Sawmill basic info needed...

So i'm starting to finally nail down some more specific homestead plans, and one of those plans would be to make best use out of trees already on the property.  Ie for building, instead of just burning as wood.  Ideally building material for the main house.

So i'd like a sawmill...

Yet i'm not even sure where to start on that question.    I want a sawmill which will pay for itself as soon as possible - even if it can't do every job forever.  Not sure whether the best option is to use one of those chainsaw type mounts (how much is wasted with the thickness of those blades, how is safety), or get a spinning blade type - to buy new, or used, or chinese crap.  Of what size.

The first and most important project would be to build a house, thinking an A-frame about 20x24 feet to start with a plan/hope to extend it longer later like to 24x40.  So i'm assuming i'm cutting the vertical timbers for that and wondering if I can minimize use of wood paneling and such, which i'm sure a sawmill isn't going to give me 4x8 sheet anyway I mean...

I then realize that cut lumber probably has to dry before I can use it in construction, so how long is that, before I can even build with it?  These are the basic questions off the top of my head - you probably know questions I SHOULD be asking and haven't.

I have never owned a sawmill.  The of the professional operators I have known, none have used a chainsaw type mill.

I dont know about pine, but my neighbor built a large barn with rough sawmill lumber, poplar, it was fresh cut green wood, still looks and works great. I got a load of lumber from the same sawmill, oak, I put some things together with it right away no problem but once the wood got dry it was so hard nails just bounced right off. if I use an\y of the wood now once its dry holes have to be drilled in it first before using nails or screws.
the chainsaw sawmill will work. you need a big chainsaw, 80cc's are what a lot of people say, you need a ripping chain and it is a lot of physical labor with slow cutting.. there are plenty of reviews of cheap sawmills like the harbor freight mill for $2500 on YouTube.  or the granberg alaskan chainsaw sawmill you might look at some of the reviews by people who have actually used each of the types of devices.

We have a museum of 40+ buildings, from 1820 to 1900, that I moved from 6 counties. Most of them needed extensive repairs. I was only able to restore them all because I cut all my own wood, with my own bandsaw mill. Before that, I had decades of hauling logs to various circular sawmills. And before that I ran a steam engine run mill. During those same years I had a friend who used a chain saw "mill". I know a bit about the subject. And the first thing is, is that running a mill is dangerous work (Had a friend whose father cut himself in half when he fell into his circular blade saw. He lived long enough to say goodbye to his son as his son held his upper half.). And it's not so hard to lose a finger or two milling. Secondly, it's a lot of work. And a whole lot of time. And doing it right ain't cheap.

My suggestion is that unless you have plenty of time, money and love hard work, and you have someone to teach you the basics, you'd be better off letting a sawyer do your sawing. Check around and see if there is anyone with a portable band saw who can come and cut your wood. If you just have to have your own saw, do a lot of reading so you know how to cut the log. It really matters. ~~Unless you want to waste lots of lumber, and maybe end up with boards that may twist and warp. I would not waste my time trying to use a chainsaw mill. Too slow and hard and you need far too much lumber for your project. And don't even think about a circular saw mill, unless you want to get hurt. Band saws are way safer.

I don't know where you are and what the situation is in your area, but in the several state area around Ohio, U.S.of A., used mills (which is probably what you want) are few and far between because so many guys want to saw wood because of high lumber prices. And new mills were quite pricey last I checked. Maybe it's gotten better, you'll just have to check. As for drying/curing lumber, the US Army developed a number of books for building with green wood. They needed lots of barracks, hangers and shops during WW2. I'm sure there's plenty of information around about building with green. There's also lots of info. about drying wood.

~Good luck

Highly recommend one of these: https://petersonsawmills.com/

I spent a day with a crew using one (them, not me...I was making biochar with the offcuts). The apparatus took about ten minutes to set up and then they were away, cutting beautiful boards out of some great big macrocarpa logs.

The advantages of a swing blade design, from what I could see:

Narrower kerf than chain, so lots less wasted

A horizontal (slab) pass can be immediately followed with a vertical cut, so no double handling

Far easier to keep a circular blade sharp and true, and it's inherently more robust than a band

Here on permies.com I read posts about Paul and his workers using a nifty small saw mill to make dimensional lumber. It looked to work simply and easily. I’m not sure which forum I read the posts, but you could try searching around. They made some easy adaptations to made the mill work easier.

Leigh Tate, one of the permies.com helpers has a small sawmill that they used on their farm. They cut their own trees to make dimensional lumber for a building project she and her husband worked on. You could try sending her a pm. She posted info and pictures on her own blog.

I had one of those chainsaw mills. Used it to cut tree trunks into slabs for making furniture. When we bought the rig, we needed to buy a bigger chainsaw than we normally used, plus a bigger bar. Plus a ripping chain. We watched a few YouTube videos before starting, so we knew to make a simply jig guide for especially the first cut. The mill worked fine for our use. We went slowly and touched up the blade after each  cut, keeping it really sharp. We cut 8 foot long slabs, 2 inches thick from trunks up to 18 inches in diameter. We cut up several tree trunks, making most of our household furniture, workshop tables, plus many extra slabs for selling.  When done, we sold the set up and recouped some of our initial investment. Having all those slabs made the adventure financially well worth it.

I have got a few sawmills, from a chainsaw type I made homemade from plans, to a manual bandsaw mill and a rotary sawmill. I got 4 if you count a shingle mill as a sawmill.

I think the idea sounds better than reality. It can work, but there is a lot of work in a board. You must fell, limb, buck, haul out, saw into boards, plane and edge a board just to get the equivalent of what you get buying a board at the lumber yard. That is a huge investment of time.

Me? I got 3-4 sawmills that are my own, yet pay them to bring in their mills to saw my logs into lumber. That really says a lot. In two days they can saw what would take me most of the summer to do. There is a huge difference in landowner sawmills that are manual, and professional hydraulic ones. It is all about time. Do you want to build a house, or saw lumber to build a house? Both will absorb your summer.

I find the value of mills is making custom lumber. My old houses use 2x5 lumber, a size I cannot buy at a lumber yard. And siding options like board and batten, clapboards and shingles are easy and fast to make on a sawmill.

As for the type: there is only the band sawmill to consider. The rotary ones have a 3/8 kerf meaning for every 3 boards you cut, one is converted into sawdust. A bandsaw losses one board to sawdust for every 16 you cut. That means a lot less logs to produce the same lumber.

The chainsaw mills are just too slow. Start a board today and you might finish it tomorrow. They are incredibly slow. Like rotary mills, they also waste a lot of potential boards into sawdust.

As I said, I have owned skidders, bulldozers, feller butchers and sawmills all my life. Bandsaws are the answer… if you don’t custom saw that is.

The other advantage of a swing blade that I forgot to mention is a big one if you're cutting difficult or knotty timber: Bandsaw blades wander when they encounter density anomalies in their path. This is especially pronounced on slab cuts and and propagates downward to successive cuts before the operator notices and now has a stack of wiggly boards. Rejects are as much of a waste as sawdust, and ruined bandsaw blades cost money and time to replace. The circular blade can be touched up mounted on the machine and they typically last several years in service, with tip replacements a simple matter of a welding job. So yes, a wider kerf means you're making more sawdust, but that's a resource as well...and if your reject rate is closer to zero that's a win.

The team lead on the Peterson rig that I worked with said that it was the only choice for them, as all the trees they are cutting are old pine and macrocarpa, which were planted as shelter 60-100 years ago and never pruned. They're a far cry from the premium grade sawlogs that the mills work with, but they're on iwi farmland and the whole point of the project is to turn them into good boards for building warm, practical houses for the people who live on those lands. This is in the most remote and economically deprived region in the country (East Coast) which has been hammered by a parade of cyclones and flooding for several years now.

Hi Brian,

My husband started with a chainsaw mill, but didn't care for it. It requires a ripping chain for the chainsaw, and of course, must be sharpened frequently. He wasn't happy with the kerf, but for a small project it did the job.

Later he found a Central-Machinery sawmill from Harbor Freight Tools on Craigslist. It's probably the cheapest brand on the market and therefore not necessarily recommended, but the price was right because the guy was moving and it had to go.

sawmill

sawmill

sawmill

Dan bought it and it has more than paid for itself! Just compare the cost of lumber to the cost of the sawmill. That particular saw only accommodated 9-foot logs, so he extended the track to 16 feet.

sawmill with extended track

If we were going to replace it, however, he would go with something more like a Woodmizer or Cooks Saw. Things to consider are horsepower, length of track, log diameter. Are replacement parts available?

There is a huge learning curve, so you may want to start out with smaller projects to learn and practice.

We had primarily pine, but if you are milling hardwoods, you'll need to sharpen the blade more frequently. You can send these out to be professionally sharpened, or do it yourself.

Ideally, of course, all your trees are straight with no knots, but in reality they aren't. So there's quite a bit of "waste." Dan has used these to build furniture, for garden bed borders, and in hugelkultur.

bench made from sawmill scraps

There are apparently a lot of opinions out there about curing the wood. Much of what we harvest is from already dead pines, so I can't help much with curing time, other than say it has to do with moisture content.

curing home-milled lumber

Of course, I can't resist some photos of the barn itself.

goat barn

goat barn

goat barn

You can see that we used plywood for the walls, but for our little buck barn (also made from home milled lumber), Dan used the edge slabs from the sawmill.

buck barn

buck barn

Here are some recommendations for more information to get you started:

Bob Vila Best Portable Sawmills of 2023
Bob Vila - best chainsaw mills of 2023
Out of the Woods YouTube channel - lots of excellent videos on sawmills and how to use them

P.S Have you considered building a log home?

Brian,

I have HM122 with 9.5HP engine from Woodland Mills. I bought a mill, because I have hundreds of eucalyptus trees to cut and I don't need firewood for 100 years.
Anything thicker than 20cm/8" I leave for the mill, straight 10-15cm are left for posts and everything smaller I chop with the chop saw - it saves tens of chains and tons of time. Since 2017 I have been using the same Diablo blade to cut 90 m3 of firewood in perfect size.
Branches thinner than 5cm go to the chipper or burn pile.
I'm not a supporter of a concept of chipping 4" perfect firewood and then splitting big logs with another tool and more sweat.
One saw band lasts around 4 hours on green eucalyptus and 2 on predried one. Now I only cut logs that were preseasoned for 2 years, because I have more control of lumber quality. Despite standard recommendations of milling green wood, it always fails with Eucalyptus camaldulensis - the lumber twists and checks. With preseasoning it keeps the dimensions and checks a little. Because dry red gum eucalyptus is two times harder than hickory I got myself carbide tipped band that I hope will extend its life at least ten times.
I used 3pt fork lift attachment for my tractor to load the logs and position them on the mill myself.

Milling heavy lumber for a log house would make a perfect sense. Milling sticks/planks - not so much - it would be way too much work for an inferior house.

My experience has been a little different. Waviness in the cut is based on wood species here more than anything. With spruce, the cuts can wonder with a bandsaw blade because the density between soft trunk wood and hard limbs is so different, it will wave on you, but eastern hemlock cuts like butter... flat and straight. It is the same thing when cutting cedar (waviness) or fir (flat)

At $14 a blade, i don't bother to sharpen them, and just buy new blades. I have sharpened them before and after paying $12, the blade snaps because its been prestressed from previous cuts. Considering how many $5 2x6's I can get out of a 14 dollar blade, to me it just makes sense to only go with new ones.

I get a lot of life out of my blades though because my logs are incredibly clean. With a log trailer, I can sneak into the woods and pick the trees up and carry them out on wheels so they never get dragged through dirt and mud. That means a lot of logs can be converted to boards before the blade is dull. It is nice because I can also use the log loader to set the log onto the mill, and then after the wood is cut, pick the boards up and set it on a trailer to haul to wherever I need them. I seldom pick anything heavy anymore and green 2x6's are HEAVY!