This is the order the work goes in. I should say plainly that no tree out of the swamp has been through it yet — the mill is not out there. What follows is the sequence, not a description of something already happening.
1. Find It and Write It Down
A GPS waypoint first, standing next to the tree: name, coordinate and timestamp written into one file before anything else exists. Then a tree number, an engraved tag on the trunk, and photographs with the tag in the frame so the picture authenticates itself.
2. Cut It Free
Every one of these came down with the root plate still attached, so the tree is still tied to the ground and nothing can be measured or moved until that changes. The order matters: de-limb first, because the limbs are what prop the tangle up and what cause the roll once it is free; chock as they come off; buck from the far end back toward the butt; and take the trunk off the plate last, so every cut before it is into something still anchored.
3. Get It Out
Nothing has driven in that swamp in two hundred years and nothing rolling will not sink, so the road gets built out of the waste limbs as I go. The log noses get sniped with the saw so they ride up instead of plowing, and the pull comes off a winch on firm ground with the pull point raised through a block. A 15-foot butt log at 36 inches is around three tons green, which is what decides how it gets bucked before it moves at all.
4. Wash It
Before it goes on the bed, not on it. Grit driven into the bark on the drag is what kills band blades, and a blade is cheaper to protect than to replace.
5. Open It
Primary breakdown — flitches first on anything with the girth, because that is the cut that shows you the inside while keeping the widest material still available. What the log turns out to be decides everything after this point, and it is the first moment anybody actually knows.
6. Saw It, and Leave It Rough
Slabs, boards, cants and turning stock, cut to what the log will support rather than to an order book. Everything leaves rough sawn with the thickness still in it. What comes off one whole tree is on the frugal milling page.
7. Sticker It and Wait
End sealed the day it is cut, stickered, and then dried — quickly down to about 30 per cent where that is risk-free, patiently after that.
8. The Post Closes It
The blog post for that tree starts where it lay and carries it through all of the above, and it is the record — everything else on this site refers back to it. Where there is footage it will be linked from there too.
Contact
Old Growth Mill
Axson, GA 31624
Email: [email protected]
Phone: (912) 310-0650
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