Guy Marknes

Hi there!

My name is Drewe, and I’m a retired master builder and chef, tailor, sawyer, and furniture builder.  I’m currently putting together a 39 unit tiny home village in Detroit’s North End community in partnership with a local charitable aid agency that’s centered on community building.  My involvement is as the developer. I’m bringing the blueprints, modeling, real estate broker, lending teams as well as over 20 years of experience developing several subdivisions worth of 350 individual homes in the 1,200 to 3,000 sq ft range, having successfully completed each home with zero defects at closing and with no warranty callbacks in the 18 month post closing period.

I’ll be simultaneously developing my village in Detroit that will be more geared towards agorism and sustainable living.  I’ll probably eventually take my proceeds and bugger off to a large acre spread in the middle of nowhere and homestead for real.

I’m looking for a woman to join me on this adventure. A partner, lover, best friend and accomplice.

So, where would be the best deals.

Ideally some form of running water through, I've been looking at some of those vortex turbine designs and they look promising.

Land to grow, land to graze, and land to harvest raw materials would be nice, clays and muds for building, and timbers for that as well.

Anywhere a fella and his family would be best to look?

That was a great video!  And about the best/cheapest/sturdiest rail system I've seen for a bandmill yet. He also has a TON of blade guards in place, especially on the operators side.  Most I've seen on the various milling forums I lurk and reside in as well, use trailer tires and axles for their inexpensiveness and ease of access, but fail to take into account that those small diameter tires have too fine of a crown on the rubber, and that the blade needs a flat surface to run on, or you dismount the blade at full velocity.  Those motorcycle tires and wheel bearings will stand up much longer to those RPMs.  Nice job, and a great looking build.

Frankensaw Chainsawmill 2.0

Later I rebuilt the sled with some straighter whitewood planks from ye olde local Home Depot, but kept all the pipes.

Simple lynch pins in pre-drilled holes set the height.

Caution on drilling your bar tip: I called the company and talked to one of their engineers and discussed the most Northward point I could safely drill a 1/4" hole and not compromise the integrity of the bar.

Using a ladder for the first pass gives you a straight and true flat surface for each following pass, and no need for any pesky rail systems.

It's a full on Citybilly set up, no safeties, no guards whatsoever.  I do NOT recommend you build anything without guards and safeties, and PLEASE if you decide to sawmill, even with a bandmill wear chaps and other safety gear.  Things go awry and wrong.   Just because one crazy SOB has a gaggle of guardian angles on his shoulder doesn't mean anyone else can invoke them by copying designs.

Frankensaw Chainsawmill 1.0

100 year old house studs from the kitchen wall tear out.

New pipe parts from Home Depot

$50 42" bar

$53 chain

misc. screws

Started off renting powerheads from Home Depot Tool Rental (Makita's) and slabbing logs.

Sold enough logs and bought a used chainsaw.

Burned it out.

Watched some youtube videos on how to rebuild a chainsaw.

Bought some parts, rebuilt the powerhead.  (Built 20 or so custom saws in the past 2 years, never tinkered with a 2 or 4 cycle engine in my life prior).

Current powerhead is a 101ccc Husqvarna non-EPA with a nikasil cylinder set up, total investment: $150 for a $700 machine because self built.

Most permies already have a groundsaw already, and if not your powerhead does double duty with a shorter bar for firewood or other yard tasks.

But, if approached well, you can DIY a portable one-man sawmill for $200-$300, that can net you thousands in slab lumber for projects.

If it's within legal limits, I would suggest industrial hemp.  The plant is 100% useable.  The flowers can be made into a tincture with a completely negligible amount of THC so there is no psychoactive effect, merely the pure medicinal effects of the CBD oils for things like fibromyalgia pain, RA and celiac disease. The outer fibers can be made into rope or textiles, the inner curd dried and mixed with hydrated lime for super strong and lightweight insulating concrete, and the remaining fibers can be used for craft papers.  


Google has failed me as to the exacting nature of Finland's status on industrial hemp though.

Actually Paul, I'm already gathering materials for one in the garage to heat the new all season greenhouse going up.  Already have ductwork and the 450 pound wood fired furnace in the basement so it's another season in the house with that beast ( just discovered I have a mere 643 CFM blower on it with a port not much larger than my smartphone, so there will be another thread soon on it's mod with a proper squirrel cage ).

Next year though, you'll see a proper RMH in the basement here, with a huge thermal bench, forced air, thermal water tank storage, as well as that Peltier generator I hinted at.  It's going to be a somewhat long 12 months, but by this time next year, it will all be in place.


I look forward to the updates.

(It may not look it, but I pre-treated it as well)

..which worked just fine and dandy until I decided to process an ash log for firewood instead of slab lumber.  Man, did that ash burn hot.  I was splitting with a maul when wifey came casually pacing past me with the ash pail full of wood afire mixed with bits of curbed clay pieces.  Turns out we had blasted the ass-end out of the the clay chiminea.

Survival being what it is and being what it was, I quickly adopted this in it's place and weathered the rest of the season with it:

Paul....I'm going to shake you to your core with this one...

When we bought this house it was October, we were heavily leveraged across many, many thresholds ( most through helping other people. We're the "we can do for ourselves in any 'climate' and money always comes types ), and that winter came upon us with a voracity that was almost preternatural in it's speed.  The house had absolute zero insulation, 99 years old at the time, balloon framed brick two story in essentially an open field with no windbreak.  It was cold. The house was bought from the bank in your typical Detroit stripped of electrical, plumbing and HVAC goods and amenities.  We needed heat and we needed it quickly.

Someone had a Vogelzang kit on Craigslist for $20, and I had an old barrel already.

That sufficed for the basement alright.  Kept the new pipes from freezing and the first floor warm, but did damn-all to heat anything else anywhere else.

The 'Bart was then put in, but with that wheezing OEM fan it barely kept the first floor about 68 degrees.  Meanwhile the second floor was a meat locker.

So, we put one of these in: