More Sawmilling

This is just a quick entry to narrate the few new pictures. What wasn't cut into beams was cut into 1-1/4 inch (or 5 quarter) boards that will be the roof under-layment on the house. They will be laid over the timber framed rafters. These boards will be seen from inside, so we will probably want to get them milled again before we use them, i.e., planed on one side and possibly shaped on the edges with lap joints. But that is a decision we don't have to make right away. You see a lot of off-cuts in a pile in the first picture, but most of that has already been cut into 1 inch square "stickers" for spacing the lumber in the stacks. There is still some waste that will go to the fire pit for campfires.

Green lumber takes about 1 year per inch to cure in a solar kiln. The first kiln we built worked well. The beams we stacked in November 2008 all look great, so we built another one for the 5/4 boards and we will be piling all the new beams on top of the others in the first kiln shortly. The fresh cut beams weigh an estimated 500 to 800 lbs depending on the dimensions and wood type. All but one of the beams is pine. There is one 8x12 beam cut out of a large oak. I am betting that one weighs at least 800 lbs. Now we have to start looking for some more logs to drag over here so we can start the process over. I think we have about half of what we need, so the search for more lumber is on. Most of the pine trees that went down last year from the wind events are already going to be full of pine bark beetles, so hopefully we can find some more oaks and poplars for the next round of cutting.

There are still a lot of unwanted trees laying around and we have started making some inquiries and scouting around. This recent progress has been rewarding. It is exciting to see all the hard work of getting logs here finally made into the wood products we will build with. We may not be able to make the entire house from discarded forest products, but we have already made a good start toward lowering the environmental footprint of the house. Recently, a friend of mine worked on the construction of a 3500 square foot house. The owners were able to occupy the new home in less than 4 months. The embodied energy of that home with all its industrial wood products and other modern chemically laced materials puts it in an entirely different energy class than our home of less than half it's size. Our timetable may be closer to 4 years than 4 months, but it is comforting to know our house is part of the solution and not part of the unsustainable building model we have adopted over the past 75 years.