portable sawmill

Here is a picture of my friend Andrew running my new sawmill.

Any info on the mill you could provide?
Haven't seen one like that.

This is a swing blade style mill from peterson.  It is their "skillmill".

paul wheaton wrote:
This is a swing blade style mill from peterson.  It is their "skillmill".

Thanks.

I have a couple questions about this sawmill..

How deep does the blade cut down?

Can you put larger blades on it?

What hp is the engine?



Also a friend and myself are just about to buy a sawmill to work with in Washington because i have many friends with property that needs cleand up and we will be falling lots of trees and besides that my friends and i are general contractors and landscapers  and i cant even count how many hundreds of large trees we have taken down and cut into rounds for firewood and given away free to get it out of the customers yards.

This is the sawmill we are probably going to buy http://www.hud-son.com/oscar36.htm but i have never seen this model and will look into it.  But it does not look liek it can cut very nice wood besides maybe 8" beams or so witht he small blade?

The one you are looking at is a bandsaw style mill. 

Mine is a swing blade style.

This particular blade cuts only 4 inches deep.  But you can cut a 4x8.  And you can cut one beam per log that is larger than 4x8.  I have left behind slabs that were 18 inches wide and two or three inches thick.

A bandsaw mill can cut in only one direction, and you have to get the log up on the rails. 

With this mill, you can roll the log under the rails and work on it, or move the mill to be over the log. 

It is designed for you to cut in both directions so that each pass produces a piece of lumber.

With a bandsaw mill, you need to roll your log repeatedly to get a cant, and then you start carving off pieces of lumber.

In the sawmill trials, this style of mill almost always wins for quality and speed. 

The downside is that it is optimized for basic lumber sizes.  If you want lots of big things from one log, this mill does not do that well.

But!  This style of mill comes in bigger sizes with a much bigger blade. 

Yeah i can clearly see mine is a bandsaw mill. My questions werent what kind of saw i was looking into but on what kind of cuts your saw can make.  I checked out thier website and can see how limited in ways your saw is.  Its pretty much up to what kind of wood a person is trying to mill.  I can get lots of trees that would be wasted if i could only cut 16" boards.  I see they have the mill with the chainsaw stile blade that can cut wide logs like i can get so im going to do more research on that model.. 


Once i but a mill i will post on it.. Wont be for a month or two.

Peace

if we're talking about portable sawmills, i thought i would mention the fabulous "alaskan chainsaw mill" that is the ultimate in portability.

1) if ur not going to be cutting a massive amount of lumber it is the best bang for your buck.

2) take the mill to the log.  u don't have to skid logs out to the mill.  u mill where the tree falls.  no damage to the forest floor to cause erosion. no damage to other trees as ur equipment or horse bang into them on the way out.  can cut on VERY steep ground.

3) can cut boards of unlimited length

4) can cut MUCH wider logs than bandsaw.  cutting width is about 8" less than the total bar length.  my longest bar is 50" long and i can cut 42" live edged slabs.  watch of nakashima!

5) very physical work; no need to go to the gym and pump iron.  i see this as a plus, not everyone will i suppose.

disadvantages
1) loud and dirty/breath fumes
2) wide kerf, more wasted wood
3) uses lots of fuel and mix oil
4) much slower than other methods


if ur curious about how it works:

www.nicksportablesawmill.com

there are lots of you tubes of alaskan mills

Cool.

oooh,Nice rig Paul, !
how long does it take to set up?
looks pretty involved to get it all leveled & parallel to the log
then chop out a 2x4 at a time

here's a video of mine in action
http://www.vimeo.com/4231260
definitely in the "crappy video is better than no video" category.
note:the chain really needed sharpening by this point,see the dusty chips.
we had already cut about 10 slabs or so.going thru the bark and dirt too.
also ,i always have chainsaw chaps on now.this was old vid.

heres a shot of my alaskan on a 42" bar.
in the garage you can see a stack of slabs we made.

wow tribalwind where do i get one of those? the endless possibility's with that thing here makes me drool.

baileys is a good place. ive bought a bunch there..it's about $200
http://www.baileysonline.com/itemdetail.asp?item=46778&productid=46778&channelid=FROOG

lots of guys make their own.its a really simple design.
i got mine cheap at harborfreight (dont think they stills ell it)



this guy here is selling his home-made ones it seems for 109..36" cut.
and other sizes.
http://cgi.ebay.com/36-panther-mill-chainsaw-mill-proudly-made-in-USA_W0QQitemZ160359595125QQcmdZViewItemQQptZLH_DefaultDomain_0?hash=item25562d3c75

on my (horrid) website you can see a few slab beds i made form wood i cut

www.tribalwind.com
heres more pics of milling
http://smg.photobucket.com/albums/v74/tribalwind/Craftwork/Milling/

Set up time .... well, I would like to get a sort of trailer where it would be easier to take it off the trailer than my rig.  If there was no time to take it off of the rig, I would guess that the set up time for the first log is about half an hour.  Then rolling the next log in, or carrying the mill to the next log would be just  a couple of minutes.  Leveling the saw to the log might be another minute.

Then the cuts are really fast and the kerf is small.

I've been running a Swing-saw for 5 or 6 years.  Mine is a Brand X sawmill.  Google it, they have a website.  I and crew have milled over 300,000 board feet with this mill.  I can vouch for this mill. 

We mill the by-products of our forest restoration work.  So our logs tend to be somewhat low-quality.  Still, we can produce enough to support 2-3 families.  Check our our website: www.vanwild.com  or www.badgoatgoodwood.com  or www.watershedconsulting.com.

And here you are Mark - with your mill!

That is Awesome! It looks so easy.
Someday........

Feral

I just checked some stats on the video and saw this

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Wow!

that's a humdinger..enjoy !

I really enjoy the end of the video, where the owner talks about the business niche of designing buildings based on available logs, then making those designs happen.

Even people who don't know the term permaculture will likely see the elegance of this system. It warms my heart.

As an owner of seven sawmills (yep, seven) I can tell you that the debates over which is better, is endless. 

It really depends what you are planning on doing. Dimensional lumber works very well on a swing blade. Large planks, better with a band type. Alaskan is a good starter - we have a Stihl 090AV on ours which will give you a hernia just looking at it. 

Swingblades are nice, I have used on before, a Peterson 10 inch. Made really nice wood from some very hard trees. But then again, I have cut up corteza with a bandmill with a bi-metal blade with great results.

Seingblades can handle bigger logs, generally speaking too.