Cutting Your Own Lumber for Beginners | Getting Started with a Portable Sawmill

[Music] all right guys welcome back i'm standing underneath the hillbilly hideo 2.0 and what this is is well it's my sawmill shelter i built this for days like today where i can get out enjoy the day regardless of the weather and cut some wood with my sawmill behind me now what i'm going to do today is take you guys back in time a little bit and i'm not talking about yesterday or the week before the month before i'm taking you back like three years here and i'm going to talk to you guys about what it was like for me to cut wood for the very first time using a bandsaw sawmill like you see behind me i'm going to take you through the whole process of going from a single log to a piece of lumber i'm going to explain to you the steps i take and you guys can well use what you like from it but i'm going to tell you what i do in order to make my lumber and how i find it works for me before we get there let's just talk about what i've been up to for the last little while you guys probably saw me load this up in the mill here recently and this stuff was from a blow down a storm that i finally got out of the deep part of the bush and i ended up using my winch to do that and my grapple and my tractor and all that got it up here i'm hoping the weather today helps to wash some of the mud away because if you would have seen some of my recent videos you guys would know that the snow on my trails my skidding trails has sort of faded and so some of this stuff is caked on with mud anyways i also have another pile i just brought out here and you can see it here just got to get back out here with the tractor we'll get the grapple fired up and get this loaded up there as well so no shortage of logs for lumber and you guys are probably saying to yourself well if you look around there's probably never going to be any shortage of logs for lumber and yeah you're absolutely right over here i got some cleanup to do with the snow finally disappearing at least in most places around here i end up with stuff like this these are projects and this was a stack of lumber that got buried in the snow and i didn't get cleaned up before the winter now it's time to clean it up so i can look around and see a bit of a cleaned up yard we look over here you guys would have seen this as well relatively recently you would have seen all these slabs get cut up probably about mid-winter and unfortunately the winter kept rolling through and covering this stuff well now that the snow is nearly gone and when i say nearly it's because there's actually snow under this pile but now the snow is nearly gone i can come in here with the grapple pick it up and load it into ibc cages just like this anyways that's pretty much what we're up against and just before we go anywhere i know many of you folks probably say to yourself what's he talking about snow there's actually some snow in deep parts of the bush here still and that's because it doesn't get much shade and believe it or not even though some days it gets up around i don't know some days 17 18 degrees celsius at night we're still getting relatively cool and we'll just tuck in over here you guys can see what i'm talking about see down there yeah there's the white stuff so this wood here is still caked in still uh still sort of in in parts so that's gonna slow me down on some of the cleanup anyways let's head on over here and you guys are gonna notice my handy-dandy club car i just installed this beautiful back seat on here for extra people i think that's a beautiful thing right there check this out oh yeah beautiful eh i know i know anyways gotta have my toys one of the more recent things i did around here you would have seen this as well was i finally got around to making the boardwalk uh flush with each deck and that more or less eliminated a trip hazard i had to wait until the weather got warm so that i could get in here and use some adhesive and you know secure it and all that this is also removable because i gotta remove it in order to clean out sawdust and snow and all kinds of stuff so uh this is just sitting here right now for the time being what i'm gonna do i'm gonna leave these supports under here um i'm going to see if there's any spring in this boardwalk first and foremost if there isn't then this might become a permanent staple anyways looking behind you guys here you can see my lumber pile i'm going to talk about this today we're going to talk about why i space it the way i do why i have it positioned where i do in proximity to my sawmill shack and hopefully some of this stuff helps you guys especially if you're brand new to song because it's a wonderful adventure but unless you know where to start or unless you have some ideas from others sometimes it can be a bit daunting so hopefully i can share some of my insight with you and maybe it's worth uh i don't know maybe it's worth something and if it's not well glad you guys are here anyways let's go all right guys well first things first i'm hoping you guys all had a chance to read your owner's manual because your owner's manual has far more insight than i'm going to give you this right here is the lubrication tank for my sawmill and this sawmill is a 2017 model i'm going to fill it up right now with straight water i've only ever used straight water in the warm months when it's winter and it's below freezing then what i use is this stuff i i just get some basic washer fluid and i use washer fluid because obviously it keeps the lines from freezing it also is non-toxic and i don't want to harm other critters floating around here and i certainly don't want my dog or something like that coming out here and eating something that has toxic material on it so i use washer fluid to uh to do just that cold months water in the warm months oftentimes what i do in order to get my water out here i often will use these jugs when i don't have a water system set up my old sawmill setup i had a water system where i had eaves troughs and then water came off the roof got collected in barrels i'm going to get that set up again but i just don't have it yet and so i just bring out these camping barrels and then i'm just going to hold that up there and fill it up with water and that'll be our lubrication all right guys well i got my torque wrench out and my model of sawmill uses a torque wrench to bring up the blade tension to 25 foot pounds you guys might have a different model and so make sure you follow your owner's manual here i'm going to torque it up and that will get us in the ballpark i'm going to talk more today about getting a log into lumber as opposed to the technical side of your sawmill come back for another video down the road where i'll talk about sort of the ins and outs and the technicalities dealing with the sawmill but for today you guys can just see what i have to do for my particular model all right and there's my 25 foot pounds and so that's good to go and let's go talk about logs and lumber so each of us is going to have different way of getting our log from wherever it is it's stacked to our actual log bunks and our sawmill for mine you guys can see i have a bit of a deck out here i put my logs up there with my tractor then it rolls with these four by fours from that log deck down here onto my actual sawmill log box if you guys have a look my first step after the log gets up here is i want to look to see how it's positioned and what i want to do is i want to push it all the way to the back and when i say the back i mean all the way until it touches these log stops and for this size log i tend to only use two log stops in reality you could probably use more than that but i only use two and that makes sure that it's adequately supported so i get it here i push it right right up and tight against the log stops and i got one there and i've got one here now there are two different log stops that come with my log my uh sawmill i've got the longer ones for bigger logs and i've got the smaller ones as you can see here and if you guys want to know why i've got numbers here be sure to check out the playlist i've got that listed in there uh in the sawmill setup playlist anyways i set the log stop so they're about halfway at the minimum halfway up the diameter of the log uh you could have it a little bit higher but you don't want to get too high obviously because you're going to be cutting the top off this log so let's try to push this over here and i'm quite fortunate this log is not the biggest thing in the world it's uh you know it's going to make some nice lumber but and i'm trying to push it here with one hand there we go that's not too bad so after the log is up against the log stops what i do is i look underneath the log so i look at the bottom side of it and i look at the gap between the bottom of the log and the top of the log bunk and i look at that on every log bunk and what i'm looking for is to see is there a gap in some places and not a gap in other places if that's the case i may end up with a seesaw effect the seesaw effect is basically when the log is not perfectly straight you could push on one end of the log and then it will it'll go up and down that's not ideal so what i do is if there is a bit of a gap let's say at this end i might rotate the log until the log is now touching the worst thing you can have is the seesaw because you don't want the log to drop on you when you're cutting because then you won't make a flat surface there is something out there sold by woodland mills i believe it's called the toe board if there's a gap let's say under this end of the log you can actually crank on this tool board it comes up and supports that end of the log so that it doesn't drop on you when you're cutting other people i've seen they also take like like shims and if there's a gap here or even a gap here they'll just tuck that shim under there and that'll make it so that the log can't go up and down it'll be resting firmly on the log stop for me i don't have a toe board and i don't tend to use shims all that often what i actually do is i will just rotate the log and i'll rotate it until there is no gap at each end if there's going to be a gap that's probably because the log goes like this a little bit i'll make it so that the gap is somewhere in the middle and that way it doesn't see-saw and i can simply just cut the top off nice and flat until i get down to the point where i make one continuous flat cut that's what i do all right once i'm happy with where the log sits and there's no seesaw effect when i do i push the log up tight against the log stops i actually use my one leg and i just put pressure on it because if you notice if i move it wants to roll back just a little bit you probably wouldn't do this with a thousand pound log or one that's gonna roll back on you quickly but obviously this is uh this is no danger here and then we lock it into place now my sawmill has two of these um the other one is at the far end it's for when i have really long logs in this case i find it's sufficient if i have two log stops and one clamp and so now i think we're good to go before i fire up the sawmill there's probably people out there who are saying they like to put the small end of the log at one end or the other facing one way or the other for me it doesn't really matter i've done it both ways and i haven't found a way that i like better and so i basically whichever way it rolls off my log deck that's the way i position it in this case i got the small end down here and the large end down there one thing i will mention is when i look at the small end that's going to dictate what type of lumber i'm going to try to get out of this log if i have a look here i can pretty much estimate that that's probably close to about a seven inch diameter that comes with experience uh you may not be able to do that quite yet and so with that in mind get your tape measure out measure the distance there now let's see what we got here get that on there not too bad it's about we'll say it's seven and a half that seven and a half inch will dictate the type of lumber i can get out of this you have to have in the back of your mind the type of lumber you're going for for me i have a list of projects that's gonna require some structural framing and because of that i want two by sixes and i want two by fours at this time so i look at this and i say to myself can i get a two by six out of this because that's the largest material i'm gonna be using if i can i won't waste this log on cutting small material i'll at least get some two by sixes out of it some of the smaller logs i've got like see this little thing obviously i'm not gonna get a two by six out of this and so i'm gonna save logs like that for my small material maybe i'll get a four by four out of there or maybe i'll get a two by four out of there bigger stuff used for the biggest material you need smaller stuff save for the small logs that is of course unless you got like 24 inch 24 inch logs you're always cutting but that's not the case here all right back at the small end of the log here and what i have is a little jig i rigged up and you guys might decide to use something similar what i've got is two inch increments labeled on this piece of wood and in fact it's just over two inches to my line there it's two and a sixteenth and that just accounts for a little bit of space for my blade now i don't know what my blade thickness is and i'd probably say it's a little bit under a sixteenth but regardless two and a sixteenth is what i've got measured just to account for a little bit of extra space i'm going to use this to predict what lumber i can get out of this log if you guys hold this up here and we'll go right across the middle right right across the heart of the log you guys will notice i can definitely get one two three two inch pieces well that would make a single six inch piece that's perfect because i want two by sixes so i can definitely get a six inch wide two by six out of this the question is how many two by sixes can i get out of this log well if we take it this way you'll notice you can get at least one right across the middle but if you drop it down a little bit it'll show you how far down you can still get a six inch piece so all the way to there if you're inexperienced you can draw a line there and then you can come all the way up to the top and draw another line and i'm going to set you guys down for a minute and do just that so there's six inches i'm going to come down just a little bit and i'm just going to draw a little line on there with my pencil okay six inches wide and then we'll come down a little bit further almost to where the log the log edges are and i'm gonna draw another line this shows me more or less where i can get six inches too before it goes off the edge of the log this would end up being waste this would end up being waste and when i say waste i don't mean i'm not going to use it i mean i just can't make a two by six out of it i could still use this here and i could make one by material out of it i could probably make some strapping or i don't know what i'll make and i could probably do the same with the bottom this here to here let's use my little jig to see approximately what that distance is and you guys can see i could get one two inch piece another two inch piece and that's pretty much gonna bring me to my line so this log right here if i'm trying to maximize the number of two by sixes i'm gonna get out of it i can get two two by sixes and some extra pieces which will probably end up being one by something all right so i did that with this little jig and one last thing about the jig here if you guys are comfortable or if it makes you more comfortable you might want to you might want to just draw a line right at the edge here and that way you know exactly where it's going to be so something like this and i find a marker works a little bit easier but obviously uh this will work and then you can just continue that line as best you can and at the very least what it does is it gives you an idea as to where you're going to get your lumber out of it now this is in total this is four inches this is six inches if you didn't want to make two two by sixes you could actually break it up the other way and instead you could come across like so make little lines and obviously you don't have to draw them on here if you don't want you can just visualize it but you can draw little lines there and you guys can see you could go this way where was my line somewhere in here you could go this way and instead you could make two by fours and you could get three of them instead of the two two by sixes anyway it's pretty handy just having a little jig like this obviously this doesn't have to be 100 accurate but uh gives you a rough idea all right guys well just about to fire up the sawmill what i did a moment ago i just adjusted the height of the sawmill so the blade is pretty much going to be in alignment with the line we drew there you guys can see there it is there now what i'm going to do from this point knowing that i have this much material from the blade to the top that's going to end up being waste i'm going to come up about an inch well it's going to be exactly an inch and i'm going to make my first cut that way when i make my second cut i can drop down an inch and it brings me to that line and it gives me a one inch material that i can use for strapping or some other piece of well some other piece of lumber all right guys well we got the one side all cut nice and flat this is ready to be flipped over and unhook it and in this case i normally would be using a can hook or a pb uh unfortunately for me my can hook is all euchred up it's all bent and so i don't have one with me so in the meantime i'm just going to do what i do what i can to get it done so let's roll her over and as you guys can tell there's a bit of weight there so you don't want to be standing in there and get your leg trapped obviously this is now on its flat edge i'm going to slide it and i'm going to reclamp it take note of how high your log stops are here if you put these too high you will find out very very quickly that when a blade touches it it makes some pretty sparks but it's gonna it's gonna cost you a pretty penny because you'll be replacing that blade watch the log stops get it clamped in position then we'll repeat the process except on this side all right guys well just before i fire this thing up and make my next cut here's what we got to consider the top of the log bunks now has a finished side of a 2x6 resting on it that is going to be the starting point for my measurement from there i have to think what is going to be the highest point at which i'm going to make a cut and it's going to be five inches imagine this one two by six comes up two inches the next one's on top of it it comes up four inches and then my one inch piece on top of that for a total of five inches therefore i'm going to set my scale to a five inch cut and make my cut instead of using the lines that i scribbled on the end of the log with if i use those lines that i scribbled on the end of the log with inevitably one's gonna be slightly out of place and that's gonna make my overall dimension and my lumber not accurate so i'm going based on the scale and that's gonna be how i finish cutting now i'm not gonna talk about scale setup at this point of the game but what i am going to tell you is make sure you read your owner's manual because my sawmill came with different scales and different scales actually take into account blade thickness whereas other scales don't so it's important you know so if you want a true two inch piece it's taking into account the blade thickness otherwise when you cut a two inch piece it's going to be slightly under that two inches all right next i'm going to unclamp the log here and you guys now can see i've got a flat side here and a flat side on the bottom the bottom side is the widest flat section so what i'm going to do is tilt this log up on edge raise up the log stops if need be and then push that flat edge tight up against the log stops what that's going to do is that's going to give me after i make a cut a nice square can't so that's what we're up against and i'm fortunate here because i can actually just sort of roll the log by hand sometimes you'll need a peavey or a log or a can excuse me a pb or a cant hook in order to do that and i just hooked it into place again and i think we're good to go so you guys can now line up your blade with the rough line you drew on your log or you can do what i do because i don't tend to draw those lines on the logs anymore you can just take your tape and come on over to the side of your log and what i do is i actually position the tape just like that touching the log bunk and then i try to see for myself where can i get my six inch wide material out of this log without getting bark in it right we don't want too much bark we kind of want this stuff here in the middle so if we do that one more time here you guys can see if i go from approximately one and a half inch up to about seven and a half inches that ends up being six inches wide and so that's gonna be my first cut seven and a half inches i'll flip the log over and then i'll cut one and a half inches so seven and a half here we go [Music] [Music] all right guys well we're almost done here what we have left is obviously a log without the sides on it without the bark on it this is called the cant mine is four inches by six inches that's perfect because as you guys know i'm gonna make two two by sixes out of this so obviously i have to flip it on to its other edge the most important thing at this point is not so much flipping it on its edge but it's watching the log stops watch this imagine i were to simply unclamp this and flip it over if i were to take this one-handed and push it up against the log stops well look at that if i were just to leave those log stops i'm gonna come through at two inches and i'm gonna mow those suckers down and i'm gonna be cursing myself because i forgot to lower them at this point the most important thing for new sawyers is to remember what height your log stops are at by always having a quick look and maybe even drawing those lines on there which if you check out my other video you'll know why they're there and that way you get some nice material without uh all the headaches of cutting into one of those log stops so clamper into place reposition the blade now that it is four inches wide i'm going to drop it down so it's at two inches and that'll make one more cut and leave me with two two by sixes true dimension that i can stack up in my pile so here we go [Music] when i'm back dragging my sawmill i always crank it up at least one third or half a turn and that just raises the blade up and i guarantee there's nothing that's going to touch on the way back in reality it shouldn't touch anything but that's my safety i always like to bring the saw head down below my measurement and then i crank it up just a little bit up to my measurement that makes it so i'm 100 sure the cables are pulling and it's tight when i set the dimension [Music] all right guys well just fixing up the spacing here and as you can see i've got a space here between each of the boards i don't get out a tape measure or anything but if i can put my fingers down there then that's pretty well good enough for me down here between each row i put stickers these things here i basically keep a big pile of them out here and these are one inch by one inch they go in between each row that just makes it so air can get in between the rows and that's on top of air getting in between each board i've now got these stacked up here i'll end up putting my next set of stickers up so when i get more lumber it'll go right up there last thing i need to do and i'm not going to bring you guys along for it because you probably understand the process but that is to take care of those one by pieces i'm left with this can be a bit onerous at times and so if i had an edging machine well that would be ideal but i don't what i need to do at this point you guys can see the one by material you see the bark on the left edge and the right edge this will be run on my sawmill one more time i'd raise up the log stops basically what you're going to do you're going to position it on edge and then it'll be up to you to decide what width of material you're going to get out of this uh for me sometimes i even leave it with the bark on there kind of looks nice and if you flip it over to the other edge well look at that you don't see any bark at all so it'll be up to you to decide what you do with those this one obviously has more bark on it and so you'll have to decide how much you take off but hey i got two one by pieces out of that on top of my two two by sixes so that's a good day in my books i got lots more lumber to cut and i'm definitely going to have to get more coffee to get that accomplished i appreciate all you guys being here if uh if you're brand new to the channel welcome aboard if you're not brand new well welcome back and for everyone out there do yourself a favor get out there and make some dust well fire up a sawmill enjoy yourself we'll see you next time

Channel: Sawing with Sandy

Views: 171,021

Keywords: cutting your own lumber, cutting your own lumber for beginners, How to use a portable sawmill, Cutting logs into lumber, Make the most of your own trees, How to cut lumber from trees, Make more lumber in less time, getting started with a portable sawmill, running a portable sawmill for the first time, how do I make lumber from trees, How lumber is made, start cutting lumber with a portable sawmill, easiest way to make your own lumber, Simple sawmill setup, woodland mills

Id: o7Qi5ZL6gxc

Length: 30min 33sec (1833 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 28 2021