Welcome Friend!
Today we are going to cut through this log here.
It's a little over four foot, which is more than the capacity of the chainsaw mill here,
so lets see how we can deal with that.
[Intro Music]
This is what remains of a massive black poplar
hardwood tree.
As you can see it's been waiting its turn for milling for quite some time.
It's been almost a year now.
This does mean the bark comes off really easily though.
It will be interesting to see what kind of spalting is inside, if any.
Now before we can get started on milling up the main log, there's this little beast here,
that’s kinda right in the way.
I half milled up this log about six mounts ago and it was right in the way of the main
trunk of the tree then.
Still, it does show the most obvious and easiest way to get round not having enough capacity
in the chainsaw mill.
And that is to do some inventive swingemejiggering, and just cut in a different direction.
It's certainly not the safest method of chainsaw milling and I probably wouldn't recommend it
But it did work (!) and I was tossing up whether or not to just turn this into firewood, and
I am glad I didn't in the end because it left some quite nice, useful little sized slabs.
It was also really nice to see that the poplar wasn't horribly rotten or anything like that.
Canvasing from my woody friends and you clever people on YouTube, there seems to be a big
divergence of views about poplars durability - some people saying it is really great, like
Oak, other people saying it will rot as readily as softwoods like pine.
This particular one seems like it might be somewhere in between those two extremes.
Spiritually speaking, this little lump of wood ended up being a nice lesson for me.
I approached it quite impatiently, just wanting to get on to the more exciting, big log and
I should have been more attentive to the signs: the slow cutting and the chain not really
pulling the saw along into the cut.
And you saw there the amount of steam coming off the chain.
I thought that was because the wood was just still really wet, but actually the chain was
exceptionally dull.
I'm usually the first to stop, even mid slab, and change the chain, but this was so small
I just wanted to plough on, which was a mistake!
The amount of fuel I used just on those few cuts verified that, and I really should have
changed it earlier!
You know that when you can see nicks with the naked eye that the chain really is in
a bad way!
On the plus side this gives me a chance to show you what I often evangelise about, which
is not having a clamp-on chainsaw mill, but rather a bolt-through one.
It's so much easier to change the chain, because the chain just slides out.
There is no need to un-clamp the mill at all.
I personally like to sharpen chains back at the workshop, not in the field, especially
with ones this long.
What I have found with chainsaw milling, is to get a good finish, the consistency of the
tooth angle and the length of the tooth and the height of the raker, is really crucial.
So hand filling, you can actually muck these up quite quickly, especially if you are doing
it in the field in in-ideal conditions.
I tend not to hand file more than four or five times between proper grindings.
Maybe that's just a reflection on my poor hand filling skill, but I have found I can
hand file standard cross cut chainsaws that aren't used for milling and get them cutting
sharp and quickly, very easily.
But chainsaw milling's a different game!
Let’s move on to this big log.
I have set it up with a bit of scaffolding tower.
That's firmly attached.
That's our ladder / guide.
Let’s get started!
As usual I like to start quite slowly, ease the chain in, before opening the throttle
fully.
Same deal when it comes to stopping to put wedges in.
I stop nice and slowly, start nice and slowly.
That way you don't get horrible groves in the boards.
It's just one nice continuous texture.
Similarly you don't really want to hammer the wedges in with any force, because that
forces the top-most board to shift, which is what you are guiding from, which will also
cause grooviness.
All right!
First one down and we just about snuck in there with the capacity of the mill.
It gets a lot wider as we go further down though.
The finish is pleasingly smooth: it's got a nice interesting central feature, there...
Give me your ideas!
What would you make from this - let me know in the comments.
I recon it would be delightful coffee table material.
Now I am going to cut the rest of the slabs three inches thick, and you can see here this
is how I adjust the DIY chainsaw mill height.
I just have gauge blocks that go down there and at both ends of the mill there are two
bolts that tighten the frame to the vertical rails.
[Music]
Just snuck in there on the second one.
The grain patterns are absolutely gorgeous.
For the next slab down I am definitely going to have to do something a bit different to
cut through the widest part of the log.
After the last debacle with the chain, I'd thought I'd check to see how much fuel we're
using and it's looking OK.
[MUSIC]
Ok that's It.
We have reached crunch point, there's no going any further.
It's totally wedged.
So at the moment my only plan is to undo this part of the mill, slide up that vertical rail,
and see if I can continue like that...
Along with larger capacity anyway, I'm guessing this may be another great benefit of the bolt
through style mills.
But let’s not get ahead of ourselves and see how this works.
So you can see straight away that the mill tends to wonder a little bit, pivoting round
on its mounting on the power head side of the guide bar.
That said, we have made it through!
And there is only a very small nib that we haven't cut.
Re-attaching the mill at the nose end I'm super encouraged to see the cut hasn't wavered
up of down really.
[Music]
So I am actually really surprised that inspecting
it I can barely tell where the mill was detached at the nose end there...
I was kind of expecting giant grooves and a really poor finish, but no!
I'm guessing it would be feasibly possible to do this technique with the whole length
of the log, but really I think it mainly works because most of the log is very well guided
and then it's only this end bit where, it's already kind of, found its direction, if you
like, where the nose is free floating.
The pivoting around of the mill in relation to the saw, when it's unattached, is somewhat
disconcerting!
It doesn't move much but you certainly can't push on the mill to encourage the cut.
I'm guessing some form of added bracket between the handle of the saw and the mill could be
a useful addition, in that regard?
So this is actually working much better than I thought it was going to, and I'm feeling
silly for putting this log off for so long now.
[MUSIC]
Nice!
That worked well!
Peace, Love, share subscribe, see you next time!