milling thread

[Al Smith]

You can find the itty bitty mills for about the price of a splitter I think .They are rather light duty and aren't really portable other than the fact the tracks and head stock can be handled by a few stout men .

I've seen them demonstrated and while they aren't praticularly fast they are a tad more speedy than a chainsaw and a whole lot less work .They are really designed for small logs and it's doubtfull they could handle a 3 foot oak log .24 incher maybe by 12 foot would most likely be the limit .8 HP more or less with 3/4" bands .

 

[woodworkingboy]

Yeah, nice idea. That first cut with the conventional methods can be a bit of a pita, getting the angle that you want to match the pith or whatever, without twist. It always seemed to me that having a set up like you have, Larry, say over a concrete slab where you could also jack up or down each end of the log, would be a good way to go.

 

[Al Smith]

Since there seems to be an interest in this stuff perhaps a link or two might be in order .

I checked on that small band mill I mentioned and it's 2100 bucks for the basic machine .That's for an Oscar 18 built by Hudson but others make small mills also .

For a chainsaw mill the best design I've found is a homebuilt which this guy sells detailed plans for .http://www.procutportablesawmills.com/index.html

Another interesting site is this which has a lot of ideas for those so inclined to build a mill .
http://www.diybandmill.com/index.php?option=com_frontpage&Itemid=1

 

[Porkbrick]

that procut is making me dream, and drool. i wish i had the time and space for a project like that.

 

[CurSedVoyce]

Making that whole cedar tree into fire wood was a damn shame today .... Would have made some nice barn siding.

 

[Porkbrick]

i have a stack of red cedar slabs i milled almost 12 years ago stored at my moms place. went up there a few months ago to find out that my brothers have been making raised bed and knife throwing back boards out of it. i will be dismantling their raised beds you can be certain

 

[CurSedVoyce]

Understandable!

 

[Al Smith]

Making that whole cedar tree into fire wood was a damn shame today .... Would have made some nice barn siding.

Since you mentioned that ,the guy that cut what bit of lumber I have is a lineman .

Some years back he and his brothers were working in Detroit installing 70 foot poles made from 90s' ,cut down . They hauled 20 foot long pole butts by the hundreds back to Ohio ,western red cedar ,untreated .

They bought a little Woodmizer LT 15 I think and cut enough cedar to more than pay for the mill .Those butts were around 30 inchs in diameter .Needless to say about anyone in the family that wanted a cedar lined closet got one .They sold every bit of it they wanted to for about 1/2 what retail prices were .

They actually made nearly as much money one year just cutting on the week ends as they did working as linemen .

 

[CurSedVoyce]

Sweet!

 

[squisher]

Cool thread. Going through my stacks of wood today had me dreaming of milling.

 

[sotc]

I have around 1000 board feet of pine and 100 board feet of walnut stacked in the shop

 

[squisher]

Cool. I gotta finger out some way of milling.

 

[sotc]

And some russian olive

 

[squisher]

Russian olive really? How'd that mill out?

 

[sotc]

Kinda pretty, lemme dig through my phone and see if I still have pix

 

[sotc]

Most of this is pine but you should be able to pick out the olive. The 8x8 cant is olive too

 

[CurSedVoyce]

Purty

 

[woodworkingboy]

No sawmill in your area, Squish?

 

[squisher]

Oh there's plenty of sawmills from huge to tiny. I'd rather do my own though and sell even rough cut lumber instead of selling the logs.

The Tolko mill less than 1km away from me does over 350million board feet of lumber a year. Hundreds of loads of logging trucks a day feed it.

I'm thinking about getting an Alaskan and giving them a run for their money. Lol.

 

[Reddog]

Oh there's plenty of sawmills from huge to tiny.

This one wasn't too far away if I remember right.

 

[Al Smith]

I'm still rounding up bits and pieces for my bandsaw .It's down to the saw itself with the set works etc .After that it will be the dogs ,loader and misc stuff like hydraulic feed .

I've about decided on steel round stock slides with a link chain set works instead of threaded rod .It will take probabley a triple reduction on the chainlift because the saw head will weigh a tad bit with a Wisconsin 4 cylinder for power .

Danged machine should have been done already except other things took priority .

 

[woodworkingboy]

Alaskan milling is cool, I've done a lot and not knocking it, but I do find that a sawmill that charges reasonable makes life a heck of a lot easier, and the costs are pretty minor when you look at the speed and efficiency and lack of loss due to a thin kerf. Murphy's law applies to Alaskan milling in a big way. You can reduce the time that a mill will charge by cutting off any protrusions that might interfere, and marking which side you want to cut and knowing what thicknesses, if the mill charges by time and not volume. A good band mill can zing right through it pronto, and leaves a very good surface. Sticker it right off the saw for air drying and load it into your truck that way. Unload as a complete unit and it saves having to muscle around slabs. Cover it and paint the ends, or paint before milling, and you are into the drying phase no muss no fuss, with considerably less handling. Sawmills rock, imo.

 

[Ax-Man]

Wow, 8x8 cants of olive. Are the cants Russian olive ?? We have Russian Olive around here but I haven't seen any get that big. Mostly they are invasive small brushy trees that are a pain in arse to work with.

I see spring is in the air and the milling wood bug is starting to bite. I have been doing a little milling myself . I'll try to get some pics up of my latest cutting of some Red Cedar wood for some soon to be benches.

Jay , I see we are on the same page. I like the Alaskan mill. It is fun but a bandsaw may be a better way to go for making slabs because of that narrow kerf. I might have to scale back on my expectations and get a push type bandmill istead of a hydraulic one mostly due to costs. It wouldn't kill me to push a bandsaw mill.

Here is a picture of a bench made out of Russian Olive that I have in my pictures. Cool looking wood.

 

[squisher]

This one wasn't too far away if I remember right.

Heh that's Tolko(formerly Riverside) veneer plant on the way to Lumby right? That's like five minutes from my house. That mill is a former shadow of it's previous self it used to be quite a bit larger. Those fields in the back there are the neighbouring farm to the dairy I worked at all through highschool. Lumby is where I was born and raised.

Tolko's lavington planer mill is what I was referring to in my previous post it makes that site look small.


Jay, I haven't found anybody locally who will do custom milling for anything close to reasonable, might as well go buy the lumber if you want to go that route around here. That's what has got me thinking about doing some milling myself, cash in on some of that action. Value-added and all.

 

[Reddog]

Heh that's Tolko(formerly Riverside) veneer plant on the way to Lumby right?

Yup that is the right area. I snapped a picture because of the two LeTourneau log movers.