Finally made my mill mobile ready, and a good bunk setup. Ordered some 24' 3/16 tube and stuck it together. No more leveling the track and fussing everytime I want to mill. Bad news is the bunks hit my arch hitch, instead of backing the arch over I have to side load bigger stuff... Sits on 3/4 inch threaded rod on each inside corner of the crossbeams. With two nuts welded to the inside corners for leveling, With scrap plate as feet. I'll probably end up doing 6 harbor freight trailer Jack's instead at some point. I have no need to move the mill, but I have a 3500lb axle from a boat trailer that is bolt on ready. Harbor freight magnetic light kit and I'm good to transport. Mills fall under the same category as wood splitters as far as plates and registration(none required), surprising for NY. Yesterday I fanaly got to try it out. Milled a hunk of beech, outside was punky good enough for 13" cant though. Milled some cherry silver maple slabs a small'r beech maybe 500bdf altogether. Did two truckloads of slab scrap, stacked on the porch with another to go, makes great shoulder season stuff. Busy Sunday! More milling tonight!
Got some nice figured slabs tonight. Had to do some trimming, I usually pull the guides to slab at 40 inches but was lazy. These are around 36" wide and 3 inches thick around 6 feet long. First time I've seen huge areas of tear out just like a planer.
Biggest hardest wood I've cut with it. Sugar maple. Those slabs are just about ready. When I first built it R&d on some old oak, used a go cart axle shaft.the shaft wasn't up to par... I've since upgraded, I forget the alloy. It's better to use 2inch shafts I used 1" cuz it's what I had. Budget build! If I could do it over I'd spend the extra couple hundred and use 2 inch shafts, my bearings and wheels are all 1". The drive pulley and band wheels would need to go to the machine shop, along with new pillow block bearings in order to do it.
Milled a few hundred bdft of hemlock. True two buh sixes.(for a maybe solar kiln) 1/4 sawed a portion of oak glad I did because it had a little tension in it. 3000lb log tested my new bunks! Did some(beta test!) apple and a half punky maple I forgot about in the woods... Forgot pictures of those.
Did some stacking over the weekend! And more picking up and stacking! Have a good cord ++ of waste wood!
Hoarding oak for flooring stair case- stair treads. Slabs I'm trying to set up to slow dry over winter. Sell'em next year. Trying to Build a small inventory it all needs time to dry! In a race against myself to get a bunch of logs done before winter. Just milled this silver maple tonight...
Updates. I've completed a few projects with the wood milled last year. The silver maple slabs I have been selling(like hot cakes) wish I had more to mill, it's selling for 9,000 a cord in slab form. That's severely undercutting everyones prices on CL. And some of the milled hemlock was used for a almost no cost trebuchet build.