Want to buy a sawmill - Talk me out of it!

[Sawyer Rob]

But to fool yourself into thinking you are saving anything by making construction lumber....forget it. You will never replicate the dimensional accuracy and stability. And gonna be more hassle than its worth. After you get that first bunk of 2x4 studs milled, dried, planed, then watch it further shrink and twist or crack....you realize how dumb it was and shoulda just went and bought 2x4's for $3ea

That sure hasn't been my experience!!

IF, that is happening to you, then it's mostly operator error causing it.

SR

 

[HawkinsHollow]

Working that kind of mill pictured gives me a back ache just looking at it. It’s at ground level.
We’ve got a Timberking 1600 and at the end of the day often wonder how much was really saved. Blades, fuel, lube, debarker, metal detector, chainsaw, cant hooks, tractor

Will your local building code let you use ungraded lumber for residential construction?

I will build it up on rails to a comfortable level.

A Timberking 1600 is like a $30,000 machine, you gotta cut a lot of lumber to break even.

I don't plan on using it for residential construction.

But that is the TBN spirit!! You made me doubt myself, for a second!

 

[buckeyefarmer]

Funny, when you are finally able to afford all the toys you have wanted all your life, now, you are too old to play with them..... I am in the same boat.

Yep. There's things I want to do that my health no longer allows.

 

[buckeyefarmer]

When Dad built our house in the early 1960's, he first had a portable saw mill in and he cut all the lumber used for the house, and all his other buildings. some areas's, without permits, you can use the lumber for building, Heck, people did it for many many years until the Gov't came along to "Help". He stickered and let dry in piles for years. Growing up I had all the hardwood I wanted to make stuff. Dad still has piles of hardwood boards in building.

 

[MoKelly]

Yep. There's things I want to do that my health no longer allows.

There is an old saying (I think paraphrases from George Bernard Shaw) —- “youth is wasted on the young”.

 

[Eagle1]

When Dad built our house in the early 1960's, he first had a portable saw mill in and he cut all the lumber used for the house, and all his other buildings. some areas's, without permits, you can use the lumber for building, Heck, people did it for many many years until the Gov't came along to "Help". He stickered and let dry in piles for years. Growing up I had all the hardwood I wanted to make stuff. Dad still has piles of hardwood boards in building.

Big part of the reason I live here, no government to "help". No permits, building codes or even sewer permits (if you are over 20 acres).

 

[plowhog]

I don't plan on using it for residential construction.

I believe you will enjoy having a sawmill and get great value from it.

Close to 10 years ago I had 20-30 "blowdown" trees after a large wet sloppy windy snowstorm. It took a lot of tractor work to process all those and roll them down ravines where they would rot and go to waste. I really disliked the waste part of that.

I purchased a Woodland Mills HM-130 sawmill and it is fantastic. To be fair, the manual crank to raise and lower it got old really, really fast. Last year I purchased their electric motor upgrade and it is wonderful. ($600) I don't mind pushing the sawmill down the track at all as that part is quite easy.

Last winter I had close to 100 blowdown trees (epic winter). I enclosed a photo below of a *tiny fraction* of the lumber I made from these trees that would have instead been wasted. I have countless board feet of very desirable cedar in sizes ranching from 1x6 to 1x18. And some oak, and of course plenty of pine.

My neighbor gave me his huge dead sugar pine tree. I made 1x18 pine planks, 8'6" long. It was a *huge* tree and beautiful almost knot free wood. Who has 18" material anywhere?

Suggestions are: decide what to do with waste, and deal with it same day as milling. At first I let my sawmill waste go into a pile, but then the pile grew to reach an almost unmanageable size. I have a sawbuck next to the mill, put the scraps on it, and make 16" pieces using an electric chain saw. I can burn cedar in the fireplace and pine can be burned in an outdoor fire pit.

And pay attention to log storage and log handling. You need a good way to preserve logs until you are ready to mill. At first mine just laid on the ground which is not good. Now some bad logs are used to support the good logs off the ground.

Drying your wood is important, as you already know. The thin stuff you want to use for trim should be pretty good to use in six months, depending on your climate. Six months goes pretty fast. If you are cutting large timbers they will take probably much longer to dry, but I haven't done much of those to share about.

I wound up purchasing a Frostbite grapple for my tractor and it is excellent for handling large logs on the mill. After placing a huge log on the mill, I process one side of the log. Then use the tractor to lift the log, turn 90 degrees, and set it back down. A poor man's hydraulic mill but your back will thank you compared to using peavys. A peavy is fine of course for smaller stuff.

Be sure to post photos of your new sawmill!!!

 

[Carl_NH]

I had 4500BF of pine cut and milled at a sawmill - got 2500BF of 13-16" S4S for flooring, and 2000 BF in 1x materials for trim also planed and kilz painted and they sitckered seasoned, planed and delivered a year later. Cost .30$ bf. 10 years ago, and still using that wood today for trim and flooring which has saved us at least 4x what we spent.

When I built my barn used full 2x6 rough pine for wall studs, and 1x rough pine for sidewall sheathing but for gable end wall sheathing engineer required 5/8 plywood for the shear value, then rafters needed to be KD fir, along with the floor joists needed to be KD or floor trusses.

So you can use milled rough lumber for framing, but local codes may require standard KD for rafters and joists.

 

[HawkinsHollow]

I believe you will enjoy having a sawmill and get great value from it.

Close to 10 years ago I had 20-30 "blowdown" trees after a large wet sloppy windy snowstorm. It took a lot of tractor work to process all those and roll them down ravines where they would rot and go to waste. I really disliked the waste part of that.

I purchased a Woodland Mills HM-130 sawmill and it is fantastic. To be fair, the manual crank to raise and lower it got old really, really fast. Last year I purchased their electric motor upgrade and it is wonderful. ($600) I don't mind pushing the sawmill down the track at all as that part is quite easy.

Last winter I had close to 100 blowdown trees (epic winter). I enclosed a photo below of a *tiny fraction* of the lumber I made from these trees that would have instead been wasted. I have countless board feet of very desirable cedar in sizes ranching from 1x6 to 1x18. And some oak, and of course plenty of pine.

My neighbor gave me his huge dead sugar pine tree. I made 1x18 pine planks, 8'6" long. It was a *huge* tree and beautiful almost knot free wood. Who has 18" material anywhere?

Suggestions are: decide what to do with waste, and deal with it same day as milling. At first I let my sawmill waste go into a pile, but then the pile grew to reach an almost unmanageable size. I have a sawbuck next to the mill, put the scraps on it, and make 16" pieces using an electric chain saw. I can burn cedar in the fireplace and pine can be burned in an outdoor fire pit.

And pay attention to log storage and log handling. You need a good way to preserve logs until you are ready to mill. At first mine just laid on the ground which is not good. Now some bad logs are used to support the good logs off the ground.

Drying your wood is important, as you already know. The thin stuff you want to use for trim should be pretty good to use in six months, depending on your climate. Six months goes pretty fast. If you are cutting large timbers they will take probably much longer to dry, but I haven't done much of those to share about.

I wound up purchasing a Frostbite grapple for my tractor and it is excellent for handling large logs on the mill. After placing a huge log on the mill, I process one side of the log. Then use the tractor to lift the log, turn 90 degrees, and set it back down. A poor man's hydraulic mill but your back will thank you compared to using peavys. A peavy is fine of course for smaller stuff.

Be sure to post photos of your new sawmill!!!

Thank you for that information!! WHAT A GORGEOUS PILE OF WOOD!

 

[2manyrocks]

I don't know your area, but here the commercial lumber mill won't even sell their lumber to the public because they are only interested in selling larqe quantities. They were interested in buying a larger walnut log that I cut, but weren't interested in a nice oak log that went to waste because they wouldnt buy it and wouldn't mill it for me, either.

There are still two smaller local independent mills that will mill lumber, but I've heard they aren't cheap.

A friend had a saw mill, but kept it under a tarp. The chains for the drive mechanism rusted up, and now they break when he recently tried using the mill again. He used to keep it in his barn where that didn't happen.

One thing that would help is if you have a good open and flat work area where you can use your tractor to handle the material.