Sawmill School - Making Your First Cut on Your Sawmill

[Music] hi I'm Dave poison spotter topology fun portable sawmill and this is a special video it's for you people that are thinking about getting a sawmill or you've got your sawmill set up and you're ready to catch your first log kind of wanting to know what to expect and it's an exciting time so let's get that first log up there and start making some sawdust the first thing you want to do and have your log stopped pulled up so if your log doesn't go rolling off the mill so we're all set up now and I'm going to bring that log around and get her load it up the next step is to clamp that log down and then we'll make some decisions about how we're going to cut it up there's no substitute for a good can hook if you don't have one get one it makes a rule of difference and handling the log this one's got a good bite on the log it's got a five-foot handle that gives you a lot of turning leverage and I'd be lost without it and the idea is you want to just come in as low as you can so you can lift with your legs and if you like the luck way to log legs that's fine otherwise you can turn it to get it exactly the way you want it and you can see it's trying to roll back on me when I release it it really pays to have a wedge that you can stick in there to hold it and I've got one that I made special for this mill it's got kind of a T track on it that slides right on so when you roll the log up against those socks you can slide that in and it doesn't roll back we'll set our clamps and I like to go about a third of the way up on the log and you can see it's good and solid you're not going to move that log while you're cutting it and that's important and we can take that clamp out and leave it in and we're ready to start looking at making our cut I've marked up this log to give you an idea of how we're going to slice it up and when you're getting started out on your first few logs or maybe more not a bad idea just to kind of help you visualize what's inside the log I've marked everything to intern an eight thick boards and the reason is that's the most common thickness that I mill so we'll make our first cut or slobbing cut and this will come off and basically waste hopefully we'll get another board underneath that we'll see when we get down a little bit we turn the log 90 degrees so this side will be up do the same thing make a slobbing cut and then maybe cut another board or two coming up 90 degrees repeat the process and when we get to our last turn this side is on top they will come down and we'll just start slicing off boards now the advantage of this pattern is that it keeps the center of the growth rings centered in the boards that makes sense and that will give you the least drawing defect the least amount of warpage and stress as as the board's dry now ideally we'd have a perfectly round straight log to cut but nature almost never makes them that way so you deal with what you've got this one it's heavier at the far end and it's got a little bit of a boat to it you can as you can see so those are things that we'll have to accommodate we may have to adjust our cutting pattern a little bit because of that but we'll get some good lumber out of the slog and as another point when possible personally I like to start with the narrow end and cut towards the heavier end of the log now before we fire this baby up let's go over a few things first of all you should have high protection hearing protection you should be wearing steel-toed boots things can fall on things make a lot of noise and things can get thrown back in your face so keep yourself protected and be sure to remember to tension down the blade before you start the engine notice for the voice of experience speaking first vlog I ever cut I was so excited I had to log on the mill and it was nice piece of walnut and started up the engine let it warm up a minute gave it full throttle and bam the blade came off the band wheels put a kink in the blade basically destroyed a brand-new blade before I even touched it to the wood just remember to tension up the blade first save yourself that aggravation well I didn't quite go low enough to accommodate for the sweep in the log so just barely nicked the bark here so we're going to come down our next cut and that'll be a sliding cut too and then we'll get some boards after that one for sure we're going to take one more cuts in which plan to just because there is more sweets than we thought this course those that are set well because we're going to be educate all right so now I'm ready to rotate it 90 degrees turn on zone there a little bit I put shotgunned it's kind of help hold it for now and that comes in handy more times than you might think and get a low grip crying lift with your legs as much as you can now you're going to see why it's so important have your log stop square to your table bill because we're going to turn this log until the flat is right even with the edge of that log stopped and that's where we're going to clamp it down as long as that's square then our next cut is going to be square to the first one we made just bring it right on around here until it's just even with our log stop and that's where we'll clamp or down this is where it is really nice to have a helper but even without one if you think about what you're doing you can get it done and there's a little bit of gap there you need to turn it just a bit for reassure you can just kind of tweak it and get it to hold looks like Mike yes they were starting to get into some boards yeah drop that bar place now you want to be careful to remember to drop down your log stops there is nothing to keep that meal from cutting into it and there is basically two kinds of Sawyer's those who have text into their log stop and those who will do it again so I've done it several times I expect I'll do it again but hopefully I won't embarrass myself in this video that way usually it happens when you're sawing in front of other people you're a little bit to scratch it and you forget so run down all of the boards for edging I says had been to the mill and then I'll put him back on later and we're ready to turn this bug there we go off our log log stops down enough make sure we don't cut into him there we go and with such horror spirits will do it on screen file and everything else cause see I took the slabs I made two parallel piles with it that way I set my boards on those piles like this coming later with the Friday and water pick him up and carry him through the drawing area so everything is a matter of thinking ahead what's the next step and what are you going to do after that I try to get everything to flow together as smoothly as possible [Music] [Applause] [Applause] but my advice to you would do edge the board's as you get to them so right now I've got this camp down to three and three-quarters of an inch thick so I'll use that as a backing to hold those boards straight up and down while I edge them but then I'll come back my can't cut it off at two and a half inches then an inch and a quarter that would give me my last three boards and I'll be done looking to about three at a time that seemed to work out pretty well there that'll hold them securely [Applause] and then you want to get the straightest side down I gave you the flattest cut here and they've rolled them out too much but we'll get what we can out of them [Applause] [Applause] well as you can see we came pretty close to hitting that log stop another cotton we were to cut into it and I bumped it before and don't like doing that so now to make sure that doesn't happen we're going to drop it all the way down and swing that cleat around so it bites into that camp and the other thing that I want to do is slide it forward there so support it on that last log cross bump that way it won't tend to drink down a little as we cut so we'll clamp it down there and finish it up and we're going to leave all the boards on there as we cut and that way the weight of each board will help hold them in below it flat this is where if there's any stress in the wood it's going to start to try to bow one way or the other so this will help avoid that [Music] [Music] [Applause] let's tally up how we did this afternoon got 13 pieces 9 feet long count of 8 inches wide and by my calculations figure an inch thick that's 13 times 9 times 8 divided by 12 gives us 78 board feet so at 2 bucks a board foot that's 150 bucks plus change it's wide open at the easiest to cut but typically something like this half hour at the most Neil just sails right through it so not bad for a half hours fork we'll pick this up with the tractor carry it back to the drawing area get us stickers and get started air drying so I hope this introductions look well for you a lot of different ways to saw a log this isn't the only way to do it so get go online look up you can google like log signing patterns you get four quarter saw and how to cut a six by six or a four boy or a four by four can't out of the middle of it that type of thing and if you have any comments post them below and I'll answer them this best back in so thanks for stopping by keep making sawdust this goes [Music]

Channel: Norwood Portable Sawmills

Views: 1,071,193

Rating: 4.8493743 out of 5

Keywords: portable sawmills, mobile sawmills, sawmills, forestry equipment, bandsaw mills, Norwood, Sawmill School, Norwood Sawmills, OS Sawmills, OS27, Wood-Mizer, portable sawmill, sawmill, Woodland, Woodmizer, Frontier, Frontier Sawmills, saw mill, Woodland Mills, HD36, How to start sawing, Logosol, bandmill, band sawmill, mobile saw, mobile sawmill

Id: nMkq5M37ON0

Length: 26min 39sec (1599 seconds)

Published: Mon Mar 12 2018