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The facilities leave a lot to be desired though!
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2016 - Milling our logs...
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The club has the use of two mills which allows us to make the most of the logs we find.
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For the bigger logs we use Michael's 'Lucas mill' to produce boards to
whatever dimensions we need. It's fast and easy enough to use although the large
size of the saw-kerf means we create nearly as much sawdust as we do timber.
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The 'Lucas mill' also has the chainsaw slabbing attachment which is great
for those big logs that won't produce much in the way of straight-grained
boards.
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  For
all the smaller logs and special timbers we use Jon's home-made bandsaw mill. It
looks a bit rough and ready and it was only ever meant to be a prototype, but it
has milled an awful lot of timber for a 'test rig'!!
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Always a joy to see something unexpected in the logs we mill, like the black
streaks in the Cadaghi at left, or the beautiful colour and figure in the Buloke log on the right.
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... and there always seems to be an audience!
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The club finally acquired it's very own forklift so we did a reshuffle ,
de-stickering and cleanup of our stash at Kingower. We now have easy access
to our slabs and boards - more than we'll ever use so we sell to the public
as well. Get in touch if you looking for some timber for a project!
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Back in 2021, the Kingower shed got sold out from under us and we had
nowhere to store our timber other than in a club members yard under tarps - far
from satisfactory!
As we had no luck finding a suitable shed, in 2024 we decided to buy a
shipping container to put at the showgrounds where it was easy to access and
back under our control. Many thanks to the Emerald Auction Centre for their
generous assistance with the purchase and to LD Training for transporting the
container to the showgrounds for us.
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Thanks to council regulations, we had to chain the container down so it
couldn't float away in a flood! Fortunately we were loaned an auger to dig the
holes and the concrete was generously donated by a local business.
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Emerald Carrying Company generously lifted the container into place for us -
so many local businesses helping us out was humbling and greatly appreciated.
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Then came the big day moving the timber over in early 2025. Several trailer
loads later and a full days work but it all fitted in with room to spare . . .
although at the time of writing, it is almost overflowing.
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2026 - Not so far west...
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 As
we get more timber than we can store from logs salvaged around town these days,
it's been a very long time since we've had a day out bush. When we were given
access to a property just a half hour from town, we decided to do a day trip for
the hell of it. The property has a very diverse range of bush types so it was a
great chance to show the newer members the types of timbers we use and just get
out for a day. We still ended up bringing a trailer load of timber back and
earmarking a few good trees for later use if we ever get room to store more, but
the best part was a barbeque lunch in the shade beside the lagoon. As I heard
one of the new members say several times . . "This is just bloody perfect!"
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