Guess what I'm doing this weekend?

[HSV]

Going on my own custom milling job! Woohoo!! 

My boyfriend's family own some farm land on the East Coast of NZ's North Island right next to this place and there are many Native Matai trees buried in the swamps on this land.  Being Dairy Farmers, their main focus is the cows of course, but since I've been working with Petersons, I've got a passion for wood, so they are allowing the use of their machinery to salvage some of these logs.   

Some of the trees are submerged so deep in the swamp, it is thought they have been there since the Taupo Volcanic Eruption over 1800 years ago!

The permits were granted yesterday, so this weekend I am off to do my first 'on site' milling job... yay!  I also have the pleasure of testing a new motor option for our mills   

We're gonna be cutting a lot of 20x10" beams, as well as little 5x3/4" boards (a lot of people use Matai for floorboards) as well as slabs where we can and blocks for woodturners.   

Here are some pics of the trees - more pics to come next week.

  

[Jeff]

A most excellent adventure!    Wish I had a teleporter.

[Jeff]

Ya know, it seems a little odd to go dig up logs rather then to go cut them down.

[metalspinner]

That's awsome.  How did you find the logs buried so deep?  Do you plan to hose them down to get some of the muck off?

[HSV]

   yeah, it would be cool if you guys could come see.  But I will be taking lots of pictures... actually, I won't be, I wanna cut... I'll get the boys to get the photos. 

I guessed you would think that digging them up was a bit backwards   

It is very very difficult in New Zealand to get permission to 'cut down' our native trees, however a permit is easily granted for salvaging swamp logs.  The funny thing is, if we wanted to chainsaw the logs into firewood, or set them on fire on the farm, we wouldn't have to do a thing but light the match...    I would think they would be far happier seeing the logs turned into something that could allow them to be around for many more years, rather than going up in a puff of smoke.  I guess that's why they'd never let me run for Government - I'm too logical 

We guessed the logs were under there because of the history of the land.  Some of them weren't buried deeply at all, and a lot of them were covered over by other logs so we tried our luck.  We know of some that are quite a few metres under ground, but we will wait and see... we may be able to leave those under there for another few years if we get enough timber out of the stuff that's easily accessible.

And yep, we should be able to clean them up pretty well before we get to cutting. 

Underneath this pile we found about 4 pretty decent sized logs in good condition.
 

Here's a gem... there will be no milling for this one, we'll leave it where it lies. 
 

The largest diameter we've found so far is about 5' and the longest log will be around 30'.  We've found 10 logs in total.  This is after only a few hours looking, and a few hours poking around with the digger.  We've only covered two swamps in three paddocks!  The farm is about 800ha!!

[Don K]

I would love to be there for that. Get some good closeups of the grain patterns for us.

Don

[Sprucegum]

Talk about digging for buried treasure! 

[thecfarm]

Kinda like jim king posts.You can make all the charcoal you want,but start to get something out of the logs,can't do that.I will be following this.Very interesting.

[Ianab]

Yup.. thats buried treasure alright

My house was built in the 60s when matai was still readily available and probably the cheapest material available. Now it's proably worth more than what I paid for the whole house to replace it

This is the sort of flooring that HSV is thinking of, very valuable to anyone do restoration or addition to an older house 

 

Matai is a softwood, but one of the harder ones.


As a side note.
If they were buried in the Taupo eruption thats a significant event in itself. There is a 2 ft thick layer of ash here, 60 miles away, from that eruption... and we are UPWIND  Dont bother looking for Mt Taupo..  it's not a mountain... it's a lake.

The AD 186 eruption at Taupo is considered to be the most violent and explosive known. About 9 cubic km of pumice was erupted and eruption column heights reached 45-50 km (about twice the height of Vesuvius 79 AD). Ash was distributed over an extremely large area. 50 km downwind the deposit is 1 m thick. At 100 km it is more than 25 cm thick and pumice clasts are up to 3 cm in diameter (compared to 1 cm for Vesuvius 79 AD). Walker (1980) described the eruption as ultraplinian.

Thats 9 cubic kilometers of pumice / ash !!!!

Cheers

Ian

[HSV]

Hey all 

I'm back!

What a blast!  I have a renewed respect for all you sawmillers out there, my body aches!!! 

We left home at 6am Saturday morning, drove about 2 hours to the farm and 5 minutes through a slippery track to get to our milling site.  We didn't get home until 8.30pm Sunday night!

After we got there, we set the mill up, filled the tank, checked the oil, water and blade screws, and got our first log away from the edge of the swamp and put it in place.  I tell ya, it was real easy with our JCB (loadalls ROCK!).



The loadall was invaluable.



I've had a bit of experience milling, but until now, not this much!  I milled full on for two days.  The guys had to tail out for me because I had trouble trying to lift the boards I was cutting!  We cut 5x3/4" for floorboards, got one huge slab (flipped the log over when we got down near halfway, levelled it out and cut dimensional till we were left with a slab 4" thick!), cut a bunch of 4x6 for a guy, did a 20x10" beam, and a couple of 10x10"s.  I recon we did really well, we took our time with deciding what we could get from the logs, and didn't have too much waste.  What little waste we did have, we've stacked up for firewood, and the sawdust is going in the calf shed.



Look what I made 



Although the sun was setting on the second day... I wasn't done yet.



It was really good fun.  Although it was hard work, I really love doing jobs where I can see the result of my efforts... milling is a perfect example.  Muddy, smelly, swampy logs being turned into perfect useable lumber.  Some of the logs we got up were a little rotton toward the middle and a couple had cracks through them, but we took our time, and positioned the cracks so that we could get some decent pieces out from between them. 

This mill took the 10" cuts with ease, and I only had to sharpen the blade once, teeth all in tact. The new motor option I was testing was a 23hp Diesel.  How does under 1/2 a gallon an hour sound?  Pretty good huh?  If it was up to me, I'd say the Diesel is good to go right now, but I think Petersons wants to complete their test phase first. 

Problems I encountered:

*As an amateur, I didn't set my milling site up very well.  I was fussy with the mill setup, but I didn't think enough about how I was going to stack my timber and move it etc... there was a bit of double handling done, but I know for next time.

*Double cutting really IS easy, but I forgot to wedge as I was cutting in from the right hand side, and the slab proved too heavy for the blade and she slowed right down.  I realised straight away what I had done, but it gave me a fright when the blade jumped a little!  The slab still came off real clean (pic above).

*On a real windy day, it pays to use your track brake when you've sat down for lunch!  My heart nearly jumped out of my chest when I saw Petersons mill rollin' down the tracks all on it's own!  My job flashed before my eyes!  It was just that once that I forgot... but I guarantee, I never forgot again! 

So that's it, my weekend is over, my arms are regaining movement and everytime I hear the mill start up outside I want to escape my computer chair and go give them a hand! 

[Don K]

Sounds like you had a blast. I would think that next time you make it back to Moultrie that we will get to see you saw some wood. Now you truly have been bitten by the sawdust bug.

Don

[HSV]

Hi everyone!

I wanted to show you the first thing we've done with our swamp Matai.

It was my birthday recently, and for it, my boyfriend Robert made a jewelery cabinet.

Robert isn't a cabinet maker, he's a farmer, but for a first attempt, he's done himself proud, it's magnificent.

 



Measuring 23" tall, 21" wide and 9" deep, it's a perfect size for all my treasures :-)
 




Robert designed the cabinet for functionality. Four pillars on the top for bracelets, four more inside horizontally to hang necklaces, three large pots cut into the bottom for rings etc, and stainless mesh-like plates on the doors to hang earrings. With live edging top and bottom, the cabinet is stunning.

The figure 8s (vertical Infinity sign) represent something very important to me so Robert cut the figures into the door.

What do you think?

[beenthere]

Look very good, and most important of all...you are happy.

Thanks for showing it to us. 

Those farmers can do some of their best work with their hands.

[Toolman]

That is real pretty wood. how much per b/ft does that sell for?

[Sprucegum]

  I like the design/functionality and it looks nice too 

[HSV]

Hi there,

Not sure how much per b/f it is, but regular Matai is about $120 per m2 if that helps?

Thanks for the good comments everyone