BRUTALLY HONEST SAWMILL REVIEW: 6 Months with a Woodland Mills HM122-Popple People-Episode 53

there's a place in the woods called aspen ridge this is where we call home we are the papal people welcome to our channel thanks for stopping by in this episode we'll give you the rundown of pros and cons we've discovered in the first six months using our woodland mills portable sawmill we'll give it to you straight no sugar coating so thanks for checking out our brutally honest six month review so let's take a look at the things we like about the mill first it makes a consistently nice cut and the saw head pushes easily and rolls nice on the tracks and the mill cuts good if you have a sharp blade proper tension on it and if your tracking is aligned correctly it starts easily one or two pulls and she runs nice we upgraded to the 9.5 horsepower engine on our hm122 mill the mill is also easy to move if you need to relocate it when we initially set up our sawmill we put it on a car trailer because we wanted to be able to move it while we were finishing up our garage the idea was we needed to set it up to use it to mill the lumber we'd need to build the saw shack so we knew we'd need to move the sawmill at least once but we ended up needing to move it off the car trailer sooner than anticipated because we needed to use that trailer so it got shuffled off to a temporary location until the saw shack is finished then we'll have to move it again out to its final home the pro here two people can handle it it's fairly easy to move the next pro is that the track extensions are easy to add on it's basically the same process you did when you were assembling the regular track that comes standard with the sawmill overall we consider this sawmill a good deal for the price you get a quality sawmill a lot of bang for your buck also the woodland mills customer service has been very good too every time we've called whether it was to change your order ask a question they were always kind responsive helpful we've had nothing but positive experiences with their customer service team another pro is that the lubrication tank is metal other mills we've seen had plastic ones they just disintegrated in the sun this one is sturdy also the woodland mills owner's manual is very high quality it's clear well written easy to follow along step by step and set up instructions were thorough but it's even easier though to follow along with our step-by-step assembly videos so check those out if you're so inclined one of the features we really like about the smell is the rabbit change blade system it's a quick smooth process no special tools are required he forgot to release the blade tension before we started so you'll see him doing that here now we do use a torque wrench to set the tension afterward again but that's the only special tool you might need the biggest time saver and advantage to this is that you shouldn't need to readjust the tracking every time you change a blade you'll see him doing this process here in real time so you can get a feel for how slick this works that lubrication hose sort of gets in the way not a huge deal we could probably trim that hose a little and we may in the future but we haven't done any modifications this sawmill is still factory six months in oh there's that hose in the way again once you get one side in the rest of the blade slips in pretty easily though another positive aspect though not specific to the sawmill itself was that woodland mills has flat rate shipping cost regardless of how much stuff you buy so for example when we purchased the mill we got a track extension kit a cant hook extra pack of blades all of those were add-ons and it all shipped together with a sawmill there were no additional shipping up charges for those accessories [Music] [Music] this rapid change blade it's convenient and as you just saw it only takes a few minutes he actually spent more time going to grab the torque wrench and the tape measure which is why i edited those parts out another pro is that the push handle can be mounted up or down depending on height and comfort the recommendation is mounting it up for a ground setup and mounting it down if you have your mill in a trailer this versatility is nice because you can adjust to meet your needs well let's move on to the cons there were some things that we were less than impressed with and the first one was the fact that woodland mills advertises the hm122 can cut a 22-inch diameter lock well we maxed her out with a log that was exactly 22 inches and it didn't fit between the blade guides so if you have big logs go with a bigger mill the design for the log clamps isn't the greatest on bigger logs it didn't even fit so we ended up not even being able to use it plus it's a lengthy process to screw these in and out each time we don't love the point on the end which is why we usually place a shim between the clamp and the cut surface of the log there's a different style clamp on some of the bigger woodland mills models those look like they work a little bit better than this going back to that lubrication tank we like that it's metal rather than plastic however the valve that regulates flow rate it's just hard to adjust it's tricky to try and get a proper drip rate on the blade which is very important when you're sewing certain wood types to be honest with you we'll probably end up modifying this in the future and install a different valve something that's easy to adjust like we've seen others do online so we mentioned how we had initially set up our sawmill on a car trailer so for the first five months the mill was stored in our garage and we'd pull it outside just to millwood about a month ago we needed to use that trailer and so we had to move the mill outside temporarily until we get the saw shack finished about two weeks of being outside we noticed several small rust spots already starting to form on the mill and that was a bit disappointing because we have it fully covered both the saw head and the track unless we're using it those covers are on and so it's never been rained on even we were bummed to see that it started rusting so quickly now granted the rust spots were on bunks and the logs top sleeves on those bunks these are areas that get more wear and tear just still a bummer to see them rusting almost immediately there were no signs of rust in the previous five months when we had the mill stored indoors so this one really surprised us the most i guess we'll have to be doing some touch up here soon and finally the blade stopper which is that little red piece you see in the picture kept falling off our sawmill it's designed to prevent the blade from hitting the log stops but fell out multiple times and we just eventually left it out all together from what we've seen online this is common if you end up seeing the same sort of thing happening on your sawmill just be sure to get into the habit of checking your log stop clearance before you start cutting bottom line our verdict leans towards the positive it's a good quality sawmill for the money you pay there's a few minor things that could be improved but overall it's a good mill and a worthwhile investment as always if you'd like to get a hold of us with questions or comments please email us at thepopple people all one word at gmail.com or flip flop a comment below we love hearing from you stay tuned for our next video thanks so much for watching we sure appreciate it if you enjoyed this video and want to follow our journey please consider subscribing that way you can be a popple people too we'll see you soon

Channel: The Popple People

Views: 66,251

Keywords: Woodland mills, Woodland mill, woodland sawmill, sawmill, sawmill review, sawmill pros cons, brutally honest sawmill review, woodland mill review, woodland mills review, Popple people, Hm 122, hm122, pros and cons sawmill, pros & cons sawmill, Sawmill honest review

Id: N-whjoSNYGA

Length: 8min 56sec (536 seconds)

Published: Sun Aug 28 2022