I have a lot of dead and dying trees on my residential property, mostly pines. These were planted 70-80 years ago as Christmas trees but those that didn't sell were allowed to grow and they are reaching their end of life stage. I have cut down at least 40 trees in my 3.1 acre yard in the past twenty years and there are still quite a few to go. Luckily, there generally isn't a hurry, I take care of them as I have the time.
This weekend I cut down a double-trunked pine on the west side of my property. The tree is 38 inches in diameter at its base and I don't have a saw that can cut that easily so I chose to cut each of the two trunks separately. My 18 inch chain saw can handle that with no problem.
This tree had a bird house mounted to the trunk. I made that house from a length of a hollow log to which I added a roof and floor. Blue Birds liked it so I want to keep it. I cut the left side trunk first.
I needed this part of the tree to fall to the left so I notched the left side. Normally, the notch would be more triangular but sawdust was flying in my face and I couldn't see very well. So, I did a plunge cut to connect the top and bottom cuts. It worked just fine and the tree dropped exactly where I wanted it to fall.
Once the tree was on the ground I trimmed off all the branches and cut the trunk into pieces small enough that I could carry them to the burn pile.
The second trunk had a hard lean and I could only drop it in this direction. But again, it landed where I needed it to go.
I noticed that both trunks were solid logs even though the tree has been dead for a couple years. So I decided to mill some planks from them. At the same time I was burning the rest of the tree and melting scrap down to salvage lead.
I have a chain saw mill, the "Alaska Mill" type. I also have a 55cc saw with a 20 inch bar. That size engine is smaller than the generally recommended size but it works fine if you cut slow enough. The mill requires a smooth, flat surface so I use this homemade guide rail system to make the first cut. It works great for logs up to ten feet long.
Once the first slab is cut from the log I have to adjust the mill to the desired thickness and the mill then slides across the top of the now flat surface of the log. This goes much faster than the first cut. I then flipped the first slab over and recut it to get another plank from that.
I got three planks cut before I had to stop for the day. They are each 5/4 inches thick and ten to fourteen inches wide. I will use my circular saw to rip them to six or eight inch wide boards and then run them through my planned to get smooth finished one inch thick boards. These will be used to build a sliding barn door for my woodshed.
While I was burning the tree parts and milling the lumber, I was also salvaging lead from a bucket of scrap metal from a local garage. I have a large iron ladle that I can put about six pounds of lead scraps in and I set that over the hot coals of the burn pile. I was able to salvage these 44 ingots, each weighing roughly 1.5 pounds for a total of 65 pounds of clean lead. At current prices, that is a bit over $68 of recycled lead. I can sell this now or hold onto it as a barter item for the future. The lead was completely free and it is only a third of the scrap I currently have on hand.
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