just buzzing like a bee, trying to move along

Haven’t Wrote for Awhile 

 chainsaw mill

    Part of my problem was access to the internet due to a Wi-Fi device that wouldn’t charge. In fact I now have 3 of the same devices having just bought another one off eBay.  The last one is ok but the previous 2 had issues with charging and receiving signals. I imagine I could probably go to another carrier but my service when it is up and running is more than sufficient to do what I want on the internet, it is fast and somewhat reliable.

    Sometimes when I am silent it isn’t because I have nothing to say, instead it may be a signal that I am involved in another project I feel is more important than writing. Lately I have been working on a couple of projects to which I have alluded to in earlier blogs. One of those is excavating for the house addition. After completing the chimney and checking it out in our first cold spell of the season, the chimney seemed to work well. Now I need to get up to speed splitting and storing wood for the winter, since I have no idea how much I will have to use the wood burner to heat my house.

      Our gas supply, though working is unreliable and will continue to push us here on the farm toward conversion to other sources of fuel supply to heat water and the house. Our oil well which has been a source of free fuel with natural gas is now moving to the point it is uneconomical for the oil well company to continue to service it due to the depletion of the oil which is their main source of income. Days when we used to flare a flame 12 feet high that would light up the valley are gone forever. In fact I doubt if the state of Ohio allows gas and oil companies to flare unused gas and is ridiculous to do so considering the price of natural gas.

    I have also been working on piling loose hay to make compost for my berries and have had numerous setbacks including repairs to equipment in order to accomplish this. This last week I finally finished taking all the first cutting off of my fields I have available for hay, and  I have plans for doing some additional areas. This compost I will add to topsoil here on the farm to make a manufactured soil that will be better for plant production than what it was before.

    I am still looking at building a sawmill, and I am still studying my options including a design for a chainsaw mill I think has merits. Just recently I bought a 52 cc Chinese chainsaw specifically for that purpose. I consider them a throw away saw yet still I have no idea exactly how dependable the saw is till I use it. Right now, I have started it and ran it , but beyond that I have kept it back to use for the chainsaw mill. It sounds and acts like it has plenty of power, and I guess we will see. I also have a Stihl I can use for the mill also.

     The design of the sawmill is simple and should be able to built with a minimum of materials. They have the carriage which is the part the chainsaw rides on for sale on eBay for 285 dollars, lately I have been thinking about building myself for hopefully less. I really don’t care about using the mill for sawing dimension lumber except where I need four sides squared on a log. This sawmill should be able to do just that. I imagine you could still use the mill to saw out say 1x6 inch boards if you wanted to. But the problem with that is the size of the saw kerf or the thickness of the bar and chain. The amount of wood wasted sawing with a thick bar. But for beams or using it to saw logs for my log cabin where a minimum of cuts is needed to square up a log to make it look better, for this I think this sawmill design would be more than all a man would need to get the job done. Only the top part of my addition on my house will require sawn logs, so this will reduce my need for sawn lumber drastically. 

another view of same mill

     This fall I plan on starting the footer against the hillside and see how far along I can get before bad weather stops me. I also just recently bought some new carving tools which should help me improve the quality and speed with which I do my carvings. This will help me with both large and small carvings both. I still plan on planting trees and having some fun once in a while as I go along into the winter season. It is coming whether we want it to or not.