Drat, Foiled Again

For the longest time I’ve had a hankerin’ to have a small mobile sawmill.  At first I did not get one because we were living in the suburbs of Mordor and a sawmill in the land of Orcs made no sense.  Then, when we bought Shangri-la in the hinterlands, the property sorta came with “a guy,” Tony, the best friend of the previous owner who, like the previous owner, was a skilled tradesman.

Tony had been a big city construction tradesman who relocated here decades ago and was accomplished at all kinds of activity ranging from small handyman projects to restoring and building complete houses and all points in between.  He did a lot of the renovation of our cabin, with high-quality work that was so inexpensive I could not afford to work on my own house!  I learned he could do this because so much of his small work, like ours, used leftover materials from the big projects, or — and here is the part pertinent to this tale — harvesting and milling his own materials.

Once again, there was no real reason for me to get a mobile sawmill because Tony had one and would saw material for me whenever I needed it.

A couple years ago Tony retired and moved and his warehouse of materials and machines was auctioned off.  In fact he gave me several truckloads of vintage wood.

I have done precious little harvesting of furniture grade wood from our own forest, and that which I did harvest was oak to be micro-processed for making Gragg chairs.  Then last year we cleared a building lot sized area adjacent to the log barn to clear up sunshine for one of Mrs. Barn’s gardens, and among the trees being felled were some decent sized walnuts.  Most of that was cut up for firewood or turning blanks or to become hand-sawn crotch veneers, but I left a few large-ish log sections just in case I could figure out a way to get them milled.

Out of the blue came a call from my friend Sam, a talented restoration carpenter who does work all over the larger region, to tell me he had bought a mobile sawmill to enhance his business capabilities.

Drat, foiled again.

Sam recently came to saw up the walnut logs with his new machine.  I guess I still won’t be getting a sawmill.