Chick of the trade

Last year we had a demo day at our Louisiana friend's shop in Kinder, LA.  While there, we demonstrated both the M7 sawmill and the LAKS 330 Frame Saw.  We put a 20 inch Cypress log on the M7 and during the show, Ben sawed out several 4X6" cants.  We then took those over to the LAKS and we put them through the frame saw and we watched as the LAKS cut precision 1 X 4 boards out of this fresh cypress.  At the end of the show, I was able to take a few of the resulting boards home with me.

How Much Does a Log Weigh?

I recently had a call from a customer who was wondering how much logs weigh, especially since the lifting weight for the M7 sawmill is 1100 lbs.  So, what size log can you lift on the M7?  I went down to the local log yard, got a chainsaw, and commenced to cutting logs to length and putting them on the scale with a forklift to find out how much logs weigh.  Not really!!! It is way too hot for that here.  But, I did do some research, and developed a spreadsheet based on what I found to calculate log weights for standard length logs.

Wiring the Shop - Power ON

I called my engineer buddy at the power company and left a message I had it ready to go.  I didn't hear from him for a day and called again.  Later that afternoon I went up to the shop and noticed the power was hooked up.  I didn't see the truck, but they had come and gone, leaving me with a working meter.  Nothing had exploded or was buzzing loudly.  I was ready to hook up my lights on the inside and begin to power up my machines.  

Wiring the Shop - Installing the Electrical Meter Box and Panel Boxes

I decided to hang the meter base and electrical panel boxes on a product that commercial electricians use in most of their installations - Unistrut.  This is a great product and allows you to hang boxes almost anywhere on a very sturdy base.  Unistrut is made of galvanized

 steel and has holes in it so you can anchor it easily and with what is called "spring nuts", you can easily attached electrical boxes or anything else to it.  

Getting Electricity To The Shop

As you can see in this photo, the power pole with the

transformer is in the right place to bring electricity past the big oak tree and to the end of my shop.  I wa standing at the end of the shop where I want to bring electicity into the building when I took the picture.  The power company agreed this would be fine and they would not have to do any pruning of the oak tree.  

Old Shop - New Tenant - New Electrical Wiring

New Cypress Mantel

Solid Cypress Mantel

Here's a mantel I just made from some 3" cypress lumber I happened to have on hand.  A friend approached me about making him a mantel for his new camphouse in the Mississippi delta and I found this material that was perfect for a mantel.  It was just long enough to make the corbels to support the mantel top out of as well.  So all I had to do was cut the corbels off and then bandsaw them to the shape you see in the picture.  I sanded it out with a belt sander and an orbital sander and it turned out nicely!

Dog Gone

Guilty DogDoes this dog look guilty?  We caught him slipping away with a big juicy peach the other day!  It reminded me of when another dog of mine grabbed some food and made away with it.  

Buffalo Log Roundup

Untangling the logs

Logosol Cajun Demo Day

We recently went on the road with the Logosol Demo Day - all the way down to Kinder, Louisiana.   This is the heart of Cajun country, where the crawfish farming industry was born, and long leaf pine and cypress grow in abundance.  Rusty Savant, who was our first US PH360 owner, invited us down to his place to show off some Logosol equipment and have fun doing it.  Rusty said to us when we planned it, "I'm like a kid waiting for Christmas!"  He was quick to begin planning for this big event.