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May 5, 2012

Opalyn:

While a living forest produces trees that need to be harvested due to storm damage or insect infestation, many of those trees end up as logs for our Wood-Mizer portable Saw Mill creating useful lumber.


Our Wood-Mizer creating lumber from a cant

After removing the bark, the log is converted into a square cant which creates four "slabs". These slabs tend to pile up ‒ just like dishes ‒ until someone gets around to it. Since the wood bins for one of our community spaces are almost empty I got out "a round tuit" and got started on the dishes.


A pile of slabs waiting to be converted into kindling.
A few minutes of sorting and the stack is ready for the chain saw to cut the slabs to length.


a neat stack of slabs

Just a few cuts and the pile fits nicely into the wheel barrow to get moved into the storage bins.


kindling cut to length

Our main wood shed stores wood for the dining hall but other areas store wood in these handy bins which keep the rain off and the wood off the ground preventing decomposition.


stacked to dry over our warm summer months
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