Diving right into the project, we ordered what we needed. To start, we had shovels, drills, hammers, and other household tools. On amazon, we ordered:
With these things we were able to learn a lot quickly. We started the project by finding the perfect spot. The spot we picked is on the top of a hill, looking down to a creek close by. Having the creek close by is a huge plus because one day we will be using it for water. With our chainsaw, it was quick and easy to clear all the trees off of the spot. Before moving any of the logs, we decided to try and mill one of the largest logs. This was a sort of practice-run, as we were going to be making a bridge to cross over the creek with the lumber. With the Alaskan mill and a circular saw, it was easy to cut planks to size. The bridge was made out of two 12’ logs about 6” in diameter, with 1” planks on top. The saw we bought was an inexpensive saw, and it shows. It took ages to finally cut through the 16’ log.
After building the bridge, we cut up the logs laying on the build site and hauled them to a large pile about 10m away. We decided to cut the logs to 12’ sections, just like the bridge. This will probably be convenient in the future to have a dozen logs all the same length.
After milling the wood for the bridge, we decided to mill a very long oak log. Our itty-bitty chainsaw took 30 minutes to cut one slab of the hard wood, very unimpressive. We weren’t giving up though and cut another slab. At home we were seriously reassessing how long this would take with our cheap chainsaw. We realized that we had a lot of wood to cut and this chainsaw wouldn’t get the job done. We were left with two options: buy all the wood, or buy a much more powerful chainsaw. It turns out that saws get expensive, and it would be cheaper and more time consuming to just buy all the wood. At this point in time, we haven’t bought any wood yet except for the posts, as well as concrete to hold them in. These are the first steps of a long journey.
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