Awhile back, a pretty good size pine tree died in our yard. We don't burn wood for heat so it seemed like a waste to cut it into firewood (especially with me being a woodworker and all..hehe). The good news: I have a bud with a portable bandsaw mill. I cut the tree into 12 foot lengths (the length of my trailer and the absolute max I would want to try to wrestle) and took it to Rick's house to see what we could come up with...

The logs loaded up (maybe that tractor I bought is useful after all) with my landing supervisor, Jimmy, checking my work...



Backing up to the mill...



Let's try the small one first...







The first couple boards. Lot's of blue stain in this stuff. Blue stain is generally considered a defect, but I think if you make something out of ALL blue stained wood it looks pretty neat...



Ok, time to tackle that big beast. This log is about 20 inches in diameter at the base. My tractor lifts 1200 pounds and labored to lift it. I'm guessing that, if it wasn't a thousand pounds, it was darn close...





About 45 minutes later, it's finally in position to be cut...







Pretty stuff...



My share of the spoils. Rough estimate, 250 board feet of lumber. Rick gets the other half...



Now, I need to air dry it for about a year, surface it and hopefully make something really cool with it. I'm leaning toward using it for some desks and cabinets in a home office room if we get to doing the addition on the house that we want to do.