Sometimes Laziness Prevails

Old pic, but the only one I have of the mill

I turned the cows out to pasture this morning. It’s a bit earlier than ideal – the grass could use a few more days of growth before subjecting it to the insatiable appetites of our cloven-hooved beasts. For a brief moment I weighed this truth against the knowledge that if I didn’t turn them out, I’d have to retrieve one of our two remaining unwrapped round bales from the haymow of Melvin’s barn, necessitating a run down the road on the tractor. At the time of my calculating, it was 50 and raining and already I was a bit chilled due to underdressing for morning chores.

So you see: Sometimes laziness prevails.

A couple folks asked about our sawmill, so I thought I’d riff on that for a few minutes before suiting up and heading back outside to actually use the darn thing. We got our mill a few years back, inheriting it from a dear friend who died unexpectedly. We previously considered purchasing a mill, but as anyone who’s actually priced them knows, they are not cheap. New, you’d be looking at about $8k to get something that has some serious function; there are less expensive mills on the market, but if you’re sawing any quantity of lumber, they’re likely to disappoint. (By-the-by, I have no experience with the chainsaw-powered Alaskan mills, but if you’re on a budget, they might be a good option).

Anyway. The mill we inherited is a SMG, which is made up ta Quebec. It’s a basic push bandsaw mill, which means that a) I have to push it down the length of the log (fancier mills run on hydraulics) and b) it cuts with a bandsaw blade. I can cut logs up to a bit more than 17-feet long and 30-inches in diameter, which is about as big a log as I can safely handle. Bigger just gets too heavy and generally unwieldy for a feeb like myself.

So, here’s how it works: I drop the log on the mill tracks and make the first cut. Then, using my trusty cant dog, I flip it 90-degrees and make another cut. Do that twice more, and I have what’s known as a “cant,” which is simple a squared-off log that’s ready to be cut into dimensional lumber. Once I’ve got my cant, I take measurements and figure out the thriftiest way to reduce it into useable lumber in the proper dimensions.

Depending on quality of my logs, sawing lumber is either incredibly productive or an exercise in frustration. I’ve got enough experience by now to know that there’s a real sweet spot for the log size – anything smaller than about 10” in diameter means a lot of handling for relatively little material, while anything bigger than about 24” in diameter means a lot of struggling to maneuver. Species matters, too: I love me some good balsam fir, which cuts like butter. Spruce, on the other hand, has a wicked tight grain, which means I’ve gotta go real slow with the mill, or the blade will dive and I’ll end up with “wavy” edges. Hemlock is just hemlock: Cuts easy enough, but heavy as all tarnation and not really the best stuff to build with, as it’s prone to twisting and cracking. Pine’s not bad; we just don’t have much of it.

On a good day, I can saw 1,000 board feet working alone (this assumes Penny hasn’t made a fresh batch of cookies or doughnuts, events that necessitate frequent “rest” breaks and thus put a real dent in productivity). ‘Round these parts, that’s about $600 worth of rough cut lumber, though of course the actual sawing is only part of the equation, because of course I had to drop the trees and get them to the mill in the first place. Roughly, I’d say I’m earning somewhere ‘round $35 – $40/hour to saw our lumber, which sounds real good until you account for depreciation of machinery and the associated hazards, both of which are not inconsequential.

Still, there’s one huge benefit to sawing our own lumber, beyond the obvious cost savings: I can saw pretty much anything I need, whenever I need it, saving me the time and hassle of driving down to the local mill for, say, a half-dozen 2 x 6’s. Assuming I have the raw materials on hand, I can probably saw a half-dozen 2 x 6’s faster than I can drive to purchase them. Actually, I can probably saw a couple dozen 2 x 6’s faster than I can drive to purchase them.

So there’s that. And there’s also the fact that sawing is some of the most rewarding work I do around here. If you’ve been hanging ‘round these parts for any length of time, you know I get a wicked kick out of transforming raw materials into the building blocks of my family’s well being, and in this regard, our sawmill has few equals. For that reason alone, if you have the means and inclination (and a woodlot… a woodlot really helps!), I’d highly recommend one.

If any of you have specific questions, I’ll do my best to answer them in the comments.