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Logs Into Lumber LLC, Portable Sawmilling

Name: Logs Into Lumber LLC, Portable Sawmilling
Address: State College, PA, 16801, US
Telephone: (814) 470-0345
Price range: $$

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Logs Into Lumber LLC, Portable Sawmilling

We’re a portable sawmilling service operating throughout central Pennsylvania with a Woodmizer LT-40 mill. Sawing at your location or ours. Local Service

04/27/2026

Making Charcoal from Scrap Oak
Sawing logs generates a lot of scrap wood. We save some of it for firewood, but even that seems wasteful when you have big chunks of oak leftover. Why not make charcoal?

Ever wonder what’s in store-bought charcoal? Charcoal briquettes are remarkably uniform and consistent—what do they use in addition to wood to bind them together? Look at the label on “premium” chunk charcoal. Most of it’s not made in the United States. What kind of wood are they using? Is it wood? Any chemicals involved? Who knows…

I’ve been making charcoal for several years out of hardwood scraps (hickory and oak). It’s the best charcoal I’ve ever used, and I know what I’m getting. Burns hot and long and generates hardly any ash. See captions below:

04/20/2026

Oak Cribbing
A local construction company needed 60 pieces of 8”x8”x36” oak cribbing. That’s a lot of oak. Coincidentally, a friend has forest land where quite a few oaks were killed by gypsy moths—he also has the skill and equipment to fell those trees and get them to a landing. We were off and sawing. See captions under the photos.

10/07/2022

Trailer Decking

A local construction company is re-decking several full length trailers(48’), and asked if I could source/saw the lumber. White oak is a great choice for trailer decking, as it is tough, weather resistant, and very strong. I had a hard time locating logs. Finding clear white oak in suitable lengths is not easy, and this species has become particularly valuable.

I was lucky to find an innovative solution. I worked with a State College area tree service to find the logs. Cutting Edge Tree Professionals was able to source the logs from trees they have cut down in the course of their work—probably from somebody’s yard. “Urban lumber” is win-win. Nothing goes to the landfill, a tree gets repurposed, and a forest white oak is left in the forest.

One drawback to urban lumber: metal. Over the course of a century or so, somebody probably pounded a volleyball net, clothesline, etc. to that tree. These logs were true to form. I hit several nails in one log and ruined two blades. Still, a small price to pay for some beautiful boards.

In total, I provided the customer about 900 bdft of lumber. Green oak is heavy! Too heavy for my F-150. The Cutting Edge guys are great to work with and provided a truck/trailer to get the boards to the customer.

11/17/2021

Dimensional Lumber

The conventional wisdom regarding sawing dimensional lumber (2x ….) is “don’t bother. You can’t compete with Lowes/Home Depot, so it’s cheaper to just buy them there.”

With the skyrocketing price of lumber over the past year however, that thinking has changed. If you have your own logs, and especially if you want a 2x4 that actually measures 2” thick by 4” wide, sawing your own saves money.

With that in mind, I headed out to Unionville, PA this morning to saw up a single white pine tree into dimensional lumber. It was quite a tree: even though the butt log shattered when the tree came down, and there was some rot in a few logs, we still managed to mill over 80 full dimension 2x6s, and 50+ 2x4s.

It was a lot of fun. There is a bit of math involved to get to a cant with the right dimensions. Once you do that, you quickly overwhelm whoever is offbearing by producing multiple boards with each cut. Unfortunately, I was the main offbearer today, so I only overwhelmed myself.

This is the right time of the year to cut white pine. In the summer, pine can easily develop mold if not carefully stacked/ventilated due to the large amount of sap. Photos/captions follow.

05/24/2021

Rebuilding a Hay Wagon

One of the hay wagons at the farm had both main beams crack and fail. They were 3”x 8” by 18’ hemlock and had some large knots in them. A loaded hay wagon may weigh as much as 8 tons, so that’s a lot of weight on top of the uneven terrain and rough conditions a wagon is subject to. Hemlock is a great wood for farm buildings/projects, but it is not the strongest wood.

With the hay ready to cut, they needed the wagon fixed. No time for kiln drying wood and certainly no money to buy it, so we headed into the woods and cut down a few oak trees. For the main beams, we went with 4” x 8” x 18’ white oak, 4”x4” x 8’ cross beams, and 1.5” by 18’ random width floor boards. We went from standing timber to finished wagon in a week. It is lagged, bolted, and nailed into place, so hopefully it dries out OK. On its “maiden voyage,” we put 176 bales on—about 5 tons.
Photos/captions below:

05/02/2021

Off to a Good Start

I had the opportunity to saw some beautiful cherry and walnut over the past couple of weeks, and have quite a bit of sawing lined up. Have also started beekeeping this year.

Here’s some photos of the cherry and walnut:

03/10/2021

Cherry Slabs from Pennsylvania Furnace, PA

Winter came early and stuck around in central Pennsylvania this year. I snuck out in early January to finish up a job and was going to head right over to this one. But my blade lubrication system froze, which caused some cascading problems that required maintenance. Blade l**e is a must when sawing wide slabs, and by the time I fixed it, more snow had arrived and here we are in March.

The job was two cherry logs on a farm in Pennsylvania Furnace, Centre County. There are many locations in Pennsylvania with “Furnace” in the name. They are a reflection of the iron industry, and the blast furnaces erected to manufacture pig iron, mostly in the first half of the 19th century. Many of the furnaces are still in existence, but only a shadow of the giant structures that supported them. They were fired by charcoal, and Pennsylvania’s forests were pretty much sacrificed to make the charcoal to make the iron. People are concerned about fracking today, but I have to think the totality of the iron ore industry was an environmental disaster.

Anyway, the rest of the story unfolds through the following pictures/captions. Glad to be back in action.

11/02/2020

A Mixed Assortment of Logs

I went to Huntingdon County to saw a pile of logs. It was a great example of what Pennsylvania forests have to offer. Started off with a big hemlock, then white pine, cherry, oak, ash, and a maple. These logs all sawed like butter as compared to the black locust I was sawing (see previous post).

We had a beech log but it was starting to rain and we didn’t get to it. The customers were good off-bearers and things went smoothly—until the setworks on the saw started acting up. I’ve been troubleshooting this issue for a month, and ordered some parts this morning. Yesterday’s work paid for the cost of the part! I’m not sawmilling to get rich, but wow, parts are expensive.

10/31/2020

Black Locust

We started out with this standing dead tree thinking it was Ash. It had been dead for awhile. When I looked closely at it however, I didn’t see any evidence of the Emerald Ash Borer. When I sawed it, I knew it wasn’t Ash. It was like cutting iron. Very hard. So hard I thought something might be wrong with the saw. I changed blades...same thing. I finally settled on Hickory, which is a notoriously tough wood to saw, but it didn’t really look like Hickory either.

So I asked for help. There’s a great website called The Forestry Forum. There is a wealth of expertise there—I posted a few pictures and asked what everyone thought. Black Locust was the answer. Very thin sapwood, hard as iron, long straight trunk with no branches, and central PA is in the heart of its growing range.

Locust is an incredibly durable wood. Used widely for fence posts, they can last a century. It’s tough. Also some of the best firewood around. A cord of locust has the same BTU equivalent as a ton of anthracite coal. US Navy ships in the Revolutionary War were credited with winning battles because critical components were made of locust and stood up to British cannonballs! American Indians made bows from locust. OK, you get the picture.

If I had known I was sawing locust, I may have cut it differently, but as it worked out, I now have a pile of locust slabs. I am supposed to cut some Honey Locust next week—will see how different/similar that is.

06/09/2020

Ash Slabs

Pennsylvania has a sad history of invasive insects and disease killing off tree species. The American Chestnut, which once dominated PA forests, was wiped out in the early 20th century by blight. A few decades ago the Gypsy Moth killed millions of oaks until it was brought somewhat under control, and today the Wooly Adelgid is killing off the Eastern Hemlock—the state tree. The real tragedy of this century however, was the arrival of the Emerald Ash Borer. With few exceptions, every ash tree in Pennsylvania is now dead. As you drive along Pennsylvania’s highways and see standing dead trees—many of them are ash, waiting for rot and the wind to bring them down.

Besides being the premier wood for Louisville Slugger baseball bats (what is MLB going to do?), ash is a very good firewood, and splits easily. It’s also a beautiful wood for cabinetmaking and I’ve been lucky to saw many of them. The most recent ash came from Tubbies on Benner Pike. A year ago, I helped the owner, Bill Klaban, cut down 2 dead ash trees. I finally got around to sawing them last week. While it’s sad to see these trees go, hopefully they will live again as furniture in people’s homes.

Next insect on the horizon—the Spotted Lantern Fly. I’ve heard it is an equal opportunity eater that could threaten black walnuts: really hope I’m wrong about that.

Address

State College, PA
16801

Telephone

(814) 470-0345

Website

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