Woodland HM122 Bandsaw mill setup and Milling & Review

well hello I'm Mike Festiva welcome back in this video we'll be covering the Woodland hm 122 portable bandsaw basically we'll go through a full assembly and my thoughts on it we'll also be covering build quality and features of the Sawmill then towards the end we're actually going to load up quite a few logs on it and test it out and see how well it does for some test Cuts some of my original subscribers know I built a homemade band Sawmill about eight years ago for about a 250 300 and they're probably wondering why would biased bandsaw mill when I can build it well answer that question basically portability I want a smaller Mill something that was easy to take around and have it portable so that's why I picked this one up it's probably one of the most bargain Mills you can get on the market but spoiler alert the quality is pretty damn nice so stick around enjoy the video I don't want dork out in this too much but I want to comment the packing on this thing was fantastic this metal crate here that lifts off once you cut all these straps but like good angle iron even the paint job on is pretty good I am definitely going to salvage this metal framework here so I'm not a unboxing guy by any means but if you're going to spend this kind of money on something like this you might as well see how it comes shipped to you it's kind of cool even threw in some leather gloves there ear protection and eye protection super nice aluminum uh blade Lube tank right there with needle valve control on the bottom everything is really well packed and wrapped in that kind of bubble foam wrapping there's some log scales that come with it yeah good quality so far like I said I want to include just some of this stuff so when you get it you kind of can anticipate what you're going to be dealing with and what you got to move around well so far these components got out of here I'm quite impressed the gauge of the metal the weight to them actually is a little heavier than I thought I was hoping to get a fairly lightweight Mill that I could transport pretty easily and set up it's probably metric but it's probably a little hair shy of a quarter inch but it's pretty stout they weigh a lot these casters are way bigger than I figured they would be only one thing I noticed this has all its Hardware in it and it looked like a nut rattled out on this side I might have to go get another metric nut if that is metric off the check there's a little hole in the bottom of the box but it went out there I don't know it's not in here but so far I'm really impressed nice aluminum tank came with the gloves eye protection some hearing protection that's pretty nice all right let's get cutting the rest of these boxes open see what's inside man these components are really thick really sturdy I'm really impressed so far with the build quality on this oh this is cool I thought I'd have to go through here with the calipers and right on the bags what the millimeters are lengths and each bag has their uh you know 12 by 90 millimeter yeah each bag has a label in here stating what everything is so that will save me some measuring because there's a lot of Hardware that comes with this stuff yeah that's cool perfect well I found that missing nut it was the base of the Box mixed in with some packaging everything looks like it's here [Music] [Music] so I opted for the 9.5 horsepower model just because it was only a few hundred bucks more seemed like it'd be worth it usually on a sawmill you'd never complain that you got too much power It's usually the other way around and it's nice it's actually a cooler so when I was shopping for a small portable Mill I've always known about Woodland Mills I've heard pretty good things about them I remember looking at them back when I was building my DIY Mill years ago but I also knew Harbor Freight sold a Mill and uh the Harbor Freight one they wanted a 2700 and there was no bed extensions or parts available is kind of difficult I don't mind fabbing up my own stuff but just because you can doesn't mean I always want to so I was looking around at Woodland Mills and I was pretty impressed with their start price for their base model with the seven horsepower Kohler is uh 2500 and for the upgraded Kohler Engine like I got the 9.5 it was 27.50 Plus for another 300 bucks you can get another six foot bed extension which I opted for because if you do order that when you order The Sawmill they don't charge you any more for shipping for the bed extensions if you order it later on it's going to cost you a chunk of change so the whole Mill shipped to me was only another 200 for a flat rate shipping was pretty awesome brought to my work on uh big semi truck really quick shipping as well so far with how uh well built Everything feels these rails are much more beefy than I expected them to be all the framework on here so far feels pretty darn good it's getting late I got up for something this morning to go to work end of the work week now and tomorrow get the milk out of here get this Frame outside and set up at least one section of track so I can start assembling the mill head I also have another section of track back behind all these boxes I ordered for it because standard it will do a 10 foot log I think 10-4 but I wanted to Mill up to a 16 foot if I needed it the track's a little more beefy than I thought I thought it'd be like a little bit little lighter Duty and easier to move around but it actually is going to be pretty heavy to move around I thought this would be a little bit more portable that's why I kind of got one but I'll figure it out I think I'm gonna bolt it on the center of my car trailer be able to drive my tractor over it I have some million to do kind of a long ways away from my property so that's kind of why I wanted a little portable Mill and right off the bat I'm already realizing that there's a lot of things about this Mill that are far more Stout than that simple Mill I built I do a lot of Milling with that Mill I built years ago but I mean even these log bunks these are way thicker gauge metal than I use for that the rails are stouter thicker everything's overall far more well built but you know I've gotten eight years a million out of that machine with uh all the Cedar and Hemlock and Douglas fur around my place and it's worked great and so far the build quality on this thing is superior to the one I built so I was on a budget I built mine for 250 bucks though but I'm pretty impressed with this so far so tomorrow morning we'll get back at it and uh start setting this whole thing up so I'm going to take the instruction manual out of here and read up on a little bit before bed tonight so far I'm quite impressed with the build quality there's a lot of things like turnbuckle here nice stainless steel these uh blade adjustments look well machined good quality on here it's set up so you can put a torque wrench right in the end of this for torquing it give some other specs for adjusting the blade attention overall it's way more well built than that Mill I built from scratch it looks really thought out and the quality control on this so far seems top-notch pretty good not much chipping on most of the paint and everything and it is a mill it's going to be used around tractors and trees so it's not that big of a thing to me even these crossbar bunks they are way thicker than the stuff I use I just use pallet racking crossbars and they're much thinner than this so everything's pretty stout these are way way heavier Duty than what I put on my Mill and I'm always just kind of a little more gentle with it when I'm loading it with the excavator and you know so you don't bend them or anything but these are stout metal is expensive when you go to buy it and I do a lot of fabricating and these rails stuff like this add up quite a bit when you buy the square tubing and all this angle iron it's pretty stout plus all these uh laser cut frames all the nice ball bearings and everything I mean the hardware on this is massive it's really nice to see such big Hardware I've been buying stuff for making a uh for my other Mill like a little teeter-totter for shingle a little cutting apparatus I'm working on and every time you go to the hardware store you buy a small bag of Hardware it's 20 bucks now so seeing the hardware that comes in this kit if I had to buy the stuff with a hardware store it'd probably be 200 bucks man it's not cheap buying Hardware anymore so quick tip unless you need to set it up in a tiny shop don't do it right here I'm actually just taking this thing out of the crate working around really bad weather outside and when I was unpacking this thing and putting it together was every night after work in the dark so of course I'm working my shop but if you can it's good weather and you got plenty of light I would recommend setting up outside the location you plan to do some Milling with it's a lot easier that way got everything for that sitting over here that's going to get put together later I got everything that should be for the the track here I got a limited amount of space of course I thought I'd get out here early in the morning and here it is 7 30 at night the next day way more stuff came up today that I had to do I'm actually just going to set together six foot section of it right now in the shop if I can maybe I can do both but I want to just get the mill head assembly mounted on that I'm gonna actually take all this out of here once I get the mill head put together and install it down the field have a stack of logs I want to get through so I'm going to start on this next [Music] so one thing that was the breath of fresh air was the manual for this thing it was clearly written great illustration whoever wrote the manual actually have put these Mills together it wasn't like somebody said in an office and uh misspelling things like how many times now have we got stuff and the manuals don't make any sense now these things were written really well and another thing is the customer support with this company is pretty rad I contacted them before ordering the mill had some questions they were able to get me on the phone to the right people answer the questions I have very nice staff and I heard the two guys that started the company were engineers and it goes to show they have a lot of ideas they planned into it so good quality Mill seems like they got good customer service as well and parts availability working on the feet next [Music] so I want to talk about the robustness of this Hardware that came with the feet they're uh 16 millimeters or 5 8 of an inch pretty stout [Music] so here's a super nice little feature they planned into this Mill the can't stops are actually adjustable they slide in that nestable tubing but slightly loose you can adjust those bolts to shift it right or left so you can get the can't stop perfectly 90 degrees with the log bunks pretty cool feature so here's one little spot where I would elect a deviate away from the instructions I should have if ever installed one I will again was I had to really Drive these things through here these upright posts through these bushings that they have they have this really nice adjustable plastic bushings and they didn't say anything about adjustment until later in the manual and they were extremely tight to drive through my Mill so if I ever put one of these things together again I loosen up those bushings early on foreign I had the bed completely leveled out and solid and I deviated away from their plant and not put the mill on until you get fully assembled but not tightening the hardware yet keep in mind I kept most of the hardware loose but I put it on once I got these bottom sections on here just because I was working by myself this day and it was going to be hours before I could any any help with this other than my son in the background there but he's not about ready to help me lift the mill up here so that's where I stepped away from their plan and put it on a little earlier to drive them in because these are pretty tight they don't tell you to loosen these until later in the manual which I felt like would almost be easier loosen them now because I was driving on this one it just tore the tech cap up pretty bad thank you [Music] this 30 millimeter bolt and that spacer reason I couldn't find them is they're actually pre-installed already up here on this top of this carriage just like this kind of Hardware is already installed and the Caps were installed so if you can't find it anywhere dig around it's actually in the location it needs to be foreign [Music] so I highly recommend using a little impact gun I'm using a little Hercules uh 3 8 impact gun here snug everything up but not tight keep everything so you can rotate the hardware slightly because later on they're going to tell you to shake the whole Mill slightly back and forth to kind of settle everything out and then you torque it so don't go crazy with all the hardware for the whole Carriage just set everything on there get it kind of close but don't tighten it down until later oh so this bolt down here is by far the weirdest location you can imagine it's already pre-assembled on here so you got to back off this Nylock which is no room other than just to barely get a wrench in here and there's some conflicting Hardware over here that's a little tricky there's a jammed up back here by far that's kind of the weirdest design I've seen so far on the mill but everything else is going good so far so here I'm hooking up the nice little aluminum blade Lube tank for it it's got some good features like a sight glass on the side a little chain tether that keeps the lid to the tank so when you're filling it you don't drop it in the sawdust it's also got another cool feature automatic blade Lube through a simple valve when you pull on the throttle with the hand throttle it automatically turns on the blade Lube when you let off the throttle shuts It Off oh [Music] [Music] see those two little holes on that plate right there it's for a vibration sensing hour meter kind of a nice little thing to keep an eye out for how many hours you got on per blade or overall on the mill nice little feature came with it [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] so here it is here's the Shakedown getting all this whole Mill settled out it's what the manual says to do is shake it a little bit until everything settles down and then at that point you can torque everything up it's getting pretty close here [Music] blue smooth [Music] I think this rail system definitely is less rolling resistance than the v-rails I kind of installed I was just working with what I had on my home built Sawmill you hear the kind of the scrapey sounds and the sound of it going there's these stainless steel little wires that clean off all the grooves down here to keep the sawdust from building up on them but it rolls really nice [Music] so my blade off the bunk from side to side was actually true the problem is right now the Saw Head isn't gliding up and down these posts very well so as I run it I'm sure it'll settle out but I press down on each side of the head so the cables are are tight on both sides and it's it's actually true to the bunk but this is where you adjust it if it's not I tighten both these jam nuts down top and bottom here and I think once I run it for a little while it'll probably settle out not to readjust it again I think coming up in the manual pretty soon we're going to adjust these these are a little on the tight side you can see they're touching on one side but not the other so get to these so the head slides up and down pretty smooth I think it also said to put some silicone on the rails [Music] so you might be able to see this back bushing is nice tied up against this little area in here the front there's a gap probably I don't know 3 30 seconds maybe one and a half millimeters in there so I'm going to loosen all these four bolts squeeze these together here just by hand and snug them down and do the same on the bottom [Music] so it's time to add some oil to it it's not the easiest to get this oil filler what I ended up doing was digging through some of my little small engine funnels I came with uh like the Predator engines and different things from Harbor Freight and picked out the best one that fit it pulled out the dipstick on the other side so I didn't have to pull the funnel in and out spill oil and I could just keep checking the oil with the dipstick on the other side of the engine until I got it full [Music] yeah so I took off the check the air filter here and uh the whole housing is really nice nice big air filter on here much nicer than the Predator engines nice thick sturdy air filter assembly heard some customers complain that they have let go of the recoil starter super fast and it's hit these plastic tabs and broke them off I'm going to probably relocate this to the operator side and put the recoil over here got no problem with that that's why they got multiple bolts you can rotate this to whatever works for your needs yeah nice air filter nice Rubber seal fits down on here nice and tight but this is kind of a cool feature it's got these snap clips for easy access but it's got this little symbol over here it looks like a sun and that represents summertime so if you have it on there and clipped down it's pulling fresh air cool air over here if you put in Winter mode over here and clip it down it starts pulling heat off the exhaust which will warm the engine up a little faster kind of a neat little feature but we're going into spring so we're gonna set it up to Summer mode it's nice the company put this extra brass extension so it's easy to change the oil on these because it's comes out all the way to here you can get a nice little bucket or pan under it the thing I'm going to do is double check that these are all nice and tight don't want to be run it have those come loose so good everything's nice and snug I'm pretty impressed with almost everything has these uh nice Nylock all over this whole entire assembly nice sturdy Hardware with this Mill these plates are probably almost quarter inch thick pretty sturdy well built so a nice little feature they added to that little blade tensioning handle is a half inch square drive so you can use a torque wrench just get the Blade Set torqued down every single time identical so next what we're going to do is start spinning the blade by hand after it's been tensioned just to make sure that it actually tracks proper this blade actually is working really good tracking is perfect out of the box on mine now we're going to set the blade guides I'm actually pretty familiar with sudden blade guides and working on bandsaws I maintain a 40 horsepower electric resaw at my work this also has a 40 horsepower hydraulic motor that runs all the hydraulic accessories so definitely been used to working on bandsaws for years and this one is pretty simple to set up so I'd love to take this thing out and cut some logs with it but everything's trued up ready to go but it's pouring down rain out there so I'm kind of Shifting my interest to try to get this set up this is some Salvage stuff gets two and a half by two and a half angle iron and it's 3 16 of an inch thick got some holes plasma cut into it a few more over here this is going to be the bed stops get swapped onto here Salvage angle iron across here I believe these are upside down so I can get them trued up with the rails here this is going to get flipped over and bolted in the bed of my tractor kind of like Forks sticking out the front but they're rails so when I move this thing around a few different locations I can just pull my tractor in back over here put this rail system right up against here and here roll this off ratchet strap it to the front of my bucket and haul the mill head assembly around at least that's a plan so a few days later weather finally dried up and I was able to haul the mill and track down and get ready to start cutting some logs kind of excited about trying this thing out for the first time so this first log I loaded on here is really not the nicest of logs it's been sitting around for three or four years or so kind of getting a little funky on the edges so we're going to cut it up get something out of the center and all the offcuts are just gonna get turned into firewood probably better than just rotting away foreign I do really like the simple throttle control that automatically turns on and off the blade loop as well it's really laid out pretty well plus that handle I'm pushing on there with the throttle on it it's all adjustable whether it's on trailer you can pivot the arm down or if you're working on the ground level like I am you can have the arm up but you can tilt it back and forth and lock it in whatever Place feels the best to you pretty thought out foreign [Music] foreign [Music] so we got six two by sixes off of here and some just stuff we can Mill into like uh you know one by fours or something like that but got a little something on there [Music] so we got this uh eight and a half foot Douglas fur log on here it's kind of got a kind of a weird shape to it it's about 16 inches it's with the bark chipped off about 19 and a half tall this end is 17. 21. we'll see got some funky growth on here it's been sitting in this field for two or three years so chipped off the bark gonna clean it up make sure there's no dirt in the cut but this feels like that 16 inches maxing this thing out definitely the 22 is far off from the true capacity the bed's so small with the uprights that it's uh fairly limited there but this is truly a bigger log than I planned on Milling with it it's just down here so I figured I'd Mill it most of the stuff I'm going to be Milling is uh 16 inches and under [Music] all right [Music] so Woodland Mills suggests not to use any blade lube for the first 30 minutes to break in the drive belts so we got over 30 minutes on here so we're going to add some soapy water to the mix on my other Mill I use pine solid water but seems like any type of water with soap or pine solid that's going to do just fine so we try to remove all the bark on old logs especially if it's been sitting around or dragged around for a while you just take your time clean up the logs the best you can especially the Leading Edge where the teeth go into the log because there's any dirt or rock in there the Blade's going to drag it through the cut and I guarantee it's going to dull the blade you'll get a lot more service life out of each individual blade if you make sure to clean up and use a brush and scrape away the bark and just brush out any bark you don't remove so I want to give you guys a little tip first anybody's going to do this when you first get a bandsaw this is not my first band so I've ran a wood Miser I've ran a timberwolf and my homemade Band Saw Mill before and that big Baker at my work and if you're new to bandsaws though everyone's going to do it once see those little rods back there those are can't stops you want to make sure those are always below all your Cuts this Mill actually has a little feature on it you can bend down this little tab so it can actually hopefully hit your can't stop before your blade does but always pay attention because your can't stops were always on the opposite side you're running usually because your sawdust discharge is outside so pay attention and make sure never to hit those with your blades because your blades shot right after that yeah with these little stubbies you put this little Notch towards the back it drops down and the blade will never hit these these are a maximum drop foreign [Music] [Music] so another little tip is if you're new to bandsaws and you run them and you're getting dipping from your blade that's a total indication that your blade it probably hit some dirt or it's worn out so if you're cutting through knots and things like that you'll especially see it you gotta go slower in the travel speed through a knot because it just is harder to cut through but if you're actually running a double blade that's probably going to start seeing dipping in your Lumber either sharpen it send it off get sharpened or slap on a new blade it's just one of those things that's the characteristics of it and the sooner you know that a dipping isn't from Mostly a dull blade usually easier you can find to diagnose the problem move on here's a stack of lumber we got we got uh seven two by sixes and 14 two by fours out of that tree I would have got a lot more but it's been sitting down there for three years as a free log I got and it had some rod on the edges so we just want to nip off all the rod on there and uh just clean it on up [Music] so because I have ran some other bandsaw Mills and I've worked on them I have some experience with them I have to say for the price and build quality of this Mill and how well the kit was put together at least the one I received with all the labeled nuts and bolts in there and just really good instructions how to put it together I'm really happy with the build quality of it I think this thing offers a great value especially if you have smaller trees on your property the biggest thing is like when I built my bandsaw mill originally I sized the mill to what the trees were on my property and the capabilities of the machines I have on my property you know if you only have small Pines and different smaller trees on your property probably get a smaller Mill but if you have some big trees you might consider getting a bigger one because you're probably going to max out a small Mill this is one of those things consider what you're getting for the size of your trees and if you have the capability to move that kind of tree around your place and also I opted for the bigger engine the 9.5 horsepower I think you're always better off running the higher horsepower option if there is one you're never going to regret buying the bigger engine almost forgot to mention out of that uh Hemlock we got well two by fours there they are all right here's our stack of wood we got all the stuff brushed off today get all the sawdust off it so it can air dry up here stickered we got 21 two by sixes put away up here and uh 23 2x4s foreign well have to say I'm pretty impressed with the mill how well it's built I thought it was going to be a little lighter for my needs for being more portable it's pretty heavy if you do get something like this and you don't have heavy equipment I highly recommend just setting up in the location where you plan to do most of your milling and you know even though it's a 22 inch Mill is what they claim full logs I think it's about 20 inches between the guides realistically you're fairly limited little things you can do like the log these are set over far enough in the bed that it really pushes your log over and I think you're pushing at maybe 17 inches on here one thing you do is turn your can't stops like this I brought mine down so the curve of the log sat up on this for the first few Cuts so you can get that log over a little wider there's some definitely a few things I want to improve on it overall the mill worked pretty darn good really happy with the height set and everything like that and the winch works really well to raise and lower it cut really well everything's pretty Skookum on this thing but one thing I want to uh do is I'm going to probably engraved these log stops here I can set this down to see a five inch Mark right on here engraved into it so I know my blade that five and a half inch cut height it's going to always clear those that's one thing I want to improve and uh over here I do like the one I built for my Mill more slides on pipe clamps here it's like an old woodworking pipe and it had Acme threads so basically probably two or three turns on this thing is about equivalent to one turn with the Acme thread the handle is shorter I kept finding I kept hitting this constantly seems like something you're gonna if you don't pay attention where you put in this location you're gonna actually hit it with the mill this just feels a little clunkier to me and the point really digs in the wood it feels you can just keep cranking it and cranking and crank it just kind of drills into the wood I'm gonna go back modify this and set it up more like my other Mill I think that would be a simple Improvement but other than that as long as you're sizing your Mill for what logs you're planning to have on your property like this we get maxed out and some of the trees I have around here that's why I designed my Mill to handle a 26 inch cut between each guide and you can fit a pretty big log on that Mill but you need to have a Machinery to move something that big around overall I think if you don't have the confidence or the ability to engineer and build a mill from scratch like kind of like what I did of quite a few years ago or just don't have the white the right tools for it but always wanted a mill just put some money aside I said this in one of my previous videos just put some money aside and save up for a year or two and pick up something like this for the cost of the actual raw materials and the amount of time it takes to engineer something like this and all the cut and all the painting all that stuff sourcing all the parts all the hardware you know I built my Mill for 250 bucks but I've had friends looking for stuff for me I use pallet racking free engine and just minimal amount of cash but it took me five or six months of finding part and probably another two or three months of building the mill when I had time on the weekends and stuff honestly all said and done this works so good that I have a hard time justifying building another Mill for the cost of this thing how good it is and it took a day and a half or day by myself to put together actually did it over a few different nights but honestly that was a lot easier following some wonderfully written instructions than to be winging it and designing it and Engineering it by yourself it took a lot of work to plan out my old mill and how I built it cuts really well I'm happy with it this one's a little more small easier to break down the track a little bit heavier than I planned but yeah that's a good thing most of the time really sturdy it didn't Shake in the cut it's a very very sturdy frame so I'm pretty impressed with this so far you'll see a few more videos on my channel probably throughout the summer with this thing if you like the content you know give it a thumbs up consider subscribing you want to see some more of my homemade bandsaw mill I'll put some links to some of the videos Down Below in the description as well all right thanks for checking out the video take care bye

Channel: Mike festiva

Views: 319,607

Keywords: Woodland Bandsaw, Bandsaw, portable bandsaw, affordable bandsaw, entry level sawmill, logs, milling, cut your own, custom lumber, homestead, offgrid, milling your own, saw, tiny cabin

Id: 9d4RrehW2Oc

Length: 36min 4sec (2164 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 24 2023