Bandsaw mill up and running

Once I got the track put together it was time to set the sawmill in place with my dad’s Case 580C combination front end loader back hoe. The 580 is an indispensable piece of machinery for working around the homestead.

The first boards made with the bandsaw. Cut from a spruce tree we needed to take down by our house.

Nothing goes to waste, we use the better slabs for various projects and for sale, the unusable ones are burned in the outdoor wood boiler for heating our house and the saw dust is used for animal bedding.

1″x10″ boards cut from an old buggy pine log good for any rustic looking project.

This year (2023) we rebuilt the ends on the large hoop style green house where we keep all our poultry and I made these rustic barn doors with the bug eaten pine logs. I charred the wood to help preserve the doors. I learned a while back that the Japanese burn wood as a natural preservative. For years I’ve been charring fence posts before putting the in the ground. I first learned about charring fence posts from author Mike Oehler’s “The Fifty Dollar Underground House Book”. https://www.amazon.com/Fifty-Dollar-Underground-House-Book/dp/0442273118

We can attest to charring being good for wood preservation because on our back 40 acres there are still charred stumps from a wild fire that went through in the 1940’s. 

These were the back doors, next year we will install hardware to make them into sliding doors.

Most recently I got the front doors built and installed with sliding door hardware so that we can go inside the coop daily to tend the birds and collect the eggs. 

These doors turned out nice and we are very pleased with our first ever sliding barn doors on the homestead. I really like sliding barn/shed doors and plan to make some for the sawmill building as well.

Each of these doors are 3.5 feet wide making for a total of a 7 foot span with the two doors and they are 8 feet tall. The front and back doors were constructed the same.

Once we get the sawmill building up we plan to build a wood shop in it and hope to eventually start building one of a kind rustic doors for sale, which has been a dream of mine for many years. When when we were still in the garbage business I spent a lot of time day dreaming about the day when I would start making doors. These were good practice doors and I have built a number of them over the years, the 3 exterior doors at the cabin, a pantry door in our house and various barn doors around the place, it’s something I rather enjoy.

As far as running the saw mill so far it is exactly what I imagined it was going to be like, it’s very enjoyable work. Taking a tree and turning it into something useful is a very satisfying thing to me.

Our previous blog post tells about the lead up to us getting the sawmill. https://wordpress.com/post/logcabinhomestead.wordpress.com/207

Until Next Time

https://logcabinhomestead.com/

https://www.vrbo.com/338940

https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100064706347381

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCrsobbFCr9QE88TLcwEFVPA