Kevin Koski

[#1]

Hi Everyone,

I am located here in NE Ohio, spitting distance from Pennsylvania in the foothills of the Appalachians.  My interests are on the "rough" end of the lumber business.  My blog will be all about the sawmill, dry kiln end of the lumber industry, and all of the interesting things we find at the sawmill, both good, like rare, highly figured lumber, to bad, like hardware (such as electric motor, fencing, bolts, etc) that we sometimes find in our logs.

Let's start this blog at the beginning.  Here is a log pile (below) that will mostly be turned into blocking for industry.  Blocking is nothing more than wood that's used to make pallets, or used in the steel industry to keep the rolls of steel from rolling off the trailers.  Blocking is made from inferior trees, and the undesireable hearts of the trees.

From here the logs go to the debarker (below).  Nothing wasted here as the bark is sold for mulch in the landscaping trade.  Sometimes they color it as well. This is the shack the debarker operator sits in. Luckily, it doesn't have to look pretty.

 

Here we are "skinning"  a hickory log (below).

Below, the hickory log fights back.  Hickory bark is stringy, and causes jams in the debarker head.  My Amish (no photos please, against my religion) friend had to walk out there to dejam.  When he was out there and had his arm in there good, I asked him if he wanted me to fire it up.  Apparently finger gestures are not against his religion!

Nothing to waste at the sawmill.  Just about everything is sold.  Here the hickory bark (below) is carried by a conveyor to a mulch pile.  Excellent money maker for the mill. They produce mountains of this stuff every month.

Onto the mill.  The mill was down for grading, and some maintenance when I was there, but they ran a curly ash billet through there for me (see picture below).  Blade looks like it is standing still in the picture, but it isn't.  Get your hand caught in there, and it will ruin the better part of your day. 

They call me when they have a curly maple log as I have them do some special cuts for me.  I have seen these two blades vibrate from the curly figure as a massive maple log is fed through.  The log goes through the blades about as fast as you can run. The floor shakes, windows vibrate, and you pray there isn't another electric motor, or rock embedded into the tree!

Below we go onto the edger.  Not much to show here as it is all under cover, but you can see the laser lines the operator uses to line the boards up with.  Fortunes are won, and lost here.  A good edger can read a board in a second, or two, and make a #1 common board into an FAS board by cutting out defects. It kinda operates like your tablesaw, but on steroids.  The blades can be moved side-to-side, so the operator can trim out as much, or as little, as he needs.  The "edgings" are ground up and sold as chips to the pulp mills, but not the ash!  More on that in another blog.

This curly ash billet, above, was about 3" thick x 6.5" wide x 30" long when he was done with it.  The boys at the mill save all of the strange, unusual, rare lumber for me!
 They cut over 550 bd ft of curly maple for me last week in 4/4, and 8/4.  Thanks guys.  Pizza party on me!

Below is the power plant.  I couldn't get a picture of the whole thing as it is in a small building. Not to mention it is about as loud as sitting front row at an Iron Maiden concert. The mill generates it's own electricity as it costs too much to buy it off the grid.  Over $50k for this little guy, and it drinks about a grand in diesel fuel every week.  I'll never complain about the cost to fill up my truck ever again!

Probably could power a small village.  It was producing 30,000 watts on standby. Over 360,000 watts on full power. You can hear it labor under massive logs! Check out the plate in the picture below.

Next time I will either post some Amish mill pictures of them resawing some quartersawn sycamore for me, or maybe a post about my end of the operation, which is with the dry kilns. I have a home made solar kiln, and a comercial dehumidification kiln as well. I will go over the basics of solar drying, and DH drying if that sounds interesting to you.  I would also like to write about the emerald ash borer, and the effect it is having on the industry. We can also talk lumber pricing, and what this downturn has done to the industry, or any suggestions you have.

I hope you enjoyed the tour of a real live, production, sawmill.  I had fun writing it.  Thanks for reading it!

Kevin Koski
www.curlymaplewood.com