Your Photos

More pics:

Up the driveway:
66698



Smokehouse:
66697



There's the house:
66700



Down the driveway:
66699
 
rascal said:
What's a root cellar? Please.
I love that place, I'd fire up that mill again. Love it.

Russ
Click to expand...
This is from Wikipedia:

"A root cellar (American English) or earth cellar (British English) is a structure, usually underground or partially underground, used for storage of vegetables, fruits, nuts, or other foods. Its name reflects the traditional focus on root crops stored in an underground cellar, which is still often true. A wide variety of foods can be stored for weeks to months, depending on the crop and conditions. The structure may not always be underground."

It also doubles as a tornado shelter. In the pic from my folks of the smokehouse, it's built on top of their root cellar.

That sawmill was quite the operation at one time, a 1910 Frick mill that Dad had to rebuild about 75% of. When he had it going, he quickly earned a reputation for being the best sawyer for 100 miles in any direction. We sawed lumber for customers in Ohio, Indiana, Kentucky, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and West Virginia, just me and him.

When I left home at 19, he tried to keep sawing, but he couldn't get anyone to work with him like I could. A sawyer and their off-bear (that was me) are like a team, and they have to learn to work together nonverbally and know how each other work, and he could never find anyone else to work with him like I could.

He bought a one-man portable Wood-Mizer electric bandsaw sawmill after that, which he could do all on his own, but he never took to it like he did the old cast iron gas-powered mill. Mom told me years later that she thought it kind of broke his heart when I left home, even though he never said much about it, because he couldn't run the mill the way he wanted.
 
the SmartCar was released in Europe before it was available in USA.
66749


good friend/work colleague was in upper management - I rang him up about getting involved and he gently suggested 'that's not a good idea' - things were not going well....and they didn't . . .
 
CookieMonster said:
the SmartCar was released in Europe before it was available in USA.
View attachment 66749

good friend/work colleague was in upper management - I rang him up about getting involved and he gently suggested 'that's not a good idea' - things were not going well....and they didn't . . .
Click to expand...
When I bought my Fiat, I looked at a SmartCar and found it very...lacking. Right away, it was noticeable, at least in the one I sat in and drove, that the fit and finish left a lot to be desired - pieces didn't fit flush, things like that.

Coupled with a poor warranty, I gave it a miss, though I really wanted one.
 
the bit that put the whole idea in the sewer was the gas consumption.
one would expect such a small thing to be exceedingly fuel efficient....
it wasn't . . . in spades!

doing mucho European business travel I always wanted a 'small' car - rental "big cars" in European cities/parking lots were a serious pain in the driving plan....
once upon a (long story omitted) I wound up with a (up-grade) to an Audi 200Q.
Turbo charged, pass anything . . . but a Tankstelle . . .
nice perk on the Autobahn....
eventually I bought a Audi 100Q - since it was fully capable of collecting speeding ticket anywhere...
turned out to be a booboo - when exit time came, could have sold the 200Q for more that it's purchase price.
 
rascal said:
I love that place, I'd fire up that mill again.
Click to expand...
rascal: Here's a video of a Frick milk, newer but very similar to what we had for 15 years or so:

View: https://youtu.be/8p7B8JVxbB8


My dad would run the carriage, and I'd catch the slabs and boards as they'd come off. Whenever it was time to turn the log or sit a new log, I'd hop the carriage and ride it back and do that.

I also had to be quick with the boards because I had to stack them. Dad insisted that I stack as I go (I think so he wouldn't have to do it :laugh:), and you couldn't just stack one board on top of the other, you had to shim it between layers so air could get to it. In the amount of time you see the sawyer run a cut through, roll it back, advance it, and start another cut, I had to catch the board coming off, run it down the conveyor, stack it, shim it for the next board, and run back before the next cut came off, and God help me if I was late. Dad kept a pile of wood chunks and things like that, and if I did something he didn't like, he'd throw one at me to remind me to pay attention.

If you look close as the boards are coming off...at the end of a cut, you'll see the weight of the board actually breaks the top back edge of the board. That would have earned me a wood chunk to the head. A good off-bear knows you've got to grab that board a few inches before it comes off and pick up on it a little, to take the weight off, then it'll come off clean. No wood chunk to the head. :laugh:
 
TastyReuben said:
rascal: Here's a video of a Frick milk, newer but very similar to what we had for 15 years or so:

View: https://youtu.be/8p7B8JVxbB8


My dad would run the carriage, and I'd catch the slabs and boards as they'd come off. Whenever it was time to turn the log or sit a new log, I'd hop the carriage and ride it back and do that.

I also had to be quick with the boards because I had to stack them. Dad insisted that I stack as I go (I think so he wouldn't have to do it :laugh:), and you couldn't just stack one board on top of the other, you had to shim it between layers so air could get to it. In the amount of time you see the sawyer run a cut through, roll it back, advance it, and start another cut, I had to catch the board coming off, run it down the conveyor, stack it, shim it for the next board, and run back before the next cut came off, and God help me if I was late. Dad kept a pile of wood chunks and things like that, and if I did something he didn't like, he'd throw one at me to remind me to pay attention.

If you look close as the boards are coming off...at the end of a cut, you'll see the weight of the board actually breaks the top back edge of the board. That would have earned me a wood chunk to the head. A good off-bear knows you've got to grab that board a few inches before it comes off and pick up on it a little, to take the weight off, then it'll come off clean. No wood chunk to the head. :laugh:
Click to expand...

Thanks for posting that, I really enjoyed that, I even had visions of your dad throwing rocks at you part way through,lmao.
At 16 I worked at a timber yard where they processed rimu ( native here) into veneer. I was a yardman (at 16) and there were no de barking machines back then. I was part of the de barking team of two. Swinging an axe and a slasher to strip the bark off logs, very manual job which after a few months gave me muscles like arnie s . That was my physical peak. Winter saw me change my job. I had a bit to do with sawmills over the years, now the dogs are all mechanical and laser set to get max timber/ lumber from the log. See... I even know the terminology,lol.

Russ
 
rascal said:
Thanks for posting that, I really enjoyed that, I even had visions of your dad throwing rocks at you part way through,lmao.
At 16 I worked at a timber yard where they processed rimu ( native here) into veneer. I was a yardman (at 16) and there were no de barking machines back then. I was part of the de barking team of two. Swinging an axe and a slasher to strip the bark off logs, very manual job which after a few months gave me muscles like arnie s . That was my physical peak. Winter saw me change my job. I had a bit to do with sawmills over the years, now the dogs are all mechanical and laser set to get max timber/ lumber from the log. See... I even know the terminology,lol.

Russ
Click to expand...
We never had a debarker...except me with an ax and short spud bar - break the bark open with the ax, and if you were really lucky, you could peel it off with the spud bar.

The only time we ever took the bark off, though, was if it was full of mud and rocks, because that would dull the blade in no time.

I should also mention that the blade in that video above is a bit smaller than what we had - and no safety features at all. I'd frequently run across the mantle while the blade was spinning/idling to help my dad with something, then jump back across.

The only sort of serious accident I ever had was when my dad was rolling a log onto the blocks on the carriage, and I was behind the blocks waiting to set the dogs, and he rolled the log too hard, it slammed into the blocks, then rolled back a bit.

The slamming knocked the catch on the lever that worked the dogs loose, so it released with the full force of those heavy cast iron dogs behind them and cracked me right in the crown of the head and gave me a concussion.
 
TastyReuben said:
We never had a debarker...except me with an ax and short spud bar - break the bark open with the ax, and if you were really lucky, you could peel it off with the spud bar.

The only time we ever took the bark off, though, was if it was full of mud and rocks, because that would dull the blade in no time.

I should also mention that the blade in that video above is a bit smaller than what we had - and no safety features at all. I'd frequently run across the mantle while the blade was spinning/idling to help my dad with something, then jump back across.

The only sort of serious accident I ever had was when my dad was rolling a log onto the blocks on the carriage, and I was behind the blocks waiting to set the dogs, and he rolled the log too hard, it slammed into the blocks, then rolled back a bit.

The slamming knocked the catch on the lever that worked the dogs loose, so it released with the full force of those heavy cast iron dogs behind them and cracked me right in the crown of the head and gave me a concussion.
Click to expand...

Can you even imagine kids these days doing the sort of work you did?
We would strip about a dozen logs about 2 to 3 metres long and drop them in a hot tank of water to soften them before they were placed in the casing where a guillotine like blade sliced about 1 mm strips off then dried and sent away. Rimu is a beautiful timber, it's on my ceiling in the kitchen. Tongue and groove.

Russ

66786


66786
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom