Hello everyone! Whew! It has been busy. We got a call from a friend that a farmer had 2 large oak trees fall. They fell across the fence that held his cattle. Our mission: Help clean-up the trees and get some nice slabbing wood in return. But don't let the cattle out. Especially the bull!
We got as many logs as we could from the 2 trees. It took about 3 hours with a couple of chainsaws and a friend with an excavator. The pasture is clear, the farmer has some firewood, and we have some amazing oak logs to slab and make projects with. The cows and bull were happy for the entertainment. We were happy that none got away. We are blessed to have opportunities like this and for friends that think of us when situations like this arise.
Isn't he a gorgeous bull though? He sure kept his attention on us, and I was not about to take my attention off of him.
We purchased a used 16k trailer and it came in handy for this job.
We sure would love an excavator like this one. It made this so much easier. Our skidsteer is great but not as maneuverable as an excavator for getting in tight spots and having the reach you need in a lot of situations where fallen trees are involved.
We also got our larger chainsaw in with a 42" bar to put on our Granberg mill. We never could have slabbed the larger of these logs without it. Some of them are too big even for our bandsaw mill. We had fun trying out the mill and taking a look at the grain on the inside of the larger oak logs. We also cut a huge white pine we had.
Once we got the slabs cut down a little, we used the bandsaw mill.
Here are a few videos of some of the cuts!
We are excited to get these slabs drying so we can make future projects with them. The softer woods, we can take in and have dried. The harder woods have to dry for about a year before they can go into a kiln. We eventually want to add a "solar" kiln to the side of the mill barn so that the sun can do some drying for us on some of our cuts. I don't think we will ever run out of things to do thank goodness!
Speaking of solar, that is another project Eddie got going for us! Take a look!
Thank you for taking the time to catch up with us! Here are some pictures of random happenings on the ranch! God bless! ETC Designs
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