I had a man that owns his own chainsaw mill call and tell me that he had a few cherry logs if I wanted them.  I had just told him a couple of weeks earlier that I was looking for a cherry to mill.  At the time he said he didn't know anyone that had any that wanted it cut, but he would let me know if he heard of any.  The next week the local power company came out and cut his whole row of cherry trees that were under their power wires.  Well since he's not interested in milling hardwoods he gave them to me instead of cutting them up for firewood

Here is a pic showing the forked log above loaded on the mill, I thought me and my friend Chuck were going to break our backs getting it loaded.

Note to self

 Landscape timbers will work, but they are not the best loading ramps out there!  I believe I will be designing some loading ramps soon.

Second cut

Third cut and having a blast!  Batteries went dead in camera just when I wanted to take close ups showing the cherrys color and grain pattern

New batteries in the camera and ready to take more photos the next day

I have seen people using wedges with chainsaw mills before and thought you would only need them for cutting the thicker boards where the weight of the board might pinch your bar. I have found that using them on every board makes the cutting faster and the back side of the board doesn't get gouged by the chain

Here's what the cherry looked like when I got it opened up

The photo below show what the lumber looks like when using a chain filed 5 degrees, it cuts faster than the chain I used the day before that was filed 10 degrees but the lumber is a little rougher. I leaned the lumber up against my shop so I could take a pic of it. If you're wondering why the lumber isn't dimensioned, it's because I'm milling it for my personal use on my scroll saw. I like using wood with it's natural edge so I cut it that way whenever possible  The photo below shows about half of what I cut from two logs and I am pretty happy with this much of a return for a few hours work. 

I have been experimenting with different chain angles the last few weeks trying to see what works the best for me. I have read about filing the chain 0 degrees and I wanted to try it, so I filed the chain straight across with a 0 degree angle and filed the drags down 35 thousands of a inch and started cutting more cherry. I couldn't believe what a difference it made, my saw was cutting through the cherry twice as fast as it did a couple of weeks ago when I had the chain filed 5 degrees. Here are a few photos showing the cuts. I thought they would be rougher but it fact they are a little smoother than the 5 degree angle

A couple of photos of the cherry stacked and stickered for dryingI still have a couple of logs left to mill so I'm not done with my stack yet, that's the reason it looks a little haphazard