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How To Straighten A Crooked Log
By Ron Gosnell
Editor’s note: Ron Gosnell is a retired forester who lives in the Lyons area and who has helped owners manage their forests for over forty years.
With summer coming, many forest landowners will soon be hard at work to make their homes, property, and family safer from wildfire. This usually involves cutting down excess trees and brush. Often the lower quality trees are selected for removal in a “fuel reduction” process. The result is that in many cases, the crooked logs of cut trees look to be worthless. Landowners or contractors end up cutting them into random-length pieces for easier handling, to be manually loaded and then dropped off at a place that accepts this material.
This may be the easiest thing to do depending upon circumstance. However, when there are enough trees of reasonable quality to be thinned, that presents an opportunity to cut wood products. To do so is not that difficult. Wood posts, rails, poles and saw logs must be fairly straight, branchless with flush cuts, and have straight-end cuts to specific
“A Rather Abrasive Topic”
Ask the Handywoman!
By Kheli Mason, The Handy Woman LLC
Lately I’ve been doing a lot of work with wood. Knotty pine to be exact. Hundreds of board feet of it, making baseboard and door and window molding. It takes a lot of busy work to sand and stain and sand and seal all of this wood, but the results are definitely worth the effort.
You have a lot of time for musing when you are doing this type of task. You have to pay attention and keep an eye on what you are doing as you sand each board with one and sometimes two different grits of sandpaper and maybe even a third in between stain and sealer coats. As I was going about this task, I started thinking about what life was like without sandpaper. I couldn’t
Are You Seeing Spots...On Your Dishes?
If your dishwasher is turning out dull, spotty dishes - leaving you frustrated and annoyed - you're not alone. Spotty and cloudy dishes are a common nuisance for many dishwasher owners across America.
In fact, a recent survey from the makers of OxiClean(r) found that people experience spots and cloudy film on their dishes straight out of the dishwasher an average of five times per month, and 70 percent felt annoyed or frustrated because they didn't know the cause.
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Help Protect Our Native Birds
By David Rahbany
In spite of the recent snows, spring has arrived in Lyons! One clear sign is the return of colorful bluebirds and finches to our town. Unfortunately, these birds are under threat from some nasty neighbors.
House sparrows and starlings are non-native, invasive species that kill and out-compete native birds like the Mountain Bluebird. Please help keep native songbirds coming back to Lyons by
Packing In The Savings
Lyons residents, Elizabeth Lennert and her husband Eric, knew that they wanted to re-model their 1970s-era home, and thought there must be something better than 1970s energy use. As a part of their re-model process, the Lennerts decided to get a home energy assessment from EnergySmart. Based on recommendations from their EnergySmart advisor, they decided to upgrade the insulation in the walls, attic, and in the floor and crawl/space.
