Remember that show “American Pickers”? This is Urban Log Pickers. There are plenty of ways to source logs for lumber, our preferred method for acquiring logs are tree service companies with firewood piles.
What are the necessary tools for pickin’ log yards? A chainsaw (we take a big one and a little one, you never know which you’ll need), a log roller (we like this one), a trailer (grapple not required, but nice for large logs; otherwise you hope the tree service company has a crane they can use to load your logs), a good eye because you never know what you’re going to find.
Last week, we went to a new tree service yard. They took us to “the back yard” and there was a plethora of logs to choose from. We were on a mission to get some pine to cut into fish habitat for Bryant’s day job but we are opportunists. There were several large pines that was already cut into enough material for about 10-12 structures.
At this “honey hole” we found several different species of hardwood to cut into different size boards. Mesquite, olive, African sumac burl, and acacia were all in the log pile. We used our handy dandy log rollers to get the logs closer to the safe radius of the grapple. Then, Bryant and the grapple trailer go to work, making life much easier than it used to be.
This week, we milled some Sweet acacia from a different tree service pick, the super dry mesquite and African sumac burl. The Sweet acacia had a nail, which is hard on blades, but the slabs still turned out great!
The other nice thing about pickin’ a tree service or firewood yard is that most of these trees had to come down because of disease, they posed a hazard to a home, sidewalk, road, etc., or they were damaged in a storm. This a sustainable source of urban lumber. And, many times tree service companies are happy to have someone take the material off their hands.
Live Edge Wood Slabs Boards 