The Incredible Chainsaw Mill

[Music] welcome back friends to the shop on this beautiful Wednesday afternoon on the homestead the day we've all been waiting for we're gonna be cutting into the giant dug for a burl had a hard time figuring out how to slab this with what I had on hand this is what I came up with let's go take a close look at how we set this up and we'll talk about the tools a little bit and then we'll get the chainsaw mill fired out this setup was a bit of a head-scratcher now the obvious question is why don't use the Lucas sawmill well I could easily do this with the Lucas sawmill however I wanted to do this with the Alaskan because this one is more attainable by most guys if you probably already have a chainsaw so for a couple hundred bucks you can get yourself a Granberg and you can mill well i milled a whole timber-frame cabin with it and i know other guys that have as well so that's kind of why I wanted to go with this so we have two problems couple problems here first off this is heavy but not that heavy so all of the force that's going to be exerted on the saw bar is gonna move it around and we just can't have it moving around so I've got a series of wedges and cribbing different things that we kind of put up there and on the back side we actually screw it a 2x4 into the frame here or the pallet racking and then a couple legs into this I hope that will keep it from moving so once that's done I had to figure out a way we've got to be able to raise and lower the saw for the slobbing right so we have quite a bit of adjustment probably 14 16 inches here in the Granberg but the suit well the solution was to use we just modified some old pallet racking now we can lower that down or raise it up whatever we wanted to so we can really we have an infinite adjustability with the two things right there not only that but we have nice perfectly level rails that we can use as a guide so when we start slobbing it'll be perfectly flat I'm hoping the saw we'll be using today would be a 461 still with a 32 inch bar that's about the smallest saw I'd go with with an Alaskan ideally a 66 660 is is pretty hard to beat if you're gonna do a lot of milling get a 660 if you're gonna want to saw that you can do heavy firewood you're not gonna do a tremendous amount the 461 is pretty good to go got four loops sharpened up here ready to go ripping chain versus regular round file chain now on the right here is a regular round file chain and on the left is a dedicated ripping chain now of course chain sawmills you know they're you're cutting along with the grain so that's ripping that and that takes a lot more effort right so the guys will tell you from the chainsaw mill side that you want to use the ripping chain you see the difference immediately right here do you see the angle in which it's filed it's a much flatter not near as steep or the round file traditionally is gonna be a lot steeper and you also you'll see that this is a full skip and I think this is a half skip right there meaning that how many teeth per inch or so so you'll see some of the bigger saws and professionals would like to use full skip chains get better chain speed and and various different reasons but what I have found and I've used both extensively I have found that it doesn't seem to make that much difference I almost believe sometimes that it cuts a little bit faster with a traditional round file chain versus the ripping chain with the ripping chain I think you get maybe a little bit finished but nice or finished product so if it's gonna be something that's showcased and you don't want to do a lot of hand work or planing on it that might be a better bet for you so you might just try them and see but for just most guys your regular chain that you have is gonna work just fine this is a Granberg Alaska and chain sawmill if you're new to the channel you may not be familiar with these it's a simple guide that you can buy and use with any power saw that will give you the ability to make your own lumber and to install your sauce quite simple in the same process on the big ones or the small ones you can if you have small things to mill just little maybe just windfall or cleanup from the winter you have a small saw like a 16 inch bar you can still chainsaw mill with that with a saw installed the only thing left is to make sure that you check your measurements here now this upright has graduated measurements it goes from 0 to 13 inches that's how deep you can cut [Music] our first cut went pretty good that was just kind of a test cut to make sure that the jig was gonna work and I didn't see any problems there that course chain you can see or the regular firewood chain it does leave kind of a coarse finish on it but once that's planed and finished it to me nice so what are we gonna make well we got some of you requested a few billets for some pin guys that turn pins and we'll get those cut out for those you guys who have expressed that interest but our main thing is gonna do one big slab across the whole thing of it to get hopefully some sort of a tabletop so we'll see how it goes and we may be adapting the plan as we go but let's set it for a second cut [Music] for our first lab we're gonna lower this down from nine inches to eleven and a half now that's going to give us a two and a half inch cut now why two and a half well this first slab would be a really good thing for like a cheese board or a bread board a live edged platter of some sort and to finish up at two inches it's a nice dimension it's not something you see typically and it looks unique and it's just the right amount now we're set let's try this again [Music] what's like that chain started to jump off there there we go boy the smell of this Doug Fir with all this SAP in it it's just the most beautiful delicious smell of all wood I didn't quite figure right on my width I can't get through here on this end just it's just too wide so here's what we're gonna do we're gonna we're gonna nip this off with a chainsaw somewhere somewhere right in here some of you more astute observers notice I switched to a different DOMA these nomar's are really good finally someone's making something that's decent the host Kivar knife it's actually has a safety lid that's pretty good and the bonus feature here so you unlock it and when you fuel you just push it in and that spring compresses well itself fence and it automatically shuts off when the fuel level hits the tip of the nozzle therefore greatly reducing my gasoline spillage how about that huh that you know those Swedes first minecraft now this amazing unfortunately for me they don't have the same feature on the bar oil side so there's still a very good chance that we'll make a big mess here bar its deceit is to see deceiving that last little bit it always feels it faster than you think but now here when I typically do with these stupid quarter turn caps is I don't get them sealed and I pick my saw up and then I pour out the bar all over the ground so that's not stills best design there [Music] we're still not down into the good stuff yet still got you know quite a bit of saw cuts you know deep cuts there from getting it off there I think the good stuffs gonna be right down in here that's where we're looking at a nice long slab for a tabletop but right here I think we have enough here for a nice bread board for a cheese board so let's drop the leg we pretty much maxed out now on the mill adapter so let's drop the legs down one hold that would give us another two-inch pass and then we'll take one two or Tate two and a half and then we'll reassess [Music] what are we gonna have under here here's a fun fact for you professional homeowners your intake for the cool air for your saw comes in right here so if you see that sucking or grabbing chips make sure you keep that clear right there that's why it's got a great on it now we're getting down to the good stuff I cannot be careful here okay so we got a center there our next cut I believe is gonna be the top of our of our table what we're really trying to to get here with this so if we level off of that we can see there are chainsaw cuts come down to about just shy of two inches so if we set our next cut for two inches below the top right here we should have a clean cut hopefully we went deep enough I think it was just right we're gonna see the top of the table together for the first oh yeah that's good it's all one piece that's a good sign we know we got through it oh man this is exciting oh man that is so pretty you can't it's pretty now in its dry State wait till you get some something wet on there so we do have some Oh nope there's some gouges right there from the chain saw the tip where it just got in there but that's okay we could put this in the bottom we don't need to it's there's no reason to waste any more of it it's pretty alright now we got to figure out how deep we want to make this I'm thinking probably just under he'll be just over 2 inches all right guys this is it this is the big-money cut I decided we're gonna do a 4-inch cut now I don't want a 4-inch slab but what you typically do with this I can tell that there's there's a lot of moisture in this so it's going to take a long time for it to stabilize you'll want to do build furniture with wet wood because it moves so much and all your hard work and your joinery will just all be for naught so how it's done is you over cut it and then you let it sit you crib it so it's perfectly flat it's in a shaded area and you let it stabilize in inch a year so that's four years well I guess maybe it's from both sides so yet two years two years for this to cure once its cure then we can run it through a planer or hand playing it and then we'll have a stable piece that we can really do something with so 4-inch slab when I cut it now we'll see it together [Music] all right friends shall we see what we got this would be the bottom what we were all gonna see it together for the first time put a little water on it see if it'll bring out some of those grains that's pretty that is gonna be beautiful look at the swirls it has that birds I'm cut that bird's-eye maple look I think underneath the piece underneath might even be prettier it might even have less of these imperfections I've seen guys take and fill these voids with like crushed you know what look really pretty would be like crushed what's that blue turquoise turquoise with an epoxy in there yeah little goes a long ways with that but man if you do it right it can look really pretty but isn't that something look at the swirls in it and to have it from douglas-fir local tree now that just makes it all that much better that is something else you see now why they call it red fir look how much red is in it just it's it's not as red as like a giant sequoia but not too far from it but the smell is just nothing like it that's pretty - look at the SAP pockets in there that's so interesting this especially and here's quite nice I'm gonna let that one sit and stew on it for a while see what I want to do with it I was over at my sister the fresh peas house last night she said something about a giant bowl might be an option huh but this piece is ours here but that is just gonna be just gorgeous hey thanks for watching I really appreciate it if you wouldn't mind taking a moment and clicking the thumbs up of course you know we're always under heavy censorship YouTube I don't know why but so if you comment and click the thumbs up and share these videos it helps I put a lot of effort into them for you guys especially with this one with lights and camera angles so you can kind of get the experience and feel what it's like the best I can so that it's entertaining and not just some guy putting a camera on a tripod so I appreciate you guys supporting it so thanks for watching keep us in your prayers may God bless you and your families and we'll see you guys on the next video [Music] you [Music]

Channel: Wranglerstar

Views: 300,342

Rating: 4.962831 out of 5

Keywords: wranglerstar, modern homesteading, chainsaw, chainsaw mill, chainsawmill

Id: xBbmUwFyupM

Length: 16min 56sec (1016 seconds)

Published: Wed May 27 2020