That would be a priority for me and come before a log loader, I have enough other machines that can do that job. If I were a lottery player and happened to win.......Heavy Industrial Full Hydraulics Portable Sawmill | TimberKing AC-36 Hydraulic - Cooks Saw Mfg.
I am not so sure I would agree on that. I say that because a log loader does a lot more for sawing lumber then just put the logs on the saw rig...which it does well though; no wrestling those beasts. But the BIGGEST thing a log loader does goes unseen; it keeps mud and dirt off the logs. Of course it depends on what you have for a log loader, but one like mine that can go off-road means you pick the log up where it is felled, and is kept from being dragged through the dirt. With no mud or dirt on the logs, the sawblades of the sawmill last much, much longer, and a person can saw more lumber in a given day. That is their greatest asset. Another asset is that a person can bring the logs to the sawmill, and not have to bring the sawmill to the logs. This means a much better set up can be set up for the mill. A building to saw in poor weather, lights to saw after work, electricity to run accessories for the sawmill, or even the sawmill itself and not have to dump gasoline down its power unit all the time. That may, or may not make a big difference depending on where the person's wood lot is. Most of my woodlot is here, where I live, but my trailer can be towed down the road too, so I can bring back logs from the land I own in other towns too. There are work-arounds to getting the wood off the sawmill too. The old sawmills had rollers that were set at an angle so when the wood slipped off the saw, it clattered onto the rolls and went zipping by gravity outside the sawmill unassisted. You could do the same thing with modern sawmills. My uncle had a long pike pole that he used to shove the wood along without a lot of walking. I readily admit that it was not as good as having the wood returned to you, but saving 25 steps per piece of lumber over the course of sawing lumber all day, really adds up to energy conservation. This paragraph ties back to the previous one where not moving the sawmill means it can be ideally set up for lumber sawing. All this is just food for though, and a great discussion; no right or wrong answers.
10-4 LT, I thought you were talking about the log loader on most bandmills that roll/lift the log onto the mill. I'd love to have a trailer like yours also, that's another project that would be fun but one project at a time.
Man am I an idiot! I just got done using my log loader to load 7000 feet or more on my friends sawmill and was thinking that, and not loading arms. Of course you are right; in that regard there are other ways to load logs without tripping over those things every time you walk around the sawmill.
True... I watched my friend yesterday try to get some logs out of left over pile that the logger had left. He's a go-getter, using a rope and his truck, while right now I can hardly get out of my own shadow, much less in 80 degree temps with high humidity. I'll grab them today with my log loader and bring them out of the pile and load them by the sawmill. I have about 10,000 bf of logs left over from last years logging operation. Most of it is hemlock and white pine, but some cedar and spruce as well, so we are going to get that sawn just because it is silly to leave it to rot. It is amazing how many good logs cannot be sold for commercial wood. (Silly) We just figured convert it to lumber and someone will eventually use it, him or I.
I am not sure if you thought of this accessory or not, but that is a cedar shingle making attachment for a bandsaw. My neighbor, Thomas Bandsaw, makes bandsaw sawmills and has a shingle making accessory for them. There are a bunch of different designs on YouTube regarding them, but I have yet to see a decent homemade version yet. I am interested in making one because my Grandmother's old house that I am moving into, requires about 4 square of shingles. I just sold a truck load of cedar logs last week so I have a bunch of cedar ends kicking around, and it would be nice to make them into shingles. Kind of silly to buy 4 square of shingles when I can make my own, yet its only 16 bundles too. I just have to figure out a decent way of producing them though. Cedar of course is the most well known shingle type, but a lot of old timers used White Pine. White Pine makes better siding anyway because it does not rot...as long as it can dry out. I always thought ringing the bottom two feet of a house with cedar shingles would be a good plan, then from there up where the sun and wind hits a home, use White Pine. White Pine is easier plentiful, bigger in diameter, has less knots, and would go on the walls pretty quick at the widths the shingles would be. Eastern Hemlock is another wood that would make a great shingle; less prone to rot, comes in decent diameters, and saws beautifully. A Maine shingle maker by me uses off-brand wood, then pressure treats it and gives a 100 year warrantee. They are expensive, but pressure treated shingles...talk about siding for life! We do have a shingle mill in our family, but my Uncle will not let anyone use it including himself because it scares him. It was so bad that he was going to put vinyl siding on the shingle mill building, but I told him there had to be some New England law against it. He did go with cedar shingles, but ending up BUYING THEM!
I think you are right on that one. I have a friend that built a mill to cut clapboards vertical grain, the way they used to. He slices a pine log in a radial fashion about 8" deep and then breaks them off the core of the log then cut's another layer(s) until he's down to about 6-8". Then he edges them iirc and planes one face. He and another neighbor each have an old flat belt driven shingle mill, and yup, they could be dangerous. They are a part of the "gas engine" working display each year at the Fryburg fair.
Yeah you cannot beat those kind of sawmills for making clapboards because the grain is radially sawn. It is easy to make clapboards on a bandsaw mill by tipping one edge of the cant every other time, but then the clapboard is flat sawn and not radially sawn and will not last as long on the house, nor be as dimensionally stable. The State of Maine Museum in Augusta has one of those sawmills on display. I like clapboards too. They are faster to put up then shingles because they occupy so much space per piece, but are also harder to work around things because you are dealing with a lot longer length than narrow width shingles. That is why I prefer shingles. I just take my scroll saw and put it right next to me and use that to make cuts. On my current house I have a lot of rounded trim so making curved cuts in the 3 layers of shingles is fast and quick with my scroll saw. When I shingled the cupola on my house I brought the scroll saw right up onto my roof, setting the saw on a board and sawhorses spanning my roof peak. In that way I did not have to keep getting up and down for all the cuts I had to make. That saved a lot of time and wear on my body. A person could make a cant 16 inches wide and make shingles that way, lifting one edge of the cant 3/8 of an inch every other saw cut, then cutting the tapered board into individual shingles on a cross cut saw (radial arm saw/sliding compound miter saw, etc), but for me anyway, that would only be White Pine or hemlock shingles. That is because I do not have a lot of White Cedar that slabbed out into a cant would still be 16 inches wide. That would be quite the White Cedar tree!
I have a friend who used to have a 40 acre plot of reprod on the Mountain Highway to Mount Rainier. He also had a Mobile Dimensional sawmill. He had built a rough cabin on the property out of self sawn lumber. I built and installed a security gate for him on the property. He also had an old Garrett skidder that I did a bunch of cast welding on. Any time I needed firewood I would just call and we would go out and thin out leaning dead trees and yard them up then cut firewood. I am not a sawyer and know little about milling but find it mighty interesting. He once had a sawing party and I went and helped. Even though it may not be the perfect mill, I found the MD very impressive. I particularly liked the dual cut feature that cuts two blades 90 deg to each other. The "trip and return" feature that delivered a nicely milled piece of lumber back for me to stack was innovative. Shawn kept me humping for most of the day but it was a heck of a lot of fun! I can see where this type of mill would be a tremendous asset in the remote Bush!
Just saw this ad. Not a mobile dimension, but sounds like it might be a good deal, and I don’t seem to see many of these for sale. Note that the price in the title is not the price he is asking for in the body of the text. Wood mizer sawmill
One thing a lot of people are fidgeting about. As far as getting logs onto the mill and turning them . Its very simple and takes little cash outlay to build one. Most of the small mill manufacturers make one. A parbuckle system . stand with a winch on top. Run the line over the top and under the bottom of the log. Hook it to the base of the buckle . Go ahead on the winch and it will roll the log on easy pie. They even work for turning a log on the bunks for the next slab cut. . Tho many factory ones come with a hand winch. That can be replaced with a 4 wheeler electric winch quite easily. If your mill's engine is electric start its even easier.
In Southeast Alaska the Mobile Dimension and Mighty Might circular saw head rig mills were very popular due to large diameter logs.
A friend has milled many millions of board feet of lumber with his Mobile Manufacturing mill. One time he milled a spruce log with his that he had to raise the mill ends up a foot above their normal bed blocks. The log was a Sitka spruce that was over 7' small end diameter. AT 40 feet . . Of course he had to buck it down to shorter lengths. It took him a while to mill it. He had to pull the sawn lumber using ladders.
That mill I was looking at must have been sold. One of my hesitations was the company was in very "shakey" condition as far as it's future. Some family dispute or something. I hope they pull through, I like the idea of a finished board with each stroke of the saw and look's to be a very efficient one man saw.
