Portable Sawmill

It was time to turn the logs into rough cut lumber for later use in and around the new home. I hired Dave Smith (831-234-8407) and his portable sawmill to do the job. This type of mill is essentially a large band saw on a linear slide mounted to a trailer for driving most anywhere your vehicle can take you. Dave and his son Everett arrived early on a cool morning in mid December. Here's a pic of them setting up the portable mill.

This sawmill has hydraulic manipulators for positioning and clamping the logs. Dave was an expert user of his mill - it looked like the machine was an extension of his hand. Here's a video of the manipulators in action.

Dave spent the better part of the daylight hours slicing logs up into various thicknesses depending on the type of wood and final expected use. Everett moved every piece off the mill, temporarily stacked it up for later, and got new logs ready to load onto the mill. Here's a pic of the mill making sawdust, a video of the redwood log being cut followed by a pic of a 6x6 redwood post.

The final step is setting the wood up to dry in layers separated by thin pieces of wood called stickers - a process called sticking. Unfortunately, the best drying location and the best location to set up the mill were about 50 feet apart. This meant we had to move all the rough cut wood uphill to the new location, whew. A small level foundation was made from pieces of leftover oak, paving blocks and redwood shims. In the final pic you see Cindy standing next to the stack.

Water moves longitudinally many times faster than radially in trees. Cindy is busy painting the ends of the wood with latex. This reduces the amount of water coming out of the ends resulting in a more uniform drying process. More uniform drying means fewer and smaller cracks in the dried wood. Wood takes about 1 year per inch thickness to dry naturally in the air (more about wood drying). Since most of this wood is about 1 3/4" thick, it will be almost 2 years before it is ready to use.

Dave and Everett did an awesome job with one really cool machine. I would highly recommend calling Dave if you live near Santa Cruz and need some wood milled at your site.