Big J

Haha! That will teach me to skim read when I'm half asleep!

The mantel pieces or the sawn timber? Mantel pieces I don't do too many of. I get asked now and again, and it's a good use of smaller timber. Regarding sawn timber, I try to only use oak over 30 inches in diameter (ideally over 40"). Larger logs are chainsawmill halved, sometimes quartered. This gives lots of stability and I get little movement when drying. It is then sold to local (and not so local) cabinet makers. Jonathan

The pippy oak is especially nice. Very good stacking too, though I'd want to see stickers right at the end of the boards. You'd be amazed how much they can move when unsupported!

My mantel pieces tend to be £20-25 a cubic foot green, which is £700-875 a cubic metre. Accepted you have a firewood element of waste before you get that, but I can assure you that firewood has next to no value compared to sawn timber. I've 80 odd cubic metres of firewood at the yard, which has the same final value as 3-4 cubic metres of sawn oak. It takes much longer to process, takes up much more space and is far more time consuming to deliver. Jonathan

Glad to hear that they are going to good use. They are small, but would make nice mantel pieces. Jonathan

Sorry to hear that Stevie. Speedy recovery I hope. To echo others here, people like that are a real danger not only to animals but to people too. Anyone with maliciousness of forethought to intentionally cause injury or death to an animal for no reason other than self gratification cannot be trusted in any circumstance. Jonathan

Any hand saw. After some years of using chainsaws, I find hand saws to be the very definition of RSI inducing tedium.

Very sorry to hear that Marcus, condolences for losing Max.

Got a new MS880 the other day, and used it normally from the off on the sequoia milling job I recently posted about. 8 or 9 tanks through in a couple of days, no problems. I've never gently run in new saws myself.

Indeed, and many thanks! How did you get the tree dismantled in the end? I see your avatar that you're up a MEWP at Dollar? Stubby - they have their bicentenary in four years time and the boards are going to be used for an outdoor installation in the run up to that. Clive - live in Scotland but half English, half German! Could just about shift the boards half width (hence the central cut) but the 4 inch boards were still over 250kg each. Ballibeg - think it's certainly worth milling so long as there isn't too much occluded bark. Makes excellent cladding. You could break it down into cants (thick slabs) and resaw on a band mill. That's what I'll be doing with a tree that is coming to the yard next week. Mark - my back isn't great really (weight lifting injury from when I was younger) but it hurts the least when I'm working hard. It seizes up when I stop. I'm very flexible, so bending down low is fine. Today is the first day my forearms have stopped aching though! The discs are easy to cut - just do as you would a first cut length ways, taking off a rough piece and then repeat. It's quicker across the grain. These rounds were milled from the middle - the stump was too big. Jonathan

We did a contract milling job for a local school this week, which involved a double ended chainsaw mill with an 84" bar, and a lot of effort! It was a good experience, and went according to plan. Priced as a three day job, the cutting was done in two leaving me to shovel sawdust at a leisurely rate on day three. Two men, two days cutting, and 415 hoppus foot of boards produced. About 250 cube of that was at 2", with the remainder at 3 and 4 inches. Technically it was a bit of a challenge with the first log. The first cut was started at pretty much head height, which meant that we had the inevitable rise and fall in the cut at the start of the cut, which migrated slowly down the log as the cutting progressed. With the sheer weight of an 84" mill set up, and nature of starting a cut 6ft off the ground, I'm not sure how to avoid this practicably. Given that there is no other way of cutting a log like this, I think it's a far trade off. The cutting was easy and quick with the double head set up. We were getting a consistent cut rate of 3ft/minute through full width (65-67") cuts. The real challenge is having the patience to take the depth gauges down enough. I need to start pleading with chain manufacturers to produce ripping chains for people with high power output saws (or indeed two of them) because a stock chain is like trying to run a Ferrari V12 through a Ford Fiesta gearbox - you cannot realise the power. I must have taken about 25 stokes off every depth gauge, and it could still stand to be much lower. Either way, on a 13 ft cut, we were getting 3 cuts to a tank. So, as ever, I'd strongly recommend that for anyone doing any large diameter chainsaw milling, ditch the single head set up and get a double headed mill. It's not twice as quick, it's four times as quick. You save fuel (I used 20 litres to produce 415 hoppus foot), chain sharpening, stress on your machines, stress on you and lots and lots of time. Photos (apologies for the lack of mid cut photos - our promised help didn't really materialise, so we could only photograph when not cutting.

I have quite a bit of it recently processed. Easy to cut and split. I popped a crate in the kiln to fill space and deeply impressed with the results. It lights off newspaper, heats up incredibly quickly (from cold start to off the top of the safe zone on the flue thermometer in under 3 minutes), puts down a good bed of embers and lasts reasonably. Given the (low) price if fetches, I'd strongly recommend it as an affordable alternative to the loopy prices ash/oak/beech/sycamore are going for.

I used a fairly large Avant a few months ago and really didn't like it. Unstable, poor lift capacity and so jarring in it's ride I gave up after a couple of hours.

Some tightly (cross grained) elm would be my choice. Some elm just won't split for love nor money, and I reckon that would be pretty well suited to the task in hand.

Different market though Steve. For finished timber, sold as individual pieces, you have to charge that much to stand a chance of making anything. Check out Lanarkshire Hardwoods if you really want to blow your mind!

Mill now, treat with anti fungal treatment and give it plenty of air to avoid blue stain.

Stunning stuff. I like beech and reckon it's underused.

Yet to try the winch - not sure it's needed on a double ended mill, but happy to be proved wrong. To get the first cut, I just screwed down two 20ft 6x3.5 inch boards, one after the other. The beams aren't perfectly straight, but they aren't far off. Jonathan

It is a bit! The size of it was determined by the free roofing sheets that came with the shed roof. 10x10 cover meant an office 8x8. It's ideal for two people, but a bit cramped with 3. The 4kw stove is way too much for it, and I usually have to have the door open. Jonathan

It's tongue and groove underneath. The walls were prefabricated and screwed together. It's 6mm ply on the inside, 25mm insulation, 32mm tongue and groove then rain screen cladding. Here is a photo of it without cladding:

That's stunning Graham

They are 40ft and yes, they are one piece. Chainsaw milling 40ft beams is the very definition of tedium (2 beams equals 320ft of cutting). The beams are 12x9 for the front, a touch smaller for the back (limits of the log). Jonathan

Oh no! What have I started?! Sawmiller's semantics! I stand corrected

Not being pedantic, I'd describe that as heavily flamed beech, rather than spalted. Either way, it's just stunning, and perhaps one of the most beautiful bits of beech I've seen.