{"id":11524,"date":"2018-12-05T17:59:03","date_gmt":"2018-12-06T00:59:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.woodworkerssource.com\/blog\/?p=11524"},"modified":"2018-12-05T17:59:36","modified_gmt":"2018-12-06T00:59:36","slug":"video-i-took-a-road-trip-to-see-how-sawmills-worked","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.woodworkerssource.com\/blog\/woodworking-101\/video-i-took-a-road-trip-to-see-how-sawmills-worked\/","title":{"rendered":"VIDEO: I Took a Road Trip to See How Sawmills Worked"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><div class=\"video-container\"><iframe src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/712UeZl3OPU?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen> frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div><\/p>\n<p>Even if you&#8217;ve been woodworker for 350,000 years, chances are you still may not know how the wizards-that-be take a tree and turn it into lumber to keep your woodsmithing habit queued up for the next project. Or two.<\/p>\n<p>And, well, um . . . most of you assume <em>all sorts<\/em> of wrong ideas about how it&#8217;s done.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Okay, me too.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve been in this biz for 20 years and even though I&#8217;ve visited a few mills in that time, I learn something new with every visit. But it should go without saying that the first time I went to see a sawmill in action, that was the formative event. From visualizing the sheer dangerous weight of a hardwood log to understanding that logs are erratic or idiosyncratic in shape and size and that&#8217;s just the beginning of why boards can only be so big or whatever.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>The point is, it&#8217;s really easy to underestimate what it takes to make lumber if you&#8217;ve never seen it done.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>And that got me thinking . . . &#8220;next time, take a camera, tell the story and share the harvest.&#8221; So to speak.<\/p>\n<p>So the whole adventure of getting lumber from a tree is, well, <em>an adventure<\/em>. You don&#8217;t know what you&#8217;re going to get.<\/p>\n<p>As some some say it, wood is a gift of nature and its appearance is pretty much out of human control &#8211; it&#8217;s the quest for beauty among boards that makes lumber harvesting utterly different from, oh, building semiconductors or making tires. That&#8217;s one reason we like this business.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>If nothing else, I want to convey that understanding lumber is kind of like washing a pair of jeans:<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li>It has to dry<\/li>\n<li>When it dries, it shrinks<\/li>\n<li>When it shrinks, bad things happen<\/li>\n<li>But there are a few tricks to avoid the bad things<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p>I&#8217;m hoping you&#8217;ll endure a video of checking out sawmills with me &#8211; we did our best to keep it quick but it still clocks in at over 9 minutes.<\/p>\n<p>I beg your pardon in advance.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Kick up your feet, grab a snack, and enjoy.<\/p>\n<p>Thanks,<\/p>\n<p>Mark<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1138\" height=\"375\" class=\"img-responsive aligncenter wp-image-11546 size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/www.woodworkerssource.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/12\/How-Lumber-Gets-to-You.jpg\" alt=\"\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.woodworkerssource.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/12\/How-Lumber-Gets-to-You.jpg 1138w, https:\/\/www.woodworkerssource.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/12\/How-Lumber-Gets-to-You-150x49.jpg 150w, https:\/\/www.woodworkerssource.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/12\/How-Lumber-Gets-to-You-400x132.jpg 400w, https:\/\/www.woodworkerssource.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/12\/How-Lumber-Gets-to-You-768x253.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.woodworkerssource.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/12\/How-Lumber-Gets-to-You-800x264.jpg 800w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1138px) 100vw, 1138px\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>. . . and here&#8217;s what happened<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":11553,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[137,181,83],"tags":[310],"class_list":["post-11524","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-ask-us","category-videos","category-woodworking-101","tag-sawmill"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.woodworkerssource.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11524","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.woodworkerssource.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.woodworkerssource.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.woodworkerssource.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.woodworkerssource.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11524"}],"version-history":[{"count":21,"href":"https:\/\/www.woodworkerssource.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11524\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11554,"href":"https:\/\/www.woodworkerssource.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11524\/revisions\/11554"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.woodworkerssource.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11553"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.woodworkerssource.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11524"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.woodworkerssource.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11524"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.woodworkerssource.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11524"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}