Welcome to Strider Tree Gear.
Today, I'm talking a little bit a little bit about one of my hobbies.
Alaskan milling.
I get a lot of logs, a lot of castoff.
Sometimes they're really cool logs, a lot of a lot of grain and structure to them.
And so sometimes I'll take them home
and mill them up and make cool stuff out of them.
And you might enjoy it yourself.
I've got a cool product here.
The Granberg Alaskan mill
that I've been playing with the last couple of years and anyone
working in the trees who has access to this kind of raw material
can make some cool side hustle money or just to have some fun projects
by themselves. Playing around with an Alaskan Mill.
So I want to show you a little bit about that. Check it out.
So for the price of what is one nice slab,
you can actually buy the tools to cut slabs out of your own trees.
So as guys in the tree industry,
we should all have one of these in our back pocket.
And this one is made by Granberg There's a few other companies
that make them, but it's called an Alaskan mill.
And I think they call it that because in Alaska, you got to have a chainsaw.
And anyone who has a chainsaw can use it to
to mill some fairly straight and true slabs.
It doesn't leave a really nice surface finish.
It's a lot of touch up to make it something like furniture quality, but
you can at least cut some big old slabs out of some big logs.
And it functions fairly simply. It's just like this.
So what you get is this system that mounts to the bar of your chainsaw
is the 32 inch bar I've got on my 461.
And I wouldn't recommend doing big milling with any so much smaller.
If you're going to do a little log here or there, you can get away
with the size or two smaller, but you want to be on a big side with a lot of talk.
461, MS 660
or the husqvarna 572 or the 592 XP or bigger,
those are going to be good size for milling.
Even a Stihl 880 would be a good saw.
But the idea is simple.
So I've got this aluminum support that is parallel
the bar that maintains a constant gap
between the aluminum and the bar itself.
And so what I do is set up a rail on top of my log
and the rail rides on these aluminum supports,
and it maintains a consistent level as I bring the cuts across the log.
And so that cuts a relatively flat slab.
After that first cut is made, I pull off what's called the scab,
and then I can just slide this right across the top of the last cut.
And it does another nice parallel cut, so long as the teeth are nice and sharp
and you're not.
Your technique is good, but you can go through and cut several slabs off.
If I want to adjust the thickness of the slab, I tweak this setting right here.
I loosen these two knots up here and these two nuts up here,
and I can actually change the height difference between the railing
and the bar itself, and that adjusts the height.
One of the tricks and challenges I've had with this Alaskan
mill is the tendency for the bar to come on, for the bolts,
to loosen up with the vibrations, and for it to start wiggling it around.
And so one of the tricks I found and you can just barely see it in here,
but I clamped a small screw
just the top of a screw right down the middle of the bar.
So it's concentrating the clamping force of this attachment point
on the tip of the bar right down the middle, rather
than spreading it out over this area of this full rectangle.
And that makes a huge difference because this the chain needs to spin freely.
But this clamping force can actually pinch the tip, so much
so that it impedes the movement of the chain and really wears out your saw fast.
And so by clamping that one little piece in there
concentrates the force in that one central spot away from all the rivets.
And that keeps me from pinching the tip of the bar and lets this thing
spin nice and smooth.
While still not vibrating free.
So that's a little trick for you guys there.
I'll show you how this thing
kind of works over here on the rail
it's just a little 13 millimeter, which is the same socket
that you usually have on the smaller end of one of those combinations,
a combination of scrunchies or spanners that you come with your chainsaw.
Usually one of those two sizes of 13 mil,
which is what this is
All right.
So once those are loosened up a little bit,
I can adjust the height
of the saw parallel
so you can kind of see here how this railing
is going to keep a constant height between the bar and the rail.
And that lets me make a cut of flat plain off the top
of this relatively uneven log.
So you make your first cut bra right down the railing
and then you slide that off and then every other cut,
I can actually use the log itself as the railing.
And you don't need this this extra piece on here right now.
This piece I've got on here is is a specially made rail
that kind of mounts up to the log really easily.
It's just got some adjustments
that you tweak to set the height and then you pound in these little
these little attachment points that just dig into the log
and it makes the setup pretty easy.
But most guys I've seen doing this well literally just throw an old aluminum
ladder on the log, put a few screws in the side and the way they go.
And so that's a totally good option, too, if you just got an aluminum ladder
lying around.
It's going to be cheaper than this aluminum rail setup,
but it's just so much quicker for me to use.
That's what I use
So that's Alaskan milling.
It's a great way to use up some of the materials that come off the job.
It's a good little side hustle if you want to be creative and do something fun
and feel like you're recycling and reusing what would otherwise go to waste.
If you're a part time tree service or you're looking to try and start
a little part time tree service or maybe contract climbing business for yourself.
I've got a class it's a live webinar class that's going to be going on next month.
It's a three day thing called the Part Time Arborist Academy.
I'm going to go through all the basics of what it takes
to start a little part time tree service, and that's coming up in April.
And then stridertrees.com we've got lots of other resources for
you guys out there working in the trees, so check that out as well.
Hope you found this valuable, and I'll see you next time.