Kitchen and Bathroom Cabinets

Mark Rice

Member
Messages
99
Location
Red Feather Lakes, CO
I started the cabinets Monday. I got the logs all loaded up to take to the mill and it snowed. I can't get into the place where the mill is with snow on the road. Well, I could but not with a trailer.
It is all beetle kill pine. I don't just cut down my trees without a good reason. I would buy firewood before I would cut a good tree down. We have a bunch of beetle kill on the place. I still have about 30 trees to cut down. I still have 5 large ones to bring down to take to the mill. Large is like 24" in diameter. Only about one third are big enough to mill but I want to get the largest ones first. I also have about 10 more large ones that friends want me to take down for them.
The first picture is the logs on the trailer. It is a bear to get them more than one layer high. I got some stuff to make a timber lift with but I can't do that till I am ready to load more logs. I think I have at least 3 more loads of logs, not counting the smaller ones. I won't take anything smaller than 10 inches but the small ones will be the last ones to go.
I still have to get the shop done and get a planer, the miter saw mounted and some more clamps. I also have to frame in the bathroom, get it wired in and plumbed before I am ready for cabinets. The wood will take at least two months to cure. This gives me a little time but not much.
I also included some pictures of trees that have died form beetle kill and they holes that they bore. They bore in under the bark. they don't go in any deeper. They create a fungus that dyes some of the grain grayish blue. I am still figuring out if I want to do our floors and trim with it. Might be too much of one thing.
 

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Mark,

I was in Colorado a few years ago, and saw whole mountains, entire valleys, one after the other, covered with beetle-kill trees. It was truly staggering.

I'm glad you're finding something to do with the wood. What happens to the land afterwards? Aspen or fir or something else?

Thanks,

Bill
 
Bill, it truly has wiped out entire forests. We went up to a place called Deadman camping last summer. It is less than 30 minutes from our house. Every tree was dead. Some had a little green in it but they were all dead. Usually the beetles hit ponderosa or lodge pole pine but this area all the furs were dead also. Foresters try to log but the Forest Service won't let them without all sorts of red tape. The Forest Service winds up paying to have someone come in and log the areas. Then they plant new trees. Things don't work so good when you get to the federal level in Washington. Politics and special interest groups get involved from all sides and it everyone loses focus on the big picture.
The whole thing happened when there was a huge micro burst up near Dunkley Flat Tops (Flat Tops Wilderness". It knocked down thousands of trees. It was about 500 acres where every tree was blown down. The loggers wanted to go in and clean the area up. The Forest Service wanted them to but Washington got involved and wanted to come up with some committee to study the situation. While they were studying the beetles from miles away were drawn to the scent of the fresh sap from the downed pine trees. It turned into an infestation. Before anyone could get the budget approved and get all the different groups to agree on spraying the area the beetles became over whelming. The Forest Service opened it up for loggers two years after the blow down but the trees weren't good for anything but fire wood at that point. The Forest Service paid to have trees removed. I haven't been up there since the blow down so I don't know how good it has recovered from the blow down. Most of the trees around that area, that were out of the range of the micro burst, are dead form beetles. It is a shame. That area was beautiful. I used to hunt and camp there a lot. It is near Yampa, North and west of Vail.
Our area is doing pretty good. The temperatures are a little colder than the areas that have been hit really hard. Most of this area is also privately owned and there is more work done to try to minimize the little buggers. We dropped 10 trees last year and we sprayed some. This year we are going to spray again and the trees that we drop are going to get processed in some way to kill the beetles in that trees that still have some in them.
They go for the older or weaker trees first. Younger trees that have exposed roots or broken branches are also targets. They usually go for the lodge pole first, then the ponderosa. They don't hit any of the fur trees much. The problem with our place is that the folks that had it before did not do any forest management and let the trees get too thick. I am dropping the beetle kill first. When I get done with that I can start on the areas that are too thick and start pruning out the weaker trees from the thick areas. We also have a lot of new trees coming in. When we clear out an area the ground gets more sun and the pine nuts can germinate. I have noticed about 50 new trees on our place alone. The problem is they are right on each other in some places so I will have to think them out also. But as long as we have at least a few green trees I will keep on trying to keep as many as possible.
Probably more than you wanted to know but it isn't a simple answer to any of it.
 
Probably more than you wanted to know but it isn't a simple answer to any of it.

Mark,

Thanks for the details. I'm actually very interested in this, probably because I was so shocked at what I saw there. I never could have imagined whole forests across entire regions dying.

I was surprised to find out the beetles were native, and have always been there. The summers get just a little warmer, the winters just a little milder, and suddenly they have an edge. Something similar seems to be happening in British Columbia. I haven't seen it, but I've heard stories of 40 million acres lost.

It's different from the loss of sugar maples in Vermont. That's just as real, but far less dramatic. You wouldn't notice if you didn't know what to look for. The locals say there won't be much of a sugar industry there ten years from now.

And it's different from losing all the ash trees. That bug was imported. They say there won't be many ashes left not too long from now.

But with the maples and the chestnuts and the elms and the ashes, other trees take their place in the forests. It's not like the whole forest dies. I remember some valleys in Colorado where you could stand there, down along the creek, and not see a single living tree.

That's why I'm interested to know what's happening there. Are other trees taking their place? Or are the mountains simply going over to grass and scrub?

Thanks,

Bill
 
They will grow back. The Forest Service is planting in some areas also. They had a beetle infestation in the mid or late 70s and you couldn't tell it 20 years later. The biggest problem is it creates prime conditions for fires and after fires it starts the erosion. The erosion can be more devastating than the fire. That effects people more than the earth. The pines will always come back. The Haymen fire was 160,000 acres. This year we have had more than 30 fires already, before the beginning of the regular fire season.
Long story short tho, the trees will grow back. I think this is nature's way of thinning out what we won't let it thin out.
 
Back before we put out fires there was a more diverse forest. When fire happens often, there is not the large fuel load to burn. It doesn't burn as hot so doesn't kill as many trees. The forest was trees of different ages.

Insect infestations usually target the old, weak trees so there were not the 'kill all' events we see now.
 
John, right on both accounts. I couldn't agree more.

I called the sawyer yesterday and arranged to drop off another load of logs this morning. As I slipped into a coma last night I was thinking about how it is going to be real nice to drop off the last of the logs for this set. I thought about how exciting it is going to be to see some of the grain and what kind of strange patterns I could pick out for special stuff. I got up all charged to get the logs to the mill. That all ended when I looked out the window as I was making coffee this morning.
Now, I am not a real smart man but I know when it looks like something is gonna hurt. I remembered the last time I tackled the driveway with that trailer and ice/snow. I was coming up the hill that time. I had a brand new Cub Cadet diesel UTV on the trailer. My father bought one in Cheyenne and wanted me to go pick it up for him. When I left the sun was out and melting the snow off the driveway. When I got home there was a 60 MPH wind and the sun had gone down. I didn't think about the melted snow/slush freezing. I got about 3/4 up the driveway when the truck stopped. Then the truck started to slide down hill, backwards, with a trailer with the new UTV on it, in the dark. I could only see enough to see what to avoid. I knew I had to worry about where the trailer was going more than the truck. I could see it flash before my eyes that the truck was going to jack knife and the trailer was going to wind up on it's side in the creek and who knew where that new UTV was going to wind up. After it was all said and done I turned the trailer into a steep hill on the opposite side of the creek. Gravity started the whole thing so I figured gravity could stop it. The UTV didn't budge, the trailer didn't even touch the truck. I walked the rest of the way to the house and called a friend to help me pull it out.
After remembering that episode I did the smart thing.

Mark "Russ?"
Russ "Morning Mark"
Mark "Yeah, about that load."
Russ "Weather bad there too?"
Mark "Yep, not sure I want to try to drive down the driveway with this trailer. Done that before, didn't work real good"
Russ "You mean you are gonna learn from your mistakes?"
Mark "Kinda weird, isn't it?"
Russ "Weather isn't any better over here either. Supposed to get better Saturday."
Mark "Good idea, Saturday will probably work better. I can bring the wife along then. We can sit back and drink a soda while we watch her unload the trailer."
Russ "Don't think that is gonna happen."
Mark "Yeah, you are probably right."
Russ "Saturday?"
Mark "Sounds like a plan."

Got a cup of coffee and a Texas Cinnamon Roll gut bomb, then I walked the dog. Getting older means getting smarter I guess. Not as exciting tho. The older I get the more I appreciate boredom.
 

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