Weekend Logging in NZ

[Ian Abraham]

Hello All,

After reading Stu's post on his Tokyo logging adventures I thought I'd share some pics too.

First find a spare unwanted tree....

Attack tree with large chainsaw...

Look at mess on ground, thats me standing to the right of a huge mess of limbs :o

Start limbing....

[Ian Abraham]

Getting on top of things....

Can see whats in there now

And get the motly limbed log dragged out onto the flat for milling.

[Ian Abraham]

Butt end with 28" chainsaw for scale.

First log, according to my calcs there should be about 500 bf in that log.

Closeup of the log.

The tree is Monterrey cypress, it's an American tree but I dont believe it's harvested for timber in the US. A lot was planted in NZ 50-100 years ago as shelter on farms. This is just a small one, others locally are up to 9ft diameter :eek:
The timber is a bit soft but very pretty when finished and smells great while you are sawing / working on it.

Hope you enjoyed.

Cheers

Ian

P.S. Yes it is summer here :)

[John Bailey]

Ian,

How do you mill the log? Do you use the chainsaw?

John

[Stu Ablett in Tokyo Japan]

Ya, where is your Kiwi Log Hog :D

Nice looking wood, great pics, and.... hey, you cheated using a cat to drag your logs out!! ;):D

So, like John said, how DO you slab up a log....?

Cheers!

[tod evans]

pretty country ian!

[Art Mulder]

and.... hey, you cheated using a cat to drag your logs out!!

Come on, Stu, admit it... aren't there days when *you* wish that you had a bulldozer to drive through downtown Tokyo? Arr, Godzilla Stu on the rampage!

But yeah, I'd like to see how he plans to slab this up. Is this at all like the Cypress I read about from the southern US with it's light colour and good water resistance? How tight is the grain? With logs that size are you going to quarter-saw it?

love these threads, the pictures make it exciting.

[Bill Antonacchio]

Don't want to take away from Ian's thread but here is what he showed SMC a while back!

http://www.sawmillcreek.org/showthread.php?t=21381

Regards,
Bill Antonacchio

[Ian Abraham]

Thanks Bill, yes that post has pictures of my mill. It's an older Peterson swingblade that uses a chainsaw powerhead to drive a 23" circle blade. Can cut a log up to 5 ft dia, you just whittle it away one board at a time.
I usually flat saw the cypress as it's often knotty and you get more usefull boards that way. It's no problem to q-saw with the mill though, you can cut a 1x8 or an 8x1 and you can change from qsawn to flat sawn as you go. Just make my mind up once I see whats inside the log :D


Is this at all like the Cypress I read about from the southern US with it's light colour and good water resistance?
I believe it's similar to your Southern cypress although it's a different species. It's a softwood and can be a bit brittle when working it, but it finishes up very nicely with a great yellow/orange colour. It's naturally durable like most cypress and gets used for outdoor furniture and construction as well as furniture and trim. It's not grown commercially here but there is still a lot of big old trees on local farms that can be harvested with a portable mill.


Cheers

Ian

[Rob Glynn]

Reference the drying time in the older post.

We dry timber, hardwood, on the basis of 1 year for every 25mm (1 inch) thick plus one year.

I had a big Rose Gum (Eucalyptus Saligna) cut from my yard. It is a tree from the east coast of Australia that had been planted here by a previous owner, and it is dangerous near a house.

It was milled to 50mm (2 inch) planks and, relying on the formula, I will leave it drying on stickers for 3 years at least.

[Ian Abraham]

Rob - The one inch per year thing is like a worst case scenario. With hardwoods like E. Saligna and Oak in a cool climate then it's probably correct. Softwoods like cedar and cypress will dry much faster especially over summer.
The wood was ~14% after 3 months, EMC in our climate is ~12% (no aircon or central heating to worry about)

We grow some of the Eucalyptus species here in NZ for timber and yes it's slower to dry.

And yes.. crazy to let one grow big beside a house, they grow HUGE (150ft+) and FAST and have a nasty habit of shedding large branches at random :eek: The plantation grown Saligna here can reach 80ft tall in ten years.

Cheers

Ian

[Ian Abraham]

The Kiwi Log Hog got a workout today :D

First pics is the mill running, have removed the blade gaurd to cut double width boards. (yes it is a manufacturer approved practise ;) )

Cutting a 16" x 2" for coffee tabe tops

A shorter clear 16 x 2 resawn from the bottom slab.

Loaded up ready to haul home :)

Tomorrow - stacking on stickers for drying :rolleyes:

Cheers

Ian

[Vaughn McMillan]

Great-looking wood, Ian. I see some serious furniture in your future. ;)

BTW, what's the make and model of your SUV lumber hauler? It looks vaguely familiar, but they all do to a certain extent.

- Vaughn

[John Bailey]

Ian,

I may have missed this, but is the property you're working on your place? If so, I'd be interested to see more of it. It looks like a great place to live.

John

[Karl Laustrup]

That is some seriously nice wood Ian. A beautiful coffee table [or anything else for that matter] it will make. :)

Karl

[Karl Laustrup]

BTW, what's the make and model of your SUV lumber hauler? It looks vaguely familiar, but they all do to a certain extent.
- Vaughn

Hey Vaughn, the reason you don't really recognize that SUV is they messed up and put the steering wheel on the wrong side. ;) ;) :D

Karl

[Jim Becker]

That's really pretty stuff, Ian! (Reference the fourth picture....the one with the smile)

[Bob Oehler]

Real nice wood
If I give you my address could you mail me a few hundred B/F via teh mail system. :p

I have never worked cypress before but I know it is a very beutiful wood when finished.

Keep us posted in a few years on the table that you build, should have a nice top

Take care
Bob Oehler

[Ian Abraham]

Thanks Guys

The 'Ute' is a Nissan Terrano, you can buy all sorts of Japanese 4WDs cheap second hand from Japan here. Only a 2.7l turbo diesel, so it noticed it had that load of wood on the back when we got to a hill.

The farm is my ex partners place, we are still good friends, even though I dont live there any more I can still cut trees (and help fix water pipes and fences :rolleyes: ) I have some more pictures from around the farm I can dig up and post later.

Right.. better go and stack this wood up for drying :cool:

Ian

[john mclane]

Looks like you did work up some sweat cutting that "sweet" looking wood. Nice countryside. Is that your place on the hill in the background?

[Tom Andersen]

Did you quartersaw it?

[Ian Abraham]

Looks like you did work up some sweat cutting that "sweet" looking wood. Nice countryside. Is that your place on the hill in the background?

Yeah, was about 30 deg C and HUMID :cool: . No, not my house in the background, ex partners new house. But the inside (kitchen / office ) is trimmed with a lot mac timber we sawed about 18 months ago.


Did you quartersaw it?
Got a few boards with quartersawn grain from the best part of the log, but other parts had a lot of knots. Better to flat saw in that case or you get spike knots running right across the face of the boards. A small tight knot in a face is a 'feature', a spike knot across a board is a 'defect'
Softwoods like cypress dont show the ray pattern that some hardwoods do, and are pretty stable when flatsawn anyway. Unless a log is perfect it's better to flat saw them.

I've attached some scenery pics too.
First is from the back of the farm looking out East to Mt Ruapehu (about 60 miles away) 2nd shot is looking west at Mt Egmont and the 3rd shot is from friends house. These are in winter obvioulsy (July) not that much snow there now :cool:

Cheers

Ian