I Didn’t Expect THIS Inside That Rotten Cedar Log

Added: 2026-05-12

[00:00:02]Well, that ain't good.

[00:00:21]Heat.

[00:00:33]Heat.

[00:00:42]Heat.

[00:01:04]Heat.

[00:01:22]So, welcome back to the sawmill, friends. Finally, we're down here at the mill again. Some of you guys will be happy about that, I'm sure. Let me show you what we got going on this morning.

[00:01:32]So, we're unloading the kil today, and I got a bunch of popler in there. Here. I do have some pine on the very bottom.

[00:01:39]Those are rough cut 2x4s. I'm going to try to make my own pallets out of those on a later date. But right now, I need to take all these popler boards that are 9 in wide, which is most of them.

[00:01:50]There's a few little uh short ones in there like that that are off cuts. We'll use that for something else. But all these 1x9's need to go through the wooden miser edger and get them down to seven and 3/4. Then we can run them through the planer, then the molder, and we'll make all these in shiplap on a later date. Probably not today, but I do need some stickers. That's one of the reasons why I unloaded the kiln today, cuz I'm out of stickers, and there's a lot of stickers in this pile right here.

[00:02:18]So, let's go ahead and warm up the Woodmiser edger and get these boards run through real fast. All right, guys.

[00:02:26]Let's fire up the edger.

[00:02:31]Well, that ain't good.

[00:02:35]I hear the relay over there, or the fuel pump rather, one of the two. But the glow plugs are not lighting up here on the screen.

[00:02:47]H I bet we got a dead battery. Or maybe it's just low. Lift off this cover.

[00:02:53]That'll give me a chance anyway to go ahead and grease all these bearings. So, on this side of the edger, I'm not sure I've ever showed it before, you got all the bearings right there for the rollers and all the sprockets and the drive chains that run this thing. And importantly, the belt right there that drives the whole system. Also got the battery right there. Let me head up to the shop real fast and get my battery tester and we'll check this one out. I bet it's low. It shouldn't be dead, but I bet it's low.

[00:03:24]All right, guys. I got my little kit right here. And this should get us back up and running. This is my little battery tester. Not sponsored by these guys. I bought this several years ago on Amazon. I'll try to find a link. I'll leave it down the video description. If you have equipment, you know, machines, tractors, lawnmowers, whatever. This right here will save you a ton of time in troubleshooting if something won't start. It's worked for me every time.

[00:03:48]And if you buy this and you're not familiar with this right here, you will not get anything to light up on the screen until you connect it to a battery. Even if the battery is dead, it will usually light up this screen.

[00:03:59]That's how it's powered. There's no battery on it. But anyways, it works really good. And the second thing is this noco booster right here. So if this battery is low, this booster will have no trouble getting started today. And I'll probably have to put a tractor charger on it to keep it going. Let's check this out first and see what it shows. So, the only thing I need to know on this battery is the cold cranking apps, which is 800. When it comes to stuff like this, you've always got to look on the bright side, like I was saying earlier, because this gives me a chance to grease all these bearings right here. It needs to be done.

[00:04:38]All right.

[00:04:40]So, once you plug that into your battery, it lights up. You hit the okay button.

[00:04:45]Battery test. This is a regular flooded battery.

[00:04:49]Cold cranking amps is my setting. It's actually already set on 800. That was the last battery I checked. I think my tractor was low the other day and it was 800. So once you get that done, if it's not 800, you just scroll down there till you find the number you need. You hit okay. And now it starts the test. All right. So it says good charging. So we got a good battery. 42% and the charge is at 40% at 12.2 volts.

[00:05:18]The health is at 517 cold cranking amps.

[00:05:22]It's just low. It's drawn down here all winter cuz I'm not running a lot here lately. It just needs to be charged up really good. The battery booster should get this thing going pretty fast. So, for you guys out there that are getting into farming or homesteading or sawmilling or whatever, I would really highly encourage you to buy that battery tester and also get this battery booster as well. I'm getting ready to show you guys. It will save you a lot of headaches one day.

[00:05:51]Trust me, I've been without one in the past and I tell you what, it is nice having it around. That bearing right there is hard to get to.

[00:06:16]Heat up here.

[00:06:26]Yeah.

[00:06:32]Heat.

[00:07:02]Heat.

[00:07:09]Heat.

[00:07:27]All right, guys. Had to stop for just a minute because I've got to put a different attachment on Mr. Cado there.

[00:07:34]And while I'm doing that, I got that battery booster hooked back up to the battery. I'm not sure if this battery needs to be replaced or not. I don't know. The battery tester, you know, it showed it being okay, but it was kind of lagging just a little when I was using it just there. I may have to replace that battery. But anyways, I got some walnut logs that should be here within an hour or two.

[00:07:58]And he's coming on a trailer with fenders on it. So, I'll need the grapple. So, let's go ahead and put the eastade grapple on Mr. Cado there. So, when he gets here, I can get him unloaded.

[00:08:34]That's good.

[00:08:37]I've done it a million times.

[00:08:53]Guys, got some short walnut here that he dropped off. These are 7 and 1/2 footers.

[00:08:59]That one. That one's got a little bit of a crotch in it right there. And one more right there. And these are customer logs. I didn't buy them. He's just paying me to saw these up. He wants all four quarter boards out of these and live edge on both sides. We'll get to these here in a few days. And friends, I don't do a lot of custom sawing here anymore. It's actually pretty rare that I saw up anything for anybody anymore.

[00:09:25]Most of the stuff I do here is to sell.

[00:09:28]But this guy showed up here a few days ago and he had some walnut and he couldn't find anybody to saw him up. So, I thought I'd help him out. I guess we'll go ahead and get the edger started back up and finish this up here, guys.

[00:09:42]These are all one by9's down here. This stuff on the top, like that's probably 4 in wide. This one right here will be okay. Most of it will not be wide enough for shiplap, but most of that stuff down there should be in good shape.

[00:10:27]All right, guys. Real fast. Some of y'all might find this interesting. When you think about lumber shrinkage, this was sawd at 9 in on the width, kil dried down to about 10% moisture content. So after this was green and went through the drying process, it was 9 in like I said, now we're down to right at 8 and 1/2. So this popler right here shrunk about a/4 inch in the width and about an eighth of an inch in the thickness. So, I checked that already off camera. Just thought I'd mention that to you guys cuz I don't talk about lumber shrinkage a whole lot on this channel. So, when you think about popppler, you lose about a/ inch in width over the whole board right there when it goes through the kiln process. If you went wider, you would lose more, but most people saw popler around 6 to 10, maybe 12 inches on the width. A lot of people don't go wider than that.

[00:11:37]Heat. Heat.

[00:12:08]Heat. Heat.

[00:12:22]Heat.

[00:12:25]Heat.

[00:12:54]All right, friends. We're going to saw up this eastern red cedar. It's about 10 ft long. I'm hoping for 8 by8, but I'm pretty doubtful we'll get that out of it. We'll see what happens. We might get a 6x6, but I really need a 8 by8 for the plate on that hose rail to mount to. 6x6 would be way too small.

[00:13:14]So, having said all that, we're going to put on the mill, see what we can do. We might get a 8 by8 out of it after all, but I'm really doubting that. A 6x6 if we're lucky. And I've not said this in a long time, but on the sawmill, as always, a Joe main silver tip turbo 7.

[00:13:32]If you guys want to try out these saw blades, call Joe Main. His cell phone number is always down in the video description. It also looks like the hopper is getting kind of full here for the sawdust.

[00:13:44]I will deal with this later, though, guys. Let's get to saw.

[00:14:04]Heat.

[00:14:09]Heat.

[00:14:15]Heat.

[00:14:29]Heat.

[00:14:37]Heat.

[00:14:49]Heat.

[00:15:11]Heat. Heat.

[00:15:19]Heat.

[00:15:39]Heat.

[00:15:44]Heat. Heat.

[00:16:21]Heat. Heat.

[00:16:52]All right, guys. This is actually going decent so far.

[00:16:57]I've been taking a lot of passes on the outside as I sneak up on my finished dimension, which is 8 by8, a true 8 by8.

[00:17:06]And that right there is not going to work. That occlusion right there goes up about 30 ines. But I only need about 8 feet. I could actually use 7 foot if I had to.

[00:17:19]And from right there where it stops to the very end is about 9 ft. So, we'll be okay if that's all we got to deal with.

[00:17:27]But there's a lot of unknowns right here.

[00:17:31]I need to start flipping this thing over and start sneaking up on that 8 in and taking some really light passes until I see a face that I really like. Then I'll call that face done and switch it over or turn it over rather and saw from the other side. So, when you fool with this cedar here, friends, it has a lot of voids in it. And the larger the cedar is actually the worst it is in my experiences. Smaller cedar loss like 8 and 10 inch diameter are usually pretty solid. These large ones like this one right here, you find a lot of voids in the large ones.

[00:18:09]It's not looking too bad. And if I got some way right here on the outside, I'm okay with that as well. Once we get this down to a 8 by8, we'll get the Makita hand planer out and smooth this down to about 7 and 3/4 square. I can actually go down to 7 in if I have to as far as my finish size after I plane it, but I really don't want to. I like a good beefy looking post like this right here. So, let's see what happens here, friends. We'll probably take a very light pass on this face, flip it over, and get our 8 in off this face right here, and then do these two right here and see what happens. And the reason you guys have saw me walk down here and pull these slabs off and not use the sawmill is because I need to see every face that I saw. Therefore, I can judge where I need to go to next on something like this. You got to sneak up on these cedars like this, friends. You got to sneak up on them. You can't just throw them up here and take some large, heavy cuts and hope you're going to get what you want. It's not going to happen that way. You got to be pretty patient with something like this and actually make a few extra passes, but it will pay off in the long run.

[00:19:46]Heat.

[00:19:48]Heat.

[00:20:12]All right, guys. Hopefully you can hear me over the mill.

[00:20:16]That was our finished cut on that side.

[00:20:20]Man, this looks pretty good right here.

[00:20:25]Not too bad at all.

[00:20:28]We take off about 3/4 of an inch this way.

[00:20:34]I think we may get a eight bait out of this one. It's going to be pretty close.

[00:20:52]Heat.

[00:21:05]Heat.

[00:21:57]So friends, I am done for the day. I got to pick Bruno up from school here in just a few minutes. Then we got plans after that. But I'll see you guys back here first thing in the morning. Don't go anywhere.

[00:22:28]Oh my god.

[00:23:22]All right, guys. Right here's the post, and it came out looking pretty good.

[00:23:26]We're just under 8 in on both planes right there. I think we're right at 7 and 7/8 in both directions right there. And this just has to be 8 and 1/2 ft long. So, we're going to cut it to length before we plane it. And I'm going to try to take most of my material on my end cut from this side right here because we got that void right there that goes all the way down. I think we can get rid of most of this right here.

[00:23:55]So, the first cut we'll make will be on this end just to square it up.

[00:24:01]And I probably won't come back very far at all. That way, I can max out the amount of waste I can have down there.

[00:24:09]Very odd weather we're having this year.

[00:24:12]It's really dry. I've talked about that.

[00:24:14]And now it's turned off to be kind of cold. It was down the 30s last night.

[00:24:23]Let's grab our little kit right here that's got the chainsaw jig in it. That way we can get a nice square cut on the ends.

[00:24:37]Guys, let's hurry this up a little bit.

[00:24:40]There we go. That didn't take too long.

[00:24:43]This right here, guys, is called the flat top. It's made locally and this is not sponsored by those guys, but if you want one of these, I'll leave a link down below in the video description. And if you buy one, I don't make a dime. I'm just trying to help you guys out if you make a lot of cuts on large post and beams like this. It works really good.

[00:25:03]But I will suggest if you do buy one, get yourself a battery powered chainsaw.

[00:25:09]I think that's the best thing to use with this jig.

[00:25:25]on this face right here. There's still just a little bit of wind shade right there, but that should plane out here in just a minute. Not too worried about it just yet.

[00:26:07]Heat. Heat.

[00:26:22]Heat.

[00:26:29]Heat.

[00:26:34]Heat.

[00:26:44]Heat.

[00:26:55]Heat.

[00:27:09]Heat.

[00:27:56]My goodness, this thing's heavy. This log has been down the log guard for at least 2 years, maybe longer. And this cedar hasn't dried out much at all. Man, it's heavy.

[00:28:10]But it's going to look good in here.

[00:28:11]It's worth the effort, I tell you what.

[00:28:14]Good looking stuff.

[00:28:36]>> All right, guys. We're gonna call it done right there. I got to head down to the house and get ready because tonight is Bruno's eighth grade prom. I didn't know that was even a thing. Eighth grade proms. I know you have one in high school, but we didn't have one in eighth grade. I guess they're doing that now.

[00:28:51]But anyways, he's got to get ready for that. So, me and the wife have to take him out for pictures and drop him off at the prom. Then, we'll probably go out to eat while he's there and then pick him up afterwards. So, guys, in closing here, thanks for watching. I really appreciate it. If you don't care, hit the thumbs up button. It don't cost you nothing. If you're watching on a cell phone, hit that hype button as well.

[00:29:11]YouTube says that helps these videos, but I'm not sure if it does or not, but we'll keep on doing it. And also, let me know down in the comments if you guys want me to film installing the air hose rail and the conduit and all that stuff.

[00:29:23]If so, I'll do that in the next video.

[00:29:26]So, once again, guys, thanks for watching and I'll see you on the next one.