Before Buying a Sawmill - What I Wish I Knew Sooner

if you're thinking about buying a portable sawmill it could be a Woodland Mills like this it could be another brand doesn't matter this video will be great for you this is all the things over the last year that I've learned some things I wish I would have known first so if you're about to buy one this video will help you and give you some more things to think about this is my log Arch trailer this is how I move logs around logs are heavy I'm talking about thousands of pounds in a single log they're full of water when you first cut them down so you've got to be able to move them around I made this thing to be able to pick up heavy logs and move them through the timber I've got a small tractor with a jib pole and a logging tongs maybe you've got a uni loader something like that that would work great too it doesn't matter but you need equipment and equipment is expensive I also made a complete video on how I move logs around the summer if you want to watch that where are you going to get your logs you're going to harvest your own logs from your own land like we do here are you gonna buy logs and have them delivered these factors are going to determine a lot of different things when owning a sawmill once the log is on The Sawmill that's the easy part that's where the fun really begins but first maybe you need to cut a tree down [Applause] or harvest a tree that's on the ground and that can be really dangerous especially if you don't know what you're doing so think about that do you really want to be out here cutting trees down or bucking trees do you have chainsaws do you have that equipment what I'm saying on here is the trunk of a 70 year old white oak that we dropped we dropped it and then we had to Buck it and it was so big and heavy and we got a bit of a hill I had to call my buddy Kurt who has a mini excavator and he helped pull it out of here but do you know people that can lend you equipment or help you when you get in a pinch things to think about one thing that I wish I would have known and it took me a while to get this down is all the prep work that goes before you're ready to actually make a cut that includes setting up the saw tensioning the blade making sure that your belt is tight all these little things getting the guide set they're not difficult but when you're first starting out you don't know these things on top of that your blade actually matters there's different types of blade for whatever you're cutting or you're cutting soft wood hardwood is it the middle of winter is it frozen the learning curve to learn all these little things when I first started out I kept having little problems and trying to figure out what's going on maybe my blade wasn't properly tensioned my belt was too loose in fact the original belt already Twisted then it was junk so I had to buy more belts getting the guides properly on there and then obviously a lining and flattening out the bed depending on what kind of saw that you have so what kind of saw do you need that depends on what kind of wood do you think you're going to cut like how big how long because this saw here hm 126 by Woodland Mills I can cut a 26 inch diameter log and that's it anything bigger I can't put it on here without trimming it up somehow Woodland Mills makes a hm-130 which can do a 30 inch diameter log and then other brands you can get pretty much whatever you need or you can make your own even Matthew cremona made this freaking crazy electric saw he can cut like a four or five foot diameter tree with that thing so there's all kinds of options out there depending so if you're thinking about cost this thing is fully manual so I push it I do all the work they make saws that you basically sit there and it motor drives it adjusts itself it even flips the log with a thing you've got toe boards to lift and raise to get the pith lined up it's a smaller motor this is a 14 horsepower you can get saws with huge motors on them on top of that it's got a smaller blade because it's a smaller saw so the blades are cheaper so you've got to think about what's your budget what are you trying to do is this a business is this a hobby are you trying to build a house or a homestead that will definitely determine the saw that you want to buy for yourself one thing that I learned the hard way was dirty logs are no fun they dull your blade immediately it's just like when you hit the dirt with a chainsaw immediately that blade is toast and you've got to resharpen it I went through about three blades cutting a few of these logs before I realized like the Bark's all dirty it's been skidded across the mud and so every time the saw hits that dirt it's dull and I got to put a new blade on there so make sure that you're doing whatever you need to do to keep the logs clean some people will pressure wash them and clean the dirt off some people will debark them and the best thing you can do is never skid it through the dirt in the first place that's why I built that logging trailer so I could pick them up off the ground and keep them out of the dirt that's something to think about something that I didn't know it's so simple and obvious now that I am aware of it but can you keep the logs clean because that really does matter the next thing I want to talk about is actually drying wood and wood movement which turns out to be one of the biggest most important things about owning a sawmill before that though if you have any questions about if you should buy one things you're thinking about are concerned about or even this Woodland Mills saw in particular that I own ask in the comments I love answering these types of questions let's talk about wood movement another thing that I knew nothing about before buying the Sawmill was wood movement a logging outfit came out and dropped 250 trees I looked at all this wood like oh man I can Mill all this stuff up into usable Lumber it's going to be great this leftover White Oak right here this is Branchwood they chopped the branches off and taped the trunk you cannot Mill Branchwood up at least not in Long lengths because the tension in the wood what I mean is this when you've got a tree you've got your trunk which grows up very straight and Tall generally and then you've got a branch that sticks off to the side so that branch is supporting all this tension sideways it's got gravity pulling on it so usually what will happen on the bottom side if you look at the Rings inside the tree the bottom side of that branch is going to be really tight it's supporting all that weight and tension from Gravity so it's all compressed and on the top side the Rings are farther apart well what happens if you sit there and you Mill that wood into boards is that tension releases and the board will immediately bow and bend and even if you can get through it and cut it when it's dry and it'll do the same thing so what that told me is all this wood that I thought was going to be millable wood no this is firewood you need stickers to dry wood and you need a lot of stickers I made the mistake of not cutting my stickers before I started cutting logs so those original Cuts were for Junk because they started to warp and stuff before I could ever even get them stacked what these do is actually give you a little bit of an air gap between the logs when they're stacked up and the air flows through and dries the wood if you just stack wood right on top of each other at least most species you're going to get mold and the wood's going to be ruined you'll have staining all kinds of problems so stickers are really important not only that but the type of sticker you use this is Ash it's a very nice sticker material but whatever species you're cutting it it kind of depends on what kind of stickers you use and also when you think about drying you want to seal the ends with latex paint or I use anchor steel here because if you don't when the woods drying it'll actually dry out the ends faster and cause all kinds of cracking and problems so you seal the ends and then stack it put spacers in it cover the top so it doesn't rain on it and let it sit there until it's dry and then maybe you need to Kiln dry it at the end which means killing the rest of the bugs that are inside the wood also that'll help get the moisture down to what you want it for selling so things you got to think about do you have a kiln do you want to pay for a kiln are you going to build one just going to air dry everything the way you set your saw up there's a lot that goes into that where you're going to put this thing which direction are you going to face it are you going to put it on a base like I've got here what area of the country do you live in right now we got muddy season coming up it's the end of winter we've already got mud here in Iowa because it's so warm this year so that's something we got to deal with I need more gravel in here I need to make this better one thing that I didn't think about but actually worked in my favor is that direction is west so when I make a cut and that wind comes out of the Southwest it blows all the sudust away from me every once in a while when the wind's coming out of the East it's right in my face so think about that I need to build a structure to put this thing in on top of that how are you going to get rid of your sawdust and your off Cuts because that that adds up and that's kind of a pain in the butt so so give it a moment to think about how you're going to set the whole thing up you know maybe go out and actually work with someone else that has a sawmill and just see if you like it because if you don't like it don't do it

Channel: Mac Jackal

Views: 134,542

Keywords: woodland mills, sawmill, hm126, Sawyer, chainsaw, tractor, lumber, slabs

Id: 1yUchAXq2nw

Length: 8min 21sec (501 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 21 2023