Hi folks,
It's been a long time since I've been on here, but I thought I should share this one...
A friend of mine has always wanted a sawmill... he builds a lot of stuff himself out of both wood and metal, and we have talked about how to build a bandsaw mill for years. A year or so ago, he started to get serious about it – he came over to take a closer look at my Mobile Dimension mill, how the raise / lower mechanism works, etc. He wanted to make a bandmill, and I mentioned the wheels / kits you could buy from Linn Lumber, etc., and showed him a couple of the trailer-wheel-style homebuilt mills.
My friend is partial to motorcycles, so when he saw a YouTube video of a guy that had built a bandmill using a couple of motorcycle wheels, he was hooked. He found a donor motor, bought some wheels for $20, then I pointed out some guide wheels for the carriage, some pallet racking for the rails and other useful parts in the scrap bin, he collected them and was on his way...
To my buddy's credit, he got his mill done in a couple of months... I think about 50 hours of work, and only like $350 USD in parts... he's good at sourcing scrap stuff, and he did it all with a limited amount of tools.
He's since made a video to document the whole build, you can check it out here if interested...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dFNpKC3JTVQ
Happy sawing,
-N.
