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Heavy snowfall over the weekend
The best reward after clearing snow from the driveway is a snack and a cup of coffee while sitting next to the wood stove.
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Firewood re-supply
Throughout the winter we re-supply the house firewood. When everything is working, it’s a smooth process. No heavy snow, no ice and a skidsteer that starts. Makes for easier work for sure.
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257B2 Skid steer undercarriage rebuild
This rebuild started with a simple replacement of the tracks. That is not a simple task either but upon taking the tracks off we discovered a few other issues that needed immediate attention.
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Sharpening Shed – the foundation
Time to make some more covered storage. There never seems to be enough space. The woodworking shop is becoming a bit too close for comfort for some of the work to be performed. It plan is to recycle some wharf timbers and then to mill some logs to put up the buildling.
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Larger Planer Means Bigger Projects
We have been on the lookout for a larger planer for the workshop. Our old one only takes boards up to 12 inches wide. We priced out planers that took 24 inch boards but they were beyond what we were willing to pay. Hate when that happens. Then the clouds parted, the angels sang, and one came up for sale in our area. Love when that happens.
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Bartering Skidsteer Hours for Firewood
Ever use the barter system? If not, you are missing out. Living in a small community people often barter for services. Case in point, we saw an ad for local firewood that sounded too good to pass up and after contacting the owner, turns out it was someone we knew. See, we have enough firewood for this coming winter but would really like to have a head start for next winter so we don’t have to scramble in the spring.
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Back to the Sawmill
Why does everything take so long to do? Or is that just us? The week long heat wave finally ended and with logs piling up waiting to be sawed, we headed out to try and make a small dent. First things first, we had to build another pallet. We used tamarack lumber for the job and to get that lumber, we had to saw tamarack logs on the mill. That meant half the morning was gone just to make the pallets, never mind the pile of logs we are trying to get sawed. But, first up was changing the blade on the sawmill.
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Hemlock Headaches
Just to get to this point of saw milling sometimes a lot of little things have to get done.
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Getting Out the Ash Logs
With one large ash tree cut and hauled to the road, we spent another afternoon doing the same with an even bigger ash tree. This one was located just down from the first. This time we decided to try a slightly different approach.
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Milling Up Spruce For Lumber
The other day Jim told me he talks to the trees!! It might be time to make him an appointment 😉 Probably only a concern if he thinks they answer. Before we could start milling the hemlock and pine logs we got a few weeks ago, we had to mill the spruce we got earlier in the year.