Prehistoric Sinker Cypress Log - Buried 30 Feet Deep for 5000+ Years!!! - Part 1 of 2

guess what I'm sitting on a new log today and this is gonna be part of our sole of the tree series that we started in January 2020 our promise to you is that for every new species that we cut we're going to document it and give you the first peek inside to see the heart or the soul of the tree now this is a truly unique stump it's a seeker Cypress stump it was actually excavated near the Mississippi River about 30 feet underground yes that's right 30 feet underground now it is believed to be prehistoric in nature now ultimately this stuff is going to be carbon-dated by the University of Arkansas I've been told that by the client and we will share that information with it with you now in the meantime what I want to do for this video is just show you the arrival of this stump us moving this beast around is about 10,000 pound and it's a really awkward thing to move we also pressure-washed it for over three hours to try to remove all this prehistoric mud and muck and then we're going to go ahead and trim it up with a special carbide blade that is made to go through dirt rocks metal just nasty stuff I'm going to set it up on our sawmill we're gonna mill it and of course finally the exciting part will be showing you the sole of the tree inside this Louisiana sinker Cypress stump so guess what let's get to work [Music] [Music] you [Music] all right so we're done with the pressure washing you know we could spend another two three hours and maybe get another 10-15 percent of this mud out of here but you can see this tap root which is right here we're able to actually go all the way in to the bottom and we can see in all these crevices now now of course there is mud we're not going to get a pristine but we're gonna do as best we can with a minimal amount of time spent on this so three hours is about as Max's we're gonna do if not we just kind of burn in time and burn of money at that point but I'm pretty happy with the end result the real question now is just going to be what is inside this what objects are hiding inside this thing and we really hope that we don't hit anything so hard that we can't actually cut through it because that's a big pain in the butt if we do hit an object and have to pull the blade out backwards but if we do we will show you that process okay aren't you glad that muddy mess is over guess what what's funny is that I didn't have to do much of that work so thanks guys for getting to be mud monsters so at this point this is my challenge I've got to do an assessment on the stump to best figure out how to actually put it on to our sawmill safely but not only that to get the best quality and yield out of this thing so this stump is definitely far too big to put on our sawmill without trimming it down to safely sawmill it so we're gonna cut it down on the width so somewhere under 70 inches now what I want to do in an optimal scenario is maximize the height of the log on our sawmill so I can get more cuts or more lumber or more slabs for the client so I think it's somewhere over 80 inches right now I'm 65 it's pretty close to me on this side so let's look at some measurements and some areas also that it's going to sit flat and these well-supported on the cans of the sawmill okay so we know that the height off the ground right now is about 67 66 inches so no trimming involved if we can if we can actually rotate this law of 90 degrees and set it up on the sawmill now what I want to verify is the width I want this width to be 80 plus inches so we can get more lumber out of it from top to bottom so let's check that out right now - yeah without a doubt so my eyes aren't too bad yet at my old age of 43 it was about 98 inches so no doubt about it that we need to rotate this log 90 degrees and we're gonna gain about 20 more inches of cut material to give more lumber back to our client and we don't have to trim for the cut capacity of our sawmill we're good there now I am gonna mark knock off some of this loose stuff it's just bad for the blade and could damage the blade but for the most part this is a really good sized stump for our WM 1000 which is one of the biggest thin kerf wide capacity sawmills built in North America right now okay I had to run back to the shop real quick to grab this saw this is actually a Husqvarna 395 XP it's actually been bored out and hot rotted so it's a hundred CCS at port work done awesome salt love it heavy saw kind of hard to start but once it gets going it will mow through material like nothing else I apologize real quick I've got a couple young kids in the background riding dirt bikes on the property so I apologize if there's little background noise but real quick let's talk about the bar this is just a 54 inch bar and I've got a skip tooth tooth chain on it right now I'm gonna pull this chain it's been freshly sharpened in our shop if I use this Jane on that log of course it's dirty it will just ruin this and dull it almost instantly now luckily we had a project which was a very challenging live oak removal on Lake Austin now we had to cut literally a twenty thousand plus pound stump in half in the way that we got that accomplished with a was a true specialty blade it was this plane right here now this is over a three hundred dollar blade it was designed and it's engineered for search and rescue teams fire fighters etc for really dirty nasty environments where you gotta cut through rocks sometimes in the metal etc so this blade is gonna get it done the problem in the question that I have is unfortunately I forgot to send it in to get it resharpen we can't do it at the shop here because it's a specialty blade so it's been fairly well used if you're curious about the use of it check out this video of this live oak which is just a quick time-lapse video of some of our early grueling removal work around Texas so hey let's get to it let me pop off this chain I'm gonna pop the carbide on I also notice that I had a crack in this handle so I'm gonna go ahead and replace it with a new om that I happen to have in the shop too and then we'll go mark the law and hopefully we'll get a nice flat cut so we can set this log on the deck of our sawmill really really nicely with good stability you okay let me clean this up a little more and I just want to give you a close-up of the carbide itself so you can see this is braze this is the actual car by tooth that is braised onto this chain this is what makes it a specialty chain and also very expensive chain as I noted we've actually have a full day of really dirty cutting on this so I'm hoping we can still get another hour or so to trim this Cypress log before we have to send it off but hey let's go find out all right so we're all ready to trim this thing off so it can sit flat on the deck real quick safety precautions of course any time you use a chain saw I cannot stress this enough guys we're all smart enough to use hearing protection eye protection shafts chaps chaps chaps look I know they can be a pain to put on I know they could be uncomfortable I know they can get hot you need to wear them I always haven't been perfect about it but I've made a big effort in the last couple years to make sure I'm always putting these chaps on believe me they'll save you some heartache and potentially some really big injuries so please use chats [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] okay I'll call that a success you know that blade wasn't exactly sharp but it definitely got the job done I'm gonna have to send a reminder to myself to make sure to ship that thing out to get it sharpened so the next time this happens we're ready to go now I think I've got this cut right where I need to have it we're gonna find out so this is going to be what the surface of the face of this stump that's gonna lay on the deck of the sawmill then the only thing we'll need to do at that point is raise up this nose in so we're making a perfectly perpendicular cut for this dead center of this log and you'll see more we've actually done a video about center cutting pit logs that you can check out here to get a better idea of what I'm talking about when I'm referring to centering a pit outside of that real quick I'm getting more and more excited about this folks I'm starting to see signs that there's gonna be some different coloration in here now Cypress usually is just a light pretty uniform wood it's not known for its color but that's where sinker logs are so popular all the mineral deposits from being submerged over a period of time creates some really cool coloration it's almost like staining or dyeing the inside heart of these logs so you know I'm starting to have a little bit of a feel that maybe we're gonna see some pretty cool color in this so at this point I've got the challenge of trying to transport this from our forklift onto the deck and getting it on there flatly safely and ready to go for tomorrow when the client shows up and we actually mill this puppy [Music] all right so that wasn't too bad at all I just basically dragged it out in here that's good enough now at this point I'm gonna rotate it over to get it fall to fall flat on this flat face surface and then hopefully I'll be able to come on this side pick it right up and drop it on to the deck of our song but let's keep our fingers crossed for another positive outcome all right [Music] [Music] yes so far so good this is exactly what I had envisioned I'm not envisioning this thing coming rolling off of this thing so this is our biggest challenge at this point is getting it on this deck get it stabilized and preventing it from rolling off the deck especially backwards or on the far side of our deck so one thing I decided to do real quick is I'm gonna put a ratchet strap a 10,000 pound ratchet strap around the top of this to prevent this thing from full hauling forward I'll then be able to shim it and secure it before I actually pull the forks out or at least that's the goal [Music] [Music] all right great so at this point I'm happy with it it's stable it's not going anywhere now of course there's a really tall center of gravity on this thing so we need to make sure that we're being safe when we're milling it milling it's low when I get to about here it's all good at that point so I'll be a little nervous until then so we still have to trim it up one thing I'm really happy about though is that I have five points of contact I've created one in the front I've got one on this side one on the back side one on this side and one on the back side so that makes me feel really happy I like to have at least five or six points of contact just in case something slips the whole raw log isn't gonna fail at that point so we'll keep at it and we'll keep trying to stay safe I need to be below this crossmember for us to be able to clear the top of this log so we're gonna have to put a platform up here so I can safely stand and comfortably stam to be able to give this thing a buzz cut so let's do it [Music] [Music] [Music] hey I've got an intermission I'm sorry to interrupt I'm sitting here in front of another Cyprus law but this is a Texas Cyprus but in terms of this sinker log I've decided to break this up into two parts this effort occurred over three days and we have over ten hours of video footage I didn't anticipate the video to be this long but I wanted to show as much detail as I could and really show you the type of effort that we make here at the Texas urban sawmill so part two which I'm posting right here is going to go into the milling operation itself and then of course we're gonna show you the sole of the tree with lots of detail of the grain the color in the character of course by the way this is our third in the series this Bald Cypress log has a crazy unique history in itself it's actually been salvaged basically twice so if you're interested in learning more about this log I'm gonna post it sometime in March and we'll keep it up for every new species I make that promise to you that we'll make sure to so to show you the soul of the tree all right I gotta get back to work now

Channel: Texas Urban Sawmill, LLC

Views: 240,798

Keywords: live edge furniture, walnut furniture, natural edge furniture, wood slabs, custom design furniture, live edge, contemporary furniture, reclaimed furniture, adaptive tree re-use, sinker cypress, prehistoric log, prehistoric tree, texas sawmill, austin sawmill, largest sawmill, texas lumber, perfectly imperfect lumber, perfectly imperfect furniture, refined elements LLC, texas urban sawmill llc, tree salvage, texas tree

Id: rKSQ0FVwNt8

Length: 19min 54sec (1194 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 27 2020