5 Things I Wish I Knew Before Buying a Sawmill

hey it's Brock here with Rock Hill Farms and today I want to talk about five things that I wish I knew before getting a sawmill so if you guys follow the channel you know that I was in the market for a sawmill for at least a year and really a lot more than that but over the course of a year I traveled around and talked to different Sawmill owners looked at different brands and really tried to do my research but there were still a few things that surprised me after having one so I've got a lot to say about it but I also have a lot of work to do in here we spent the last three days at the Oakey homesteading Expo doing a sawmill demonstration and that was so much fun I really loved doing that demo and meeting people but the result is when I came home I've got work to do to get set back up properly first of all I had to re-level the mill a little bit while I was there which means it's not level now and then second I milled all this Lumber and now it's now just laying here not cleaned not stacked not separated where it's going to get ruined so I need to get some work done while I talk so that's the first thing I want to do is level the mill okay we're level right there the first thing I wanted to talk about is that Milling logs isn't that time consuming Milling is Maybe 20 of the work that goes into creating Lumber because first you have to you know cut down a tree or Source a log in some way then you have to get it onto your Mill and in position and then you Mill it but then you have to do maintenance on the mill sharpening blades filling the fuel anything to do with maintenance and you also have to stack the lumber and air dry it and make sure it's got good air flow store it in a good place and all of that takes a lot more time than Milling the lumber so the reason I've cut maybe three times since the last time I did a true good job of stacking the wood that's because I haven't cut stickers and I need to so I'll try to get that done in today's video so that's number one and today that extra stuff is leveling the mill you know what's really interesting to me is when I was at the show halfway through I started Milling with a really dull blade that was fighting and I waited too long to change it and the mill wasn't level you could slide the mill down it and it would rock without being in a piece of wood and then when it was in a piece of wood it would rock harder and it really looked shaky for about half of the time I was doing it but no one ever commented on that or seemed to notice because they're not used to watching a mill but what impressed me was that without really leveling the mill I still got some pretty straight Lumber I mean it doesn't look bad at all right before I changed the blade I started to see some wavy Cuts but not too bad okay [Music] [Music] my second thing I wish I would have known is know what you want the lumber for whether that's fine woodworking with some Live Edge or dimensional Lumber to build something have your plan in mind especially I get the mill and the first log it's like I'm just going to saw something up just just to do it and then I'll have some Lumber and I'll use it for something well that is true but also I don't have unlimited storing areas and I kind of do I mean I could stick it anywhere out in the field but then you're mowing around it and you're protecting it from the Sun and so you don't want to Mill a bunch of wood that's not going to be usable whether that's the species or the dimensions or how you cut it and I did a little bit of that at this Expo because what I wanted to do was teach anyone any one thing they wanted to know about Milling Lumber so that meant I needed to go through the process quite a few times and not spend a whole lot of time trying to worry about what kind of lumber I was getting I intentionally got small logs I made most of it into two inch Lumber but there's different types of two inch Lumber is it two inches when you cut it is it going to dry to two inches is it a two by four like you find in the store that will dry to an inch and a half and if you do it all different every time it's going to be hard to use those all on the same project and you're you're at least going to have to plane them that's in the Seven Habits of Highly Effective People is start with the end in mind and so the more you have a plan for what you're going to use it for the better off you'll be and that comes to mind right now because I I now have to sort this this is Beyond two inches okay no that's a true inch it looked a little thicker that is inch and three quarters that is engine three quarters that's two inch that's two inch that's an inch and a half not very smart now sometimes you get to the end of a stack and it's like this with the p I'm cutting everything two inches the piece that's left is three and a quarter I'm not gonna get two pieces the same out of that so I cut it a two inch and then you're gonna have an odd ball and you can use that for something but the the less Oddball stuff the better and that's true not just for how you end up using it but you've got to think you need to make nice neat tidy stacks of this while it dries and it's hard to make tidy stacks of random Lumber foreign so that's the second item I'll get this all sorted out and then we'll do number three this stack doesn't probably look too much different than when you saw it a minute ago but it's all sorted now these two stacks are two inch Lumber this stack is more than two inch thick this stack is less than two inch thick thick and I should just be stacking it directly on here but I can't because the last row that I put onto my lumber stack didn't have any stickers in it so that actually needs to come off and I need to cut more stickers but I actually need to cut stickers with the Sawmill and this stack of lumber was in front of the Sawmill and those are the prices you pay for being unorganized leads to inefficiency so I'm going to set this stack off in one stack hopefully keeping it stacked like it is then I'm going to cut some stickers and do this right [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] the next thing that I wish I knew before buying a sawmill is that it's not expensive to operate and may sound like a small factor but I would say a chainsaw is a lot more expensive to operate skid loader is a lot more expensive to operate I mean that machine that I'm loading these with uses two gallons an hour depending on what you're doing it can be more or less but you can do like a dozen small logs on a tank of gas on this it feels like I've never let it run all the way down I usually refill it when it's halfway or something but it seems like I could run for a long time on a tank of fuel then I'm just putting water in as a lubricant which is basically free and the blades are 25 but the blade that I just took off of this yesterday at the show I had cut quite a few logs here on a sharpened blade then took it and used it the whole first day of the show like you get pretty good life out of them really and you can sharpen them yourself if you get a sharpener or depending on where you live you might be able to find someone to sharpen them but even if you paid 25 you're definitely not eating too far into the cost to your Lumber and for me I think the answer will be to sharpen them myself so that was the next thing on the list that would be item number three now I'm going to start cutting this up before we move on to item four this is actually the first time I ever cut stickers up until now I've been making stickers out of leftover plywood that we had in the shop and I've got a panel saw and just ripping an inch off of that plywood plywood is not a great choice for a sticker and I don't want to go buy sheets of plywood so that was never a long-term solution so I think the way I'm going to be doing this is well yeah I'll probably make Cuts every inch here roll the whole stack and then make it cuts every one inch again [Music] all right foreign my son-in-law's truck in the driveway and that means my grandson's here to do some fishing all right so when I finish this up I get to have a little fun and I'm really not even that big on fishing I like having a pond I love watching the fish that are going to be in the koi pond but uh I don't have the patience for fishing unless I've got that guy with me well I went down there and got him started took a look at the pond trying to see if any of that algae or lilies were disappearing from those carp haven't seen anything change there yet but I also don't see any dead or floating fish which is a good sign Zayden is obsessed with bass right now bass bass bass so he's got a little lure that he's throwing out and what we catch the easiest is crappie perch bluegill and neither one's fishing for that his dad is going after one of those big catfish that we got last weekend and lost on the bank so I think he's got some liver down there we'll see how it goes if they catch one today at the end of the video I'll show you some catfish or whatever they come up with but for right now let's get back to what we're doing which is the fourth thing I wish I knew before getting a sawmill and this is probably the biggest of any of them the number one most important thing I've learned from having a sawmill for a short period of time is that anybody can learn to do this it's not rocket science now it's like most things that you can continue learning about this your whole life you can do it professionally and still be learning but to make nice Lumber you don't need a bunch of experience or Advanced knowledge it's not it's just not that long of a learning curve so I traveled around I talked to a few people who had Sawmills I watched them work just a couple times I watched some YouTube videos and the day this arrived I had no questions I just started sawing and I've had no problems it's been a worry-free experience and at some point I'm gonna have I'm gonna hit a nail or in a log and break a blade and but all these are things you can work through I mean like I already know what I would do if I broke a blade in the log so for me it's been a great experience and I got one more item on the list but first I'm going to go ahead and cut these stickers [Music] [Music] thank you [Music] foreign that is all that is all the Milling I'm going to do today so three things I always try to do put a clamp on the mill head or on the track so that if it gets Windy The Mill head doesn't take off back and forth number two take the pressure off of the blade leaving that pressure on can kind of deform your belts or even your blade so it's better to take the pressure off and then let it all the way down because leaving weight hanging on your cables you know shortens the life of the cables basically so the fifth thing I wish I knew is what accessories I needed and which ones I didn't and because I couldn't decide I didn't get much to begin with I knew for a fact I wanted the wide cutting head which is why I went with the 130 Max and that's one of the things I said a hundred times at the show is I think this Mill stands out as being a true 30-inch throat at a reasonable price I also knew I needed the track extension although I haven't cut a lot of long material yet I know that I will be so that's about the only upgrades I did things I really wish I went ahead and did is the trailer and that's personal preference some people never intend to take their Mill off the property but for me I wish I had went ahead and got the mill trailer next the toe board absolutely worth it I made my own I had a video where I showed it it's not as good but it works so toe board I think is definitely worth it next thing I wish I had got and that part of this is because I mounted my Mill so high but if you're doing it a lot it is a little bit cumbersome cranking the handle so it would have been nice to get the automatic log lift and I was just looking on there and man they have a lot more accessories I I guess I didn't spend enough time on their website to even realize some of the stuff they have they've got their own canned hooks which look like a good design and then they've got a cant hook pry bar thing that basically it sets it attaches to the mill and it gives you a point to Anchor your your cant hook for pushing your logs in and out they've got a a really nice looking toolbox and one that I would all of that is optional it just depends and it's nice that you can start with a basic Mill and add that stuff later but one thing I would do for sure is if you don't have a building to put it in like I do I would get the mill head cover so I thought about not putting this in the building but I didn't order the cover and I said there's no way it's I I care too much about my Mill to leave it out in the rain so a lot of options to think about but like I said a minute ago my number one tip or thing that if you're considering getting a meal the number one thing I would tell you is you can handle it it's not anything to be intimidated by the biggest challenge is getting logs onto the mill so it helps a lot if you have a piece of equipment to do that if you don't Woodland Mills can help you out with with like a winch or some other accessories for moving the logs up onto the mill but overall I'm thrilled with what I've got and I'm looking to add some accessories over time I appreciate you taking time to watch this video I'll put links on the screen to a couple more of our videos and I'll see you next time

Channel: Rockhill farm

Views: 12,162

Keywords: woodland mills hm130 max, woodland mills hm130 max setup, woodland Mills HM130 Max, farm vlog, homestead, new sawmill review, woodland mills sawmill, woodland mills review

Id: s6DNipzcu3c

Length: 21min 14sec (1274 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 06 2023