One more non-knife video. Q&A about my sawmill.

Self Made Knives

Well-Known Member
I promise, the next video I post will be about knife making! I'm taking a knife forging class this weekend and have been given permission to video. Hopefully, I'll get some good content.

In the meantime, here's a followup vid about my homemade mill to answer a lot of questions I've received.

 
I'm a subscriber...me N the boys like watching...they're all good vids! I like the mobile hunting blind!...and the live action "shot"...lol!

A few weeks back I was looking for your etcher building video and couldn't find it? I do have troubles searching you tube sometimes...any way don't need it now was just wondering if you pulled it...
 
I'm a subscriber...me N the boys like watching...they're all good vids! I like the mobile hunting blind!...and the live action "shot"...lol!

A few weeks back I was looking for your etcher building video and couldn't find it? I do have troubles searching you tube sometimes...any way don't need it now was just wondering if you pulled it...

I made a knife etcher, but I don't think I videoed it. Actually, I think I made my etcher before I got into youtube. I did an acid etching experimenting video once.
 
Dude you and me are brothers from another time! My Dad never had fancy tools, except the ones he made. I never knew when I was a kid what it was to go to the store and buy something. Still today I enjoy fabricating things like that about as much as anything.
I lost a good friend and neighbor, a couple of years ago to Cancer from Agent Orange! He used to tell me if I see your garage door up I know I can come get an education on how MacGiver is building something!! I have watched the fancy sawmillls and they don't cut any better than the one you built.

A few years ago during one of the hurricanes we had a tornado come over and it twisted all the trees I had off. Some pines that were 2' or more in diameter! What a mess. A buddy come by and I was working trying to get the mess cleaned up and he asked about all the pines. Told him I would cut him a deal. You bring your tractor down here and w h e n I get done I will bring it home! You bring your other trailer by and when it is loaded I will call you to come get it!

The last load I sent out of here I had the trailer way overloaded. He pulls up and took a look at the trailer and laughed. I said, well you said last time I didn't send you home with a load. You want me to pull that top layer off. Naw old Betsy will pull it!

I got done with his tractor about a week later and carried it home on my trailer. When I got up to his place his tandom trailer I sent the logs home sit in his yard with only three wheels. I asked him WTH.
I don't know when I got home I only had three wheels. I told him, I told you I should have pulled that top layer. He laughs Naw the truck didn't have any problem pulling it, in fact I don't know when that fourth wheel left me. I have been looking up and down the ditches for it.

I will bet you its somewhere after the railroad tracks, I told him, cause if I know you, you never even slowed down!!
Yep I'll bet we would get along well!! Love the mill!!!
 
I've had people tell me I should have lived in the 1800s, I agree, I think it was a better world then for the most part, unfortunately with the medical knowledge back then I would have been dead at 15. I surely wouldn't have made it to my age today. of course....it could be the water.
 
Steve, I agree with you 100%, folks can talk about how great it was in those "old years", but they didn't live it. I remember Mama picking sacks of flour based on the printed pattern on the cloth sack because it was what she wanted to make clothes from. Feed sacks were not as fine a fabric as flour sacks, but they worked also.

Now, How in the world did you get the overhead views? Camera mounted on a tall pole? Drone?

What can I say, I'm IMPRESSED!!!! not only with your sawmill and your abilities, but also your editing and camera work. That's not easy, but you sure make it look easy.

WOW!!! - that's all I can say. Makes me think of my Dad "making do" while growing up on the farm. We had a crusher (a machine that "crushed" (course grinding) corn, hay, etc to make cow feed. He took an old flathead engine from something, complete with transmission and clutch and connected to this "crusher" which was designed to run off a belt driven by a tractor. Dad was pretty good at stuff like that. Mom had more "school learning", she finished 7th grade, Dad didn't.

Like Cliff, I get to remembering and I can ramble on a long time with LOTS of old memories.

Ken H>
 
I made a knife etcher, but I don't think I videoed it. Actually, I think I made my etcher before I got into youtube. I did an acid etching experimenting video once.
Probably why I couldn't find it!! I was sure you had one...probably confusing with another video.
 
I think I suffer from an un-diagnosed ailment. It has three symptoms: extreme cheapskate, love to learn new things, compulsion to make those things. This ailment keeps me way too busy and way too many irons in the fire. On the other hand, I should be mostly self sufficient in the coming zombie apocalypse. Heading to a forging class in the morning to learn yet another thing! Can't wait, getting excited!
 
New video up about my sawmill project, link below. This time, I tackle a log that is obviously bigger than I had planned for when building this mill. It's the old "you don't know what you don't know" syndrome. In hindsight, I should've made the cutting throat on this mill much larger! Don't forget to enter my T-shirt giveaway while you're over there!

 
Love watching, your videos! Those are gonna be some beautiful boards when they dry!!
Thanks, I'm anxious to see how they turn out when dry. I cut about 12 of these monsters out of this one huge tree. I don't think I want to do anymore like this for a while, wore me out!
 
Great video! Brings back a lot of memories, especially the growth rings in the tree.

Not too long after graduating high school, we were cutting oak trees around Clay Center, Ks. I had bought some trees from an older gentleman who had built himself a small circular sawmill. He only wanted to sell the larger trees as he wanted to cut the smaller ones and saw them up.

I cut one of the larger ones down and a small chunk fell from the center of the log. When I got to looking, I noticed it was a stump that had been cut off with an ax. I still can't figure out how someone had cut this tree down with an ax and it had grown back around the stump. Maybe another tree grew up around it, but the chunk was dead center of the tree and no oddities in the growth rings where it fell from. Anyways, there were 158 growth rings to where the ax cut stump was in the tree. This would have put those ax cuts being made around 1834.

I still kick myself for not saving the stump and the end of the log it fell from.
 
Wow, Gene! Cool story. Years ago my neighbor was cutting firewood and brought some of the big pieces over to the house. We were splitting them with a hydraulic splitter and all of a sudden we popped one open that had a wagon wheel hub in it! The way it split the hub was still half embedded in the wood, it even still had small remnants of the wood spokes in the slots.

Then, a couple months ago I dug up some of the stumps from the logs I've been sawmilling. I piled a bunch up and burnt them in a big pile. A couple days later as they were just about gone, I poked one of the big chunks to break it up a little and horseshoe fell out! The tree was pretty big and the shoe was grown into the rootball.

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