Hi FHC friends, My son and I are looking to go in together on a bandsaw mill that we can trailer over the road here in NH. I do firewood and my son is looking to mill hardwood boards for a growing woodworking hobby/business and for air drying and selling locally. We have contacts who offer us some nice hardwood trees that have some straight-grained sections suitable for milling. We figure that 24" is plenty enough capacity for a mill. We'd like to take the mill to the tree over moving the tree to the mill at our back yard. I've researched Woodmizer LX 50 with a Go trailer and a Woodlander 126 as possible options. Do you folks out there know of others we might consider. Naturally we're open to picking up a used unit in good shape. Also, if you're around New England and have one for sale that'll do the job for reasonable $$, would like to hear from you. Thanks and happy new year.
Company in Oneida NY. Prices seem reasonable. No experience with their products though. Hud-son Forest Equipment | Portable Sawmills | Built in USA
I have a woodland mills. Others here also have them. Very happy with mine. It is a hobby for me. Customer support was excellent
Woodland mills are a very good value and they seem to have good customer service, I have their blade sharpening equipment and don't really have any complaints considering what I paid for it. I'm not familiar with the WM LX50, but woodmizer's customer service is excellent. I own a woodmizer LT40 and have had 4 woodmizer mills over the past 35 years. The mono-rail mills are hard to beat for ease of transport and setup, but are substantially more expensive than the twin rail setups. There are tons of used mills on the market these days.....I'd keep an eye on Craigslist and Facebook for a good deal. If you don't have any experience with bandmills, getting into it on the cheap to gain some first hand knowledge, then upgrading is actually a pretty good idea. Good luck with it.
Thanks. Sawdust, we will check out Woodland, as they were not on my radar. We're just fine with starting out humbly and seeing how we take to it.
Woodland Mills is local. Or sort of. Based in Canada with a spot in Buffalo NY Again excellent customer service and a great entry level machine.
I like the looks and value of the HM126 on a trailer. Good price. Any thoughts 9.5 vs. 14 hp engine? We can afford the upgrade to 14 hp. We expect to mill mainly red and white oak, hickory, red and sugar maple. Has anybody used the HMS126 trailer on the road? It seems to have DOT approved tires and proper lights. We need to move it around the area and figure to tow it at no more than 50 mph?
If anyone out there has or knows of a decent sawmill in good shape in the size range we're looking for that's for sale in New England, we'd appreciate knowing about it. We figure to need no more than 9' length and 25" diameter capacity as we get started in this. Thanks and happy New Year. No hurry, as this is a project with up to a two-year year window to get going on.
One more question, friends: Does a trailer for moving and leveling a mill for use on that trailer have to be brand specific? Or or dimensions of most smaller mills close enough to be hauled, leveled and used on a generic mill trailer?
24 is plenty. I have an 18, and can mill most logs. I am going to widen it to 24-28, just for the bigger ones and to have some extra room. Hp isn’t everything. A blade can only carry so much wood before the gullets are overloaded.
Not to start an argument, but..... While HP may not be everything, there is still a direct correlation between hp and cut rate. I've ran mills from 14hp up to 35hp with the same blades, and the higher hp mills pretty much cut proportionately faster.
Higher hp mills are usually bigger and run faster blade speeds. My mill used to run much slower than it does now, and the gullets were filling up before much of the ho was used. I sped it up to about 4,000 ft/min and they stay clear and the cut is better. It also cuts a little faster. You can only cut so fast anyway, because the wider the cut, the more the gullet fills before it exits the log. Bigger mills run faster to account for this. Wider set allows some spillage past the gullet, but then you have blade heating to deal with.
