We cut down one of our Alder trees last spring that was getting old and
dropping a lot of limbs. Rather than turn the entire tree into firewood,
I decided to mill up sections of the trunk into usable lumber.
Brute Force
I don't own a saw mill or even a milling attachment
for my chainsaw. So I tried to square up the logs by eye the best I
could. My chain was dull and not cutting very straight but it still
worked OK. I set the timber sections aside for several months so they
could start drying. This spring I finally found the time to mill the
rough timbers using my bandsaw and a simple straight edge. The overall
process wasted a fair amount of wood, but I still ended up with a lot of
lumber that otherwise would have been firewood.
