Just somewhere for a weekend or to hang out and not worry about farm stuff.
Have what I think is the perfect location, a small island in the middle of the creek. Only just and island, about 150' long and 45' wide at its widest' Channels around it are only about 12' wide but never go dry. A good chance of catching fish right around it and I have shot half a dozen sambar deer within 400y.
Overgrown with blackberries woody weeds and a tangle on fallen timber. When son and his girlfriend were home a few weeks ago we were looking for something to fill in a few hours so made a start on clearing it. Managed to hack, pull and pile most of the blackberries woody weeds and smaller timber over over a week. Just waiting for it to dry a bit so I can drop a match in it.
Having made a start on clearing it decided decent access to the island would be a good first step. Water isnt much more than 2 feet deep but cold in summer and freezing at this time of year. We had been keeping our feet dry by climbing over a bit of a choke in the creek but hard enough to do without carrying anything so some decent access is needed before anything really progresses.
A footbridge wide enough for the bike towing cement mixer, trailer etc is what I have decided to go for. Found a nice straight messmate and dropped it on the weekend. Left it at 80' long positioned it and then pushed one end across the creek with the tractor. Once it was landed on the island cut the remainder off lifted it on top of the first log and pushed it across safely landing it on the island. Getting them into their final position was a bit more work, easy on the side with tractor access but had to resort to a comalong slings and chain to drag them into position on the island.
Pulling logs into final position
Next job was to start cutting some slabs for the deck, decided on 5'6" wide and 2" thick, more than wide enough for a foot bridge and will allow me to get the 4 wheeler across but narrow enough to stop anyone thinking about taking anything bigger across.
Ended up with about enough for half the bridge first cutting session
To square up the edges I have just been using a circular saw and straight edge
Things slowed down for the next few weeks, a run in with a ram put me off my feet and on crutches for a little bit. Gave me a chance to watch a heap of videos on chainsaw slabbing and try and improve what I have been doing.
Finally got around to making up a decent rail setup for the first cut, also decided to spend more money and upgrade the milling attachment. I have been using a mini alaskan mill, really only designed for a short bar and with the bar only being supported at the saw end a slightly dull chain or any other number of reasons can see the bar flex slightly resulting in slabs that are tapered from side to side. Hopefully the larger milling attachment that supports the bar both ends solves that issue. The new mill will also allow the use of bar lengths up to 36" if I do decide on a saw upgrade.
With a new milling attachment all the videos I had watched had given me a few ideas on a setup for squaring the sides of logs before cutting the first slab. I made up a skid to slide on the rails, cut the clamp arrangement of the mini mill replace the 1" rhs attached to it with threaded bar and used it to attach to the skid.
Felt up to giving the new and improved setup a run yesterday. The rail and skid worked even better than I hoped for. rails were extremely stable and very easy to level. Skid setup worked really well, having it attached to the skid with the treaded bar in use allows you to pivot the saw on the bar just like you would using dogs on the saw in a log. I didnt take a lot of the sides of the log, will still need to square the sides on some of the slabs but just taking the bow and some sapwood off the logs has reduced the bar length needed to slab by 5-6". Ran the skid with one of my little saws to save swapping the big saw over so ended up a bit short on bar length. Still went well, where I hadnt cut fully through it was easy enough to freehand the remainder of the cut.
Things didnt go as smoothly when I started the slabbing, only got about a yard into the first cut when I blew the nose sprocket on the bar that put an end to the day. Will have to wait until I can give it a proper workout before I can see if it is an improvement.
The new rails and skid attachment in action
