Day 688 - Tiny Sawmill Mod with HUGE Impact

PPO3 is supported by Timber King sawmills. For more information on my 1220 CRZ mill or one of many Foley hydraulic options, go to TimberKing.com. Took several days off and it felt good. And by taking days off, I mean not recording with the video. That to me is taking days off. When I put the camera down, I'm not working. I'm still doing everything around the property because that's not work to me. That's just living life. You know what I'm saying? Still cutting stuff down, sawing stuff up, working in the shop. That's not work to me, which that's a wonderful position to be in. That is, that's just living life. Work is this, the camera. That's what work is. So I took some work time, took time off of work and got a bunch of stuff done. A lot of stuff done. Here in the shop, I can actually build something now because the shop is nice and clean. Still got to put some tables and chairs away real fast. We had cookout this weekend with a bunch of friends and that was a lot of fun. But I've been working on a couple things in here. This was my sawmill stuff that I'll show you in just a second outside. This is all the stuff for the sawmill stuff. Had to make some brackets for those display things for somebody else. I got the doors installed in the bathroom finally. So we have some really nice privacy finally in the bathroom. Let's go out this door and we see, we don't see actually, we don't see the camper. Where'd the camper go? Where did the camper go? We sold the camper, thankfully. Got a little bit more money than my absolute bottom dollar, so that was good. We stayed in that camper for 22 months and I'm glad those days are behind us just because we got more free room to roam in the shop and everything's more convenient in there. But yeah, the camper's gone, as you can tell. Cleaned up a little bit outside over here. These beams right here. Let me show you these beams. I made a video shortly after getting the sawmill and I don't remember what day it was, but it was titled Beam Me Down, Scotty, and I made these beams. They're about 12 inches by 5 inches thick, something like that. Anyway, these are well seasoned, we'll say. They're thick material, so they're not like completely dry, but they're plenty dry enough to build a workbench out of, if you know what I'm saying. These are both 12 feet long, I think. Yeah, these are the 12 footers and the two on bottom I think would be enough to make, for sure, a workbench top and then that post right there, six by six post, and I got another six by six over there that's been out cut for a long time. Both of those would be good for the base. Nothing's wrong with my workbench. I love my workbench. It's a fantastic workbench. I just want another one. Keep getting it filthy and dirty, bad dirty, by using chainsaws on it, working on chainsaws on top of my workbench. So I want to make another workbench to dedicate to hand tool woodworking, or actually woodworking in the shop rather, and then just use my workbench because it is all beat up and dirty and grimy for, you know, just general around the property tasks. Those three pine trees that I took down previously, I took the time to get all of the the rest of the logs up here because that's what I need to cut up today. I need to get 40 one by eight by tens and those are all 10 foot logs. These fresh ones right here are 10 foot logs, so that's good. Oh man, sun just came out. My back just lit up. That's wonderful. You remember me talking about Mr. Jack. I jokingly said Mr. Jack is the gift that keeps on giving. Well, Jack came through once again. I think it's Jack's son's friend started a land clearing business and he is in the business of clearing land. He's not in the business of selling logs. So he had a couple trees to take down on a property two miles away from our house. So our house, I guess that is a house, right? Two miles away from here. He started a land clearing job that had one, two, three, four, five big trees to come down. And, you know, I have a bunch of cleanup work to do here on this property. I've got six trees that are down, bigger trees that are down on the property that I need to clean up, but I'm still not going to say no to free material, free lumber, free lumber, free logs, and free firewood, especially if it's in this condition right here. That pile is taller than I am and it's all red oak, a couple pieces of white oak, and some ash. So it's all hardwoods and in pretty good shape for me to just start sawing into log rounds and cutting them up as I need. And also this is one of those situations where I just let it sit for a year if I don't need it right now. So anyway, this is the saw, the one of the firewood piles. There's this much firewood still at the property that we're waiting until next weekend to get. And this is the extra logs that I got for the sawmill. So, some of them anyway. This one right here, this is a, is this white or red oak? This is a red oak and it's got a beautiful, well I say beautiful, I haven't seen the inside obviously, but I think this is going to be a nice beautiful crotch section right here. So that's going to be a nice sawmill log. This is a nice sawmill log, red oak. There's an ash right there. There's a dog right there. There's a red oak right there. More ash, more ash. And then those three over there on this end, these are probably just firewood, not sawmill logs, but I stacked them up here anyway. So more sawmill logs. Can't say no to that, even if they do just sit here for a little while. I got to clean off the ends and then I've got some anchor seal on the way. I got to, I'm not used to keeping anchor seal on hand, so I got to start keeping anchor seal. What's up Gracie? Why, why are you twisting your head? Do you think I have something in my hand? I don't. Yeah? Where is it? Are you excited for nothing? For nothing? Anyway, that's really cool. But wait, there's more. I haven't gotten them off the trailer yet because they're kind of large. Once again, this is a red oak log and a white oak log. He took a white oak log down on one of my trips right when I backed into the driveway, popped out of the truck and took this particular video. So yeah, red oak, white oak. A quick little comparison here. Obviously the end grain looks a little bit more red on the red oak log than on the white oak log. The bark here on this red oak is pretty darn gnarly. You can see how deep and thick these scales are. Alligator scales, they're pretty deep and pronounced. Red oak. White oak over here, not as deep or pronounced, although still scaly like a white oak. Oh man, this one's covered in rocks. I'm going to have to pressure wash this one. Anywho, got a couple more big logs to cut up. I got to start getting through some of these hardwoods and get away from pine for a little bit, which is in the card. So I just have to, anyway, anyway. So these two big logs, there's two more big ones right here and then about five or six medium sized ones. So maybe three quarters to a half diameter on that. I haven't put a tape measure on that to see what size they are just yet, but that's a seven foot wide trailer. So, so there's that. Now I did not record any of those log retrievals because this was a time is money situation. The guy that I'm getting these logs from, he was actively clearing and I didn't want to get in his way. So I just went and cut up and got what I could get. Speaking of cut up, let me show you what I got on the sawmill. So my buddy Nathan had a really big walnut tree fall over in the ice storm and he brought a couple branches over, nothing major. I went over there and I helped him limb it up. Actually, I think I have a cell phone video of just starting it. So check out that video real quick. Over here, my buddy Nathan's doing a little bit of storm cleanup and he had this black walnut tree fall and we're going to try and get as much of it as we can for lumber and whatnot. But there's all kinds of small, small limbs and whatnot that'll be good for, you know, running through the bandsaw inside the shop, turn that into some, some lumber. There's a couple, a couple great sections that need to go on a sawmill. And then up here where it split, there's a decent amount of crotch material right here. So this, this section split right, right there, it started to split. So come up, say four or five inches right here, take this one off, then take that one off. That's a really good straight saw log. And then this lower section with the crotch, that'll be some nice material as well. And we also get the bonus of a bunch of poison ivy. So that's fun too. And briars. Yay for that. But trying to navigate this, the weight that's on this pole right here, trying to navigate that. So he's going to lift me up in the bucket and I can get all these to just drop straight down, drop straight down, straight down, straight down, all that's out of the way. Then we should be able to get this hanging one over there to drop straight down as well. That's the plan. This is one of the branches from that particular tree. And it kind of curves off. I split it right down the middle, as close as I could anyway. And what I want to do is right about here where the, the heartwood and sapwood meet right about there. Hey, Mr. Nollie, I'm recording, bud. Just, just let me know and I'll get it for you. Okay, bud. Your collar's loud. So I'm going to straight line it from right here. And then same thing over here, straight line it from right where that sapwood and heartwood meet, come all the way back to probably right here-ish. And I want to join these two together with some dominoes or something and turn this into like a, just a very quick and easy outdoor sitting bench. Something that's like very low effort, but it looks pretty cool because it's a, you know, a split log. That'll be pretty cool. That's from that walnut tree. And then these, I'm not sure if I'm going to turn these into cookies or just saw them up on the bandsaw inside for like small stuff, like box sides and whatnot. But anyway, got some walnut going on right there. And then I got something else going on right here. And that is an upgrade from Gary Adkins. If I'm not mistaken, that's his name. The gentleman on the Facebook user group for Timber King Sawmills. Now I will say I really don't like Facebook. It's just that mostly it's a time suck. But anyway, the Facebook groups for Timber King, I'm in one for the 6.7 liter for my truck, my F-250. Those have been very, very helpful. So I do like Facebook in that regard. Anyway, Gary makes these kits to sell. This is a wiper system for the lubrication on this saw. So as you can see, I've got a little buildup on these blades. And by a little, I mean a lot. And there's a couple different things you can do and recommendations I've read is use pine saw, a high concentration of pine saw and water and that'll get the pitch and resin off of the blades. And not so much. So I've upgraded to his system, which is this wiper system he manufactures or makes these. This is a wiper on the intake side or the front side of the blade as it goes into the wood. This is where your lubrication drip system normally is. Actually, this is the stock setup right here. This this little bolt, this little bracket goes on a bolt right here, and then you can adjust this piece to be on top of the blade and drip it right on top of the blade before it gets into the wood. This puts it on the other side. And it's actually like a some type of fibrous foam, not foam, fibrous type of a block right here that the lubrication drips onto. Now, I wanted to get one of those like segmented blue hoses that you can position wherever you want. It's got the orange tip, you know what I'm talking about. But I had some marble hose on hand and this I think will work just fine. So this is on the intake side of the blade. And as the blade exits, this wiper wipes the blade as well to keep this a little bit clean. I think I mounted it just a little bit too close to this wheel. So we'll see how this interacts with this wheel. Maybe it'll be beneficial and clean the wheel just a little bit. I don't know. But there's that those two pieces. And he recommends picking up this, which is a brass needle valve with a sight. So you can really dial in how much drip you have based upon what you're cutting, you know, pine, maybe drip a little bit more. But this drips down to there. And I'm not going to zip tie this just yet or figure out a bracket because that kind of is bent into place to hold it down right there. And it just comes out of this quarter inch gasoline hose or gas line hose onto the pad. So we'll see how this works. Let me go to the other side. And the other end of the system is like so. I've got the cherry flavored diesel in there, off-road diesel. I haven't even turned this on just yet. But it's going to come down through a three-eighths of an inch intake fuel filter. And that's going to go into a valve here, electronically controlled valve. This is from U.S. Solid. And this is a piece as well as that brass valve right there that he recommends picking these up as well. So we go into here. The filter is because these are sensitive to debris. So a quick little filter in line. This is powered by, I tied into the blade clutch. So if I turn this on and leave it on, which I'll just go ahead and do that now. I haven't done that yet. There we go. All right. I guess we need a little bit more drip and opening to fill that up. There's a little air trapped in there from that valve. Okay. Anyway, that is tied into the blade clutch. So that way when the engine's running, when I flip this on, it will open up and automatically have the lubricant flowing while the blade is going. Now I just turned that on for the first time. The key is on, obviously the engine's not running. So yeah, because I turned that on, the air can finally escape now. So now we're actually priming the filter and this will take a few minutes for it to all get through there. And I want to leave that running right now so that that block of that foam block or that fiber block gets saturated before I switch out to a new blade. So I do have to switch out to a new blade, but I wanted to leave this one on here for reference, how nasty and gummed up this is. And because I use water and pine saw, it always gets real rusty right here because the last little drip typically sags right there as I take the tension off the blade. All right. I'm going to get this nice and saturated before I swap out the blade and start cutting. And to cut and cut and cut and cut, that is today's objective. I want to get a ready to go and then one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, seven over there to go. Who knows how many I'll get through, but I have got to clean up all my tools and my mess and get the sawmill prepared while this thing primes and then get rocking and rolling. Okay. This, this is awesome. Such precise control of the flow. That, that is awesome because this is the factory setup. This little inline valve and it's tough and it's not, not precise we'll say. That's, that's pretty darn cool. All right. We have reached saturation so I can turn that off. Now the valve is off. Whatever's left in the line will continue to drip out, but that's one of the reasons why I switched over from three eighths over there to quarter inch here so that way I don't have a large volume in here before the valve because it is off or before, yeah, before the needle valve because the, the electric valve is off. So that means anything that's left in here may or may not drip out of the system, but we've reached saturation down here. I don't know if I articulated this that well or not, but this is a wiper system. So as the blade is up here against the roller, this will continuously wipe clean the blade. And I've seen Gary's blades as after he takes them off and they look almost cleaner off than they did before he put them on. Sun is starting to set on such a beautiful, such a beautiful day. Speaking of beautiful, this lumber, when it doesn't have a bunch of beetle holes in it, is pretty darn beautiful. Each row is five boards. Each board is eight inches wide. This is a ten and a half foot long bunk. That was pretty good. I got three of those logs left, so that means I processed six logs. Now, a couple things. First, I don't know why I haven't been doing this. Just park the fork, the grapple right here and just put those off and don't even have to worry about the intermediate step right there. When I go to get another log, get rid of the slabs. That's pretty darn cool. You know what else is pretty darn cool? Check this blade out. Look how clean that is. Look how clean that is. That's incredible. That is so incredible. Six logs and it's clean. It is shiny clean. See the reflection in the thing? Man, shiny clean. So I ended up having to zip tie this hose here. Of course, the best solution is one of those segmented, the blue segmented hose with the orange tip that you can position exactly where you want it to drip. Although, I mean that's getting the job done quite well. That's pretty darn cool. Did I take, yeah, I took the tension off. This needle drip valve with the sight right there, that's pretty cool too. Easily, easily dial it in. Of course, you can't even tell that we drank any of the cherry Kool-Aid there. So that's pretty cool. No leaks in the system. That's pretty cool. No having to turn this on or off. That's pretty cool. I tell you what, it's pretty cool. Still have a bunch of these boards left over. Every one of these is eight inches wide. This stack over here actually, yeah, this stack over here has a little bit of wane on just one side of every one of these boards. So I got a straight line rip those, but I may just put those back on there for stickers because our sticker stack is getting small. Small stack of stickers that were super sweetly stacked or something like that. There was some type of saying I used to say about that. What else? I think that's actually it for today. I had to stop because I felt like I was about to get sunburned, especially on my neck.