All right, how bout an update. It's been a while and the main reason is that I'm waiting and waiting for some decent weather to do the ballast pour. Oregon is just sopping wet with record rainfalls that are showing no sign of abating. Tomorrow has the best forecast for a long while so I'll keep a weather eye on the horizon and just maybe I'll be able to do it tomorrow.
As it was, today was lumber day. I went down to the mill to pick up the load of logs that they had taken for me a week or two ago.
Two cedar and two oak logs flitch sawn at 8/4". I am very happy with my mill- the entire job, including driving out with the self-loading truck, loading, and milling- cost me $280. It worked out to about 30 cents/ bd ft. Basically free as far as I'm concerned. A friend just bought some old growth WRC for $8/ bd ft. Lower quality "planking grade" stuff has been going for more than $2/ bd ft. Oak sells for something above $5 if I remember right, so I feel like I did pretty good.
In order to properly dry the fresh stuff I needed to move all the dried lumber that is left over from an ambitious few weeks with a wood mizer. We got to estimating and I think I've got about 6000 bd ft of home grown lumber, pretty evenly split between fir and cedar. Its not all boat quality but I darn well better be able to find enough that is.
I wanted to put the new wood where this wood was laying so I needed a way to store the old stuff elsewhere- preferably a way that did not ruin my careful air drying and made it easy to inspect each board as I wanted. Here is the contraption I came up with.
It is built of some old soft spruce masts that are left over from a restoration I did. I remember reading something about a rack like this a while back so that is where the inspiration came from.
After hours of heavy lifting...
Those boards are all 16 ft long and quite heavy. I alternated sides to create an air gap so that the boards will not gain too much moisture. The bottoms are resting on scrap to keep them out of the dirt.
Here are some shots of the freshly milled wood:
The cedar..
These are all 25 ft long and about 16" wide.
The oak....
The long ones are 18 ft long and the short ones are 8 ft long. All of this wood looks much smaller in pictures. The big oak planks took 4 guys to lift.
That's where I'm sitting now. With any luck I will get the ballast poured tomorrow and we can get back to the boat building. Then if you have the patience to hang out long enough, you just might see all this wood start to become boat shaped. Perhaps someday it will even float. That will be a good day.
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