before. Those are priceless resources. But no matter what, there are going to be those times that you face things that are unique to your own situation which cause you to blindly forge ahead into unknown territory using only trial and error methods with an ear tuned to listening to the still small voice inside, reminding you that you have been brought to this place and you will make it through to the other side.

Over the course of time I realized running the sawmill was about more than just learning the technical aspects of operating the machine. We needed to make 2 sided logs, 10" wide boards that were an inch thick, 4" wide boards (these are the "bats" or battons on the side of the cabin) and a bunch of 2x6's. My job was to not only operate the mill, but to decide how to get the most lumber out of each log. Notice the frugality here? No waste on my watch!

Our system was pretty basic at first. Two siding the logs was a great beginner lesson. A log was first placed onto the mill and made stable for cutting. The mill we were using was then lowered using a hand crank to position the blade close enough to the top of the log so as not to waste any, yet down far enough to take into account the taper so that it would slice a nice clean cut and take off all the bark on one side. Once the scrap was removed (and set aside to become kindling for our woodstove), I would raise the mill up to slide it back across the log to the starting position. The log would then be turned over and another cut taken off the other side. Once we had two clean sides we would measure the log and decide how much more to take off to keep our logs at a consistent size.

Since we had logs of various diameters we made two different cut sizes. Remember, we are taking these from our firewood permit and we were new to logging trees at all so the sizes we ended up with may seem small but trust me, they were heavy to lug out of the woods! Some logs when finished were a 6" thickness and some were 7". The kids got in on this part of the process by using the red loggers crayon to mark the size onto the end of the log as soon as it came off the mill. Once this was done the logs were stacked and set aside to continue drying out. Eventually a few of these were peeled and added to our "we can DO THIS" evidence for the bank but as our project evolved, most of them ended up later being made into floorboards for our cabin loft rather than waiting to be logs for the big house. Hopefully, having a little more experience now, we will be able to get some that are a little bigger around to mill for the house.

Having learned the basics of milling wood we were able to move on to a more challenging project which was to begin the process of making our wall boards and 2x6's (when first learning the "lingo" I was so confused when someone would refer to a "tubasix"). For these we did have some bigger logs to mill thanks to the generosity of our friend so the plans were made to mill all our boards 12 feet long, 10" wide, and 1" thick.

These logs were much bigger and of a different type of wood which is a harder, heavier wood, so our first new challenge was in how to get them onto the sawmill. The previous 6 foot logs we had used were able to be lifted right on......not so with these. There were a couple of big pieces of machinery that we were able to use, both a Kubota tractor and a big skidder. I had already learned to drive the tractor and Sam learned how to operate the skidder. HOWEVER, in the final analysis, we decided that trying to get those logs chained up to the skidder or tractor to be lifted onto the mill was just far too time consuming. We would get the chain around the log, get the skidder going, and inevitably the chain would slip and the log would fall to the ground. Time was precious and repeated failures to get those logs on the mill were intensely aggravating. Being who we are, we decided our muscle power was just going to be much faster so we devised a ramp system by laying a couple of boards with one end on the ground and the other end up on the sawmill. With Sam on one end and me on the other we would push and shove as best we could and often made use of a couple of poles with hooks on the end called peavey's for leverage. It didn't often take too long to muscle a log onto the mill this way. The fancier models have hydrolic lifts to take care of this problem but that's not what we had available!

Once the log was in place I would two side it like before and we would roll the log 1/4 turn so it was sitting on one of the other uncut sides. Next we placed a level on the edge to be cut and then shifted or placed shims to make sure we would get a straight cut. Once that third cut was made it was easy to finish the 4th. Now we had what is called a cant. We have several supporting beams in our cabin which were made this way. What we didn't need for a support beam of some kind was then milled into boards.

I began the milling of boards like you would anything you were new at that had great consequences.....very slowly and methodically. We had just so many logs and I wasn't wanting to mess up and ruin a single board. This involved having someone measure down an inch and mark a cut line for me to follow. One day Frank stopped by while we were milling. Seeing our method he mentioned that I didn't trust myself. Of course I didn't! He encouraged me to start "guessing" where an inch was. Was he kidding? Risk wasting a log?!!! Well, it was his mill afterall, I supposed he might know what he was talking about.....so I turned that handle a couple of times, gave the log a test cut and low and behold it was right on. It took me a while to get over my need to have someone "check it" every time but eventually I gained confidence and went on to furthur adventures in sawmill fame.

Often times, in order to get as many boards out of one log as we could, there would still be a remainder of inner bark on the corners of the cant. This is called wane. We were very particular about having as little wane left on a board as possible for two reasons. First, a board with wane has a tendency to bow. We were told that if it wasn't bowed too bad it could still be used but the bowed side would have to be placed facing the inside of the cabin. It wasn't possible to face them outwards and then eventually cover them with stain. Secondly, we knew we were not planning on insulating and would be looking at the boards ALOT. We wanted them to be as nice and clean as possible. It was always a toss up whether to begin sawing boards with a little wane on them so we could get more out of a log or to shave all the edges again until we had a nice clean cant to work with but decrease the number of boards. In the end we had mostly clean boards but do have a few in our cabin with wane on the edges. Over time I have come to see them as part of the charm of the place similar to the rain stains on our ceiling from all the times the rain leaked in...not something I would have desired to begin with but a reminder of all that we were going through at the time.

This seems like a good place to pause. Next time I'll tell you about the ole "skim and flip" trick we learned, post some pictures of our milling days, and fill you in on yet another amazing happening along the way in this homesteading dream.

Never in our wildest imaginations...............