Sunday, June 26, 2011

From Trees to floorboards


Hey, rather than waste time with excuses as to why I haven't contributed a blog. Here is a pictorial Blog about how we got floorboards from trees.
The first step is obviously selecting the trees. Photo 1 is the tree we used for all of our 4x2 timber. We selected this type of tree specifically because I had heard of people using this in building huts and as long as they didn’t leak, the timber remained in perfect condition for up to 30 years. Mind you this was small saplings that they used not properly matured trees, so I assumed that the benefits would be amplified with the age of the tree. This particular tree would be somewhere between 50-80 yrs old. No one really knows as it is in the middle of the bush, but they apparently grow slow.


Photo 2 is one of the 3 Mahogany trees that we cut down. They were all about this same size which for me when I was felling it seemed pretty forkin big! They certainly make a mess of the surrounding bush when they come down. This particular one snapped 2 coconut trees clean in half on its way down.


Photo 3-5 is of the same tree after it has been felled, cleaned up, rolled onto logs and ready for the first cut with the chainsaw mill. We also have to cut paths into the bush to get to the tree, and also to be able to carry the slabs out, and also clear all the surrounding bush so that we have space to work and stack the slabs. This usually takes  about 2 days to get to the point of pulling out the chainsaw and mill.






Photo 6 are the rails set up on the log to take the mill for the first cut. We need the rails so that we can get a perfectly flat surface. Once this has been achieved, we can remove the rails and the mill can slide along the top of new cut. Dad designed the rails which have worked perfect every time. You can imagine the difficulty in trying to get a perfect flat surface on a log that is round. There cannot be any movement in the rails, which isn’t easy with a chainsaw on top of them cutting a slab and vibrating madly!    






Photo 7 is the chainsaw mill about to perform its first cut.


Photo 8 is mid cut. Compared to hand milling with the chainsaw, the mill is very slow. However its only advantage is that it is very accurate with wide, thin slabs.

 

Photo 9 is our first cut finished. The rails can now be dismantled and the chainsaw mill will now run along the top of the flat surface, producing slabs of timber. From felling to stacked slabs takes about 6 days for the large mahogany trees. If everything goes well, that is the mill or the chainsaw doesn’t play up, the slabbing goes quite quickly now.  


Photos 10-12 Show stacks of freshly cut slabs. These slabs now have to be carried out of the bush, stacked onto the back of the truck, transported back to the house, offloaded and stacked with thin strips of wood between each individual slab so as to allow air to circulate evenly through the stack and to dry quicker. Each individual stack has to be covered in tarps or plastic sheets so as to not allow any direct sunlight as this will warp the wood. The slabs were left to dry for about 8 months.It only takes 10 weeks for slabs this size to dry to the point of being able to used for floorboards.





 
Photo 13. Here are some air dried slabs that are now about to be cut with the circular saw. 

Photo 14. Back in the workshop, the slabs are now placed on wooden horses and one of the rails is now used as a straight edge as a guide for the circular saw. This is a little time consuming but it gives us a perfectly straight cut which is important when we join the floorboards up so that there are no gaps.


Photos 15-17 show us removing the sides of the slab, so that we now only have the heartwood left and 2 perfect straight edges. The edges are then used as firewood to burn down the remaining tree stumps surrounding the house. It seems a pity to burn mahogany, but aside from using it as material to build scaffolding, we don’t have any other use for it.



 

Photo 18 is now cutting up the remaining slab into 2oo mm wide floorboards. 


Photo 19 Here are the floorboards. Now they just need to have the ends cut off with the dropsaw and put through the thicknesser.
  

Photo 20 Is a floor board that has had its ends cut off square and is about to put through the thicknesser.

Photo 21 The board is now being put through the thicknesser. The boards are on average around 27mm thick. Cutting up the boards was a little time consuming, but the thicknesser was painfully slow, as each board would go through about 4-6 times. What I thought would only take us a week has taken 2 weeks and we are about 80% through. We were well and truely sick and tired of doing this part of the work by the end of the second week.
Photo22 is finished product. All thats left is to lay them, sand them and give them 3 coats of polyurethane.




A bloody laborious exercise, but well worth the effort once we saw the finished product. I am hoping that they will look even better when they are layed. I guess the other good thing about it is, that not many people have 200mm wide and 27mm thick mahogany floorboards available to them to make a floor with.
Well this blog is a little dry and boring, especially if you are not into wood or the production of floor boards. However hopefully it has given you an idea of what we have been up to work wise for the past while. If you are thinking of doing this at home, think long and hard as the old maxim, “hard work never killed anyone”, is maybe not completely true in this case. Alright maybe a little melodramatic, but there were certainly some days where I felt like the saying was a lie. Until the next post take it easy!
Carl..

Sunday, June 12, 2011

Celebrations and surprises!


Hi again from tropical life, where our days are merry and productive and our nights are starry with beautiful moons rising and dolphins splashing, and unicorns prancing...not!
This week we celebrated Noah’s 5th birthday!!!!! FIVE!!!!!!!! I didn’t know if I should cry for the days of him being my gorgeous little baby, which are long gone, or be merry for him growing into such a stunning little character, such a BOY!!!
Our celebrations consisted of us counting sleeps until the big day for about 2 weeks, then me staying up late the night before to make his birthday cake, using improvised techniques of zip-lock bags as my icing equipment, and some bits and pieces I brought when we came and saved for the special day. I must say I am very proud of the result, and look forward to working on another birthday cake- Saulei’s, the day after we return to Sydney. Poor Carl will be missing out on cake this year, as we have no more flour, or eggs, or sugar, and neither do any of the shops on the island...
                                      
                                                                            Cool hey?
And on the morning of his birthday we woke him with a song, and a little crown with a big 5 on it, and some chocolates and balloons which I had saved for 3 months, coz I knew there wont be much else I’ll be able to give him here. And at preschool they got him to stand up in front of the class and the kids all sang him Happy birthday in broken English, and he got given this awesome hand crafted wooden boat by one of the preschool teachers (who bribed her son with $10 for him to give it to her so she could give it to Noah...)and we came home and went for a little swim to float the boat and he LOVED it, and we had a little party for him in the afternoon with his little girlfriends Ali and Briseis and the family, and we all guzzled birthday cake, popcorn and deep fried donuts Aggy made, and he and we were all very happy!
                                    
                                                    Birthday boy and beautiful girlfriends

                                Guzzling birthday cake and donuts or “as Saulei calls them “Gonuts”


                                         
                                           Noah and his handcrafted wooden Outrigger Canoe
                                                            
Since my last entry, just as the building of the house was about to commence, Carl developed a massive volcanic boil/sore/monster on his leg, which put him down for over a week. He couldn’t walk and was in alot of pain and ended up going to the hospital and got given some antibiotics (which they hand out like free lollies for any and every ailment). He was in bed the whole time and lost over a week in building time, but once he finally got better, they started the work with gusto,  and within a couple of days got the bearers and joists set up, so we have a floor!!!!!! FINALLY- A FLOOR!!! After years of planning, and over a year of being here and back, preparations, trials and errors, WE HAVE A FLOOR!!! Carl is seeming very confident with what he is doing, and with the help of his uncle Varo and some random helping hands that pop in at different times of the day they are doing a perfect job, with the beautiful strong timber he has cut and collected, and it is finally starting to be a reality! WE’RE GONNA HAVE A HOUSE!!!

                                The progress of the house, in order
                                   The posts-up! (craned in by human power, about 4-6 of them!)

                                            
                   The floor down- Joists and Bearers (am just showing off my new building vocab...)
 

Next week they’re gonna start cutting the Mahogany slabs into floor boards, to prepare them for being laid at the end. Carl has written a week by week plan of what to do until we leave in 7 weeks! So with any luck, and hopefully no fuck-ups, all will go well and the main part of the house will be done. We’re waiting for the next boat to come to Rotuma which will hopefully bring the rest of the building materials we need , Roofing iron being one of them. Unfortunately we cant go ahead with the original plan of thatching the roof, as apparently the type of palm leaves used for thatching here is very scarce at the moment and hard to get. It also requires allot of maintenance, which for us, not living here full time, would be a problem. So like anything in life, we’ve just got to flow with what we have, knowing that everything will be perfect at the end.

We finally received the 2 big boxes sent to us from Noah’s preschool in Bondi, which we had been waiting for for weeks. I had approached the parents at his preschool and asked them to gather all their old toys and art and craft stuff, books, dress ups and anything they don’t use anymore and send it over here as a donation to our preschool. The response was fantastic, the manager of the preschool as well as some parents even donated some money to pay for the freight over, and we received 2 boxes full of awesome goodies that the kids here will absolutely LOVE.
I feel so touched and grateful for the effort everyone made to help this happen, and the preschool teachers were all delighted!!!! One parent even donated an old Laptop, which everyone is super excited about!!! So thanks so much to Ocean Street Preschool staff and parents, as well as Em and Selina who helped get it over here!! I cant wait to see all the gorgeous little brown kids dressed up as fairies and lady-bugs, pirates and police men... we’re planning a fund raising concert for the end of July, and will incorporate the dress-ups into the concert, as well as all the songs and rhymes (English, Rotuman, Fijian and even Hebrew...).
     The Shloffing Chef, Saulei dressed up in one of the items sent for preschool

      My first Bindi (Okra) crop...

The advantages of being married to a newly born lumberjack! Beautiful chopping boards! (The one in the front is Mahogany...)


So that’s it for now, it feels like we are starting a bit of a countdown until we leave on July 29th. We get back to Sydney on July 30th, I will be there until mid August and am then heading to Israel to be with my dearest sister Pam as she births her first child. Carl and the boys will be joining us later in September, and we will all stay in Israel until then end of January 2012 when we will be celebrating my dads 70th!!! I am really excited and looking forward to spending a nice chunk of time with my family in Israel, its been way too long!!!!!
So with butterflies in my heart and a very hot sun shining thru my bedroom window with a nice monkey’s wedding showering my vegie garden, I shall sign out, and write again soon xxx

P.S thanks for your comments, which I really look forward to, always!