Turning a dead oak tree into a mountain bike jump with a cheap mill

In the summer we cut down this

dead

tree

to build a woodpecker trail. Who knows how long the

tree

was there, but the wood we cut was certainly solid and strangely full of perfectly usable wood. Well, it turns out that Berm Peak is a goldmine of white oak, which according to Wikipedia is naturally resistant to rot. Now I'm not sure how rot resistant it really is, but wherever we find this material it seems to be more or less intact. With the discovery of this abundant resource right under our noses, I wanted to find a way to use it for more than just cage landings.

So today we're going to build something from the first piece we cleared of the woodpecker trail. But first we have to get down to the gravel road. You can barely fit a hand truck on this trail, let alone a UTV. So, it took a little creativity and a lot of fighting to get this piece of

dead

tree back onto the gravel path. This winch I'm using gets its power from any cordless drill. At first glance it seems very useful, but in reality it is quite limited. This winch has a built-in torque limiter that prevents it from pulling anything larger than this.

With a strict 500 lb limit, you can't rely on this drilling winch to recover vehicles or extract larger pieces of wood like we did with the git'r. But for moving things or placing heavy logs to build trails, this could come in handy. After a long, bumpy ride on the bus, I finally managed to get that piece of wood down to the gravel road. And now you might be wondering why I didn't just cut this up where I found it, and you know what? That's a very good point. But our grinding operation will require a level surface, as well as electrical power.

Because besides that drilling lathe, there is something else we need to try today. I found this chainsaw on Wranglerstar's YouTube channel and purchased it for under $30 on Amazon. Attaches to any chainsaw bar with set screws and uses a 2x6 guide rail. By securing it with a couple of screws, you can square the wood and turn it into dimensional lumber. To cut this waterlogged oak, I am using a plug-in electric saw that costs less than $100. It seems like an odd choice, but a gas saw that can run continuously without overheating is quite expensive. There is also the noise factor that comes from continuously running a two-stroke saw for hours on end.

Not very friendly. But my power

mill

ing operation was far from perfect. First, I kept breaking the circuit breaker and needed to use a different circuit with higher amperage. Then the extension cords themselves started giving me problems, which isn't a surprise given how much current this thing draws. This saw also comes with a self-sharpening chain. It's a pretty interesting concept, but I suspect that's how they make their money back on this. Replacement self-sharpening chains cost $30, which is twice as much as a regular chain. I'll let it go and install a regular cutting chain when it wears out.

Another limitation is the 18” bar. Planks like the ones we're cutting are fine, but you're not going to start slab with this. But once I worked out the bugs, this $130 electric grinder was totally usable. I was actually able to get 2x12 boards out of this thing. And after cleaning the table saw a bit, I had more than enough usable wood to make something. It may not be a surprise that we are building an access ramp. It's my favorite thing to build, so what's better than trying out our first batch of lumber from the Berm Peak saw

mill

? I've never been one to waste wood, or so I thought.

But the truth is that two per stock in the store are so

cheap

that an extra piece here and there doesn't mean much. This project forced me to use materials more intelligently. Fearing that I would run out of wood and have to do more milling, I found myself maximizing the wood I had and even altering the project itself to use less material. I ripped the scraps into smaller boards and spaced them considerably further than normal. Hardwood is heavy, especially when it is not completely dry. But our rough cut hardwood has quite a bit of character. This thing looks like a medieval

bike

ramp, like it was designed for beheadings.

Because the wood is rough cut, it actually provides more traction to bicycle tires. And since I plan to leave this outside, we'll see how durable this wood really is. And since this ramp stands on its own, we can experiment with it. When I'm about to try something really stupid, I need someone to encourage me. So I got into a video chat with Porter. You can't hear the sound, but it was something like "don't worry Seth, you got it." "Okay, I will try it". "Shit, did you see my front wheel hit that tree?" “Yes, I was going to say something about that.

Why don’t you try lowering the rear wheel?” “Okay, here it goes.” It will make more sense later why I wanted to do a 360 here. But I guess it's pretty tight. If you grew up around sawmills, this probably wasn't very interesting, but to me it's witchcraft. I always thought the wood came from the store, but now I know that it is a relatively simple process to obtain it from dead trees. And as a result, we have a sweet-looking kicker who was actually born on Berm Peak. I plan to install this plugin at the beginning of a much larger feature, which we will start developing once the weather becomes more predictable.

Until then, I'll run the Berm Peak sawmill until we have enough boards to do it. And when it's all said and done, we'll have the craziest feature we've created yet. Thanks for traveling with me today and we'll see you next time.