red alder ranch

Naturally, at some point, my interests in kayaking and sawmilling would collide, and the result of this is kayak logging. Lots and lots of logs end up in the rivers of the Pacific Northwest. Some of these are pretty nice sawlogs for a small mill like mine, and every now and then some nice logs come along in a way that I can actually get at them and salvage them.

Last winter, my friend Brian and I tried to salvage some very nice cedar in the whitewater section of a nearby river. We had a pretty exciting adventure, but ended up finally losing the log. Recently he called me up with news of more logs in a lower, flatter and tidal section of the same river. Today, we geared up and went to investigate.

By the way, kayak logging, or any kind of log salvage work like this, even for someone with as much experience at it as I have, is an extremely dangerous undertaking. Logs shift and roll, saws bind and kick back and there are a thousand ways to get hurt or killed outright. Do not try this yourself! If you decide to ignore this advice and do try this yourself, don’t tell anyone that you heard about from me! My advice is to stay safely at home and read about it on other people’s blogs.

There were some old growth cedar chunks stuck in this logjam, along with a really nice, straight and clear Sitka Spruce log about 80 feet long and about 32″ at the butt end. We decided that the bottom 40 feet or so would be worth saving and set to work.

Unfortunately, the longest saw we had with us had only a 24″ bar on it, and this log was more like 26″ or so at the part where we needed to buck it off. In the end, I cut out sort of a window block to effectively make the log a small diameter. We eventually got it cut through and, miraculously, it did not have some hidden branch underwater pinning it in place. We finally got it loose and tied up to shore nearby. We added a couple of the old growth cedar chunks to our log raft and called it a day, visiting the shaggy cows nearby on the way back to the boat ramp.

Next stop for this project will be pulling those logs up to the boat ramp, loading them on a trailer and taking them to the shop to mill up into lumber.

And now for something completely different…

Since 1995, one of my jobs has been as a custom sawyer, milling lumber for clients in Washington, Oregon and Northern California. After I started kayaking, I stopped doing as much sawmilling work, but have been getting back into it lately.

In 1995, after selling my house in Portland, OR, I bought a brand new Woodmizer sawmill, and for about seven years I used that first mill to make most of my living. In 2002, I sold that original mill and bought a used 1996 model with hydraulic log loading and handling features, something I should have gotten with the first one, but I had no idea at that point what I was getting into. I think those 7 years of manual log handling probably took about 7 years off of my lifespan in excessive wear and tear on my body. I do still have all of my fingers, though, and both eyes, so I guess I’m doing all right so far.

The Woodmizer is a horizontally arranged bandsaw, powered by a gasoline engine. The log is loaded onto the carriage, and the sawhead moves back and forth taking slices off of the wood. The whole thing is built onto a trailer axle, so it is very portable. I have set this mill up in some unbelievable places, including in no parking zones in the city more than once.

I have milled everything from veneers and small strips for laminating up to large beams up to almost 30′ long. I have milled pretty much every kind of softwood that grows on the West Coast, and lots of different hardwoods including alder, fruit trees, black locust, madrone and several kinds of oaks and maples. Wood that I’ve milled has been made into sheds, custom homes, barns, corrals, kayaks and other boats, fine furniture and cabinetry.

Over the years I have been involved in a variety of building projects by way of supplying the custom milled lumber. Lately I have been thinking of tracking down some of those building projects and going to visit them. A book, perhaps?

This week I am milling up some Port Orford and Western Red Cedar for a neighbor to finish his pergola project. The PO cedar came from some landscaping trees near his house that blew over earlier in the year, and the red cedar was removed by the PUD to protect the power lines.

I have been to Lopez Island in the San Juan Islands many, many times, since a friend of mine bought the old Grace Episcopal Church there many years ago. I did a lot of remodelling on the church and worked on his vintage Bluebird motorhome up there too. But I had never been to any of the other islands before.

So when I saw that Justine Curgenven of CackleTV was holding a video release party on Orcas Island for her “This is the Sea 4″ movie, I decided to make the trip, and visit friends at Body Boat Blade as well.

It takes about an hour on the ferry to get from Anacortes to Ocras Island, stopping along the way at Lopez and Shaw Islands.

I got to Ocras Island right at dusk and had a good stroke of luck in stumbling across the kayak shop by accident while I was looking for the film venue. Justine and her boyfriend Barry were there, playing with wigs.

After the video event, we all went back to Shawna and Leon’s place for the night, and the next day decided to take a short paddling trip out to Matia and Sucia Islands, part of a Washington State Marine Park. I have long looked at these islands on the nautical charts, and it was a treat to actually paddle around them. The geology of these islands leaves beautifully sculpted edges all around. I took a lot of pictures, but most did not turn out so well; the lens was constantly wet and salty.

We had lunch on a beach on Matia and then headed back to Orcas by way of Sucia, making a trip of about 10 nautical miles. It was a beautiful day, but it was also Election Day, and we were all wondering a little bit how things were going with that.

I went to Djuna’s yoga class in town after the paddling trip, and then we all headed over to an Election Day party nearby, in a very high end home, with a fantastic kitchen, and a big screen TV to watch the Election returns on. At 8:15 or so, McCain conceded, and it was finally over.

The last time I was away from home on Election Day was 1984, and this year, it was a much happier experience where I was at. Normally, I don’t get too excited one way or another about elections. I don’t have TV, so I had not seen Obama speak before, except for catching his appearance on Letterman in passing. But I have to say that I was really impressed by his acceptance speech. Let’s hope that things start turning in a new direction now.

Back in Anacortes the next day, we ran across this gentleman standing on a street corner with this sign, and we circled the block to come back around and get his picture.