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Thread: chainsaw mill

  1. #1
    Boolit Grand Master
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    chainsaw mill

    any of you use one of these chainsaw mills where you attach a cutting guide to your saw and muscle it through the log?
    My son wants to get one but I see more work to produce any lumber, but I may be totally headed in the wrong direction.
    Hit em'hard
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  2. #2
    Boolit Master
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    IMHO, they waste a lot of wood.
    “Coincidence is God’s way of remaining anonymous.”

  3. #3
    Boolit Buddy
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    If you can find a small mill owner you trust deliver the logs, help him saw them up and pay the saw-bill. Portable mills are too slow and a chainsaw mill is worse.

  4. #4
    Boolit Master

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    I have 2 friends who each bought one. One sawed 2 logs and the other only sawed part of one before they gave up.
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  5. #5
    Boolit Master
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    See if you can get hold of a book called "Chainsaw Lumbermaking" by Will Malloff. Produced by "The Taunton Press", in 1982. That book gives instructions, including plans to build your own chainsaw mill. Those mills are a bit of a fiddly pain but they do make good lumber. We used a mill we built ourselves and took it up to the lake to mill beams and boards for a couple of cabins.
    R.D.M.

  6. #6
    Boolit Master
    Mal Paso's Avatar
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    Get the USA made Alaskan, it's solid. I just milled 2 logs. More horsepower is better. I used a 5 HP. It is work. That it wastes wood is splitting hairs, a circular or bandsaw of any size is going to take 1/4 inch or more. I plan to get a $20K mill after I get storage for it but I got 16 boards curing right now.
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    Last edited by Mal Paso; 07-20-2021 at 01:22 PM.
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  7. #7
    Boolit Master



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    i still use one.

    if you know how to sharpen a chain well AND know how to set the depth gauges well, then you might not get frustrated with it.



    i do use a ripping chain for less 'kerf' waste.

    i 'mill up' 3 or 4 10' logs a year, that's it.

    like i said, you MUST keep the chain sharp and biting or you'll get 3/4 through the log and only throw 'dust' for the next 10 minutes trying to push the saw through.

    i'll keep my chainsaw mill because i've learned how to get the most out of it.

    if i could 'go back', i'd save up for a bandsaw mill or not attempt to mill my own logs in the first place.

    good luck
    WebMonkey
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  8. #8
    Boolit Buddy
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    It is work for sure. Just rolling logs and getting them off the ground.

    If he has plans of making 2x4s he is money ahead to buy lumber. Timbers for structural buildings need to be graded so that's out too. I use a home made rig, it works well. I've cut cherry for projects, 15 fir planks 2-1/4×12 at 6 feet for a atv bridge. Several disks 18" or less at 2 inches for European mounts. And a 12x12 at 8' from cedar (lightweight) and cut a 70* angle for homade car ramps.

    Really it's a toy, you can make lumber and timbers you can't buy. My dad shakes his head at my stories, then sees what I made...

  9. #9
    Boolit Buddy badguybuster's Avatar
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    I used one of the Harbor Freight Bandsaw mills at my old farm (unfortunately I let the new owner convince me to leave it). It worked great so long as you went slow and kept it lubricated. The blades were mediocre but easily replaced with better quality.

  10. #10
    Boolit Grand Master


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    I started using an Alaskan mill close to thirty years ago. It worked great in the Alaskan Bush where there weren’t any saw mills. There wasn’t any near me. It works great for soft woods, but slower on hard woods. You need a big saw however. The bigger the better.

    I had a second mill shipped to me in France and I used it to mill beautiful chestnut boards using a Sthil 880, as well as squaring logs to be used as beams.

    One big advantage of a chainsaw mill is that they are portable. A lot of what I cut wasn’t accessible except on foot. Most of the time I couldn’t get a tractor, or even a four wheeler close enough to haul the logs out. Cutting them in place made it possible to carry the individual boards out by hand.

    Sure they have their limitations, but they can get the job done. Just make sure you get the first cut set up right. Afterwards it’s easy. Be prepared to go through some gas and chain oil. You can experiment with different chains depending on the finished surface you want. The smoother the finish, the longer it takes. A lot of people like peco chains. In Alaska I used skip chains that made things go a lot faster when I wasn’t worried about the surface finish. Unfortunately, you couldn’t buy the over here in Europe when I was milling.
    Last edited by GregLaROCHE; 07-20-2021 at 03:19 PM.

  11. #11
    Boolit Grand Master
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    Quote Originally Posted by bakerjw View Post
    IMHO, they waste a lot of wood.
    That's what I was thinking.

  12. #12
    Boolit Grand Master Harter66's Avatar
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    We dropped coin on the HF 301 cc mill . First cuts took me an hour to reduce a 18" Pine log to 2×4 . The big bug is is the 9'3" cut length . I bought two 20' 3×3×3/16 angle iron and have 17'4" . It will make a first cut on 26" logs IF there aren't any protrusions over 2" out either side . Yeah it's $2200 but after hosing the first blade practicing and getting some gift wood I have some cherry to cut 1×4 to 1×18 gobs of oak and cedar and 30' of pine walls and all the hardwood floor I ever wanted it's a great investment . At current prices it takes 50 10' hardwood 2×6 , 1×12 shelf boards or about 250 pine 2×4 studs and your sawing wood for gas and blade cost . It runs a 144×1-1/4" that are $15-18 ea it runs 4-5 hr on a gallon of gas . Running labor ? Set up the bed with 2" of fall in 12' or about 5" in 20' and it will just about self feed on 12-16" widths of pine .

    Not shilling just information .
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  13. #13
    Boolit Master Moleman-'s Avatar
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    My BIL Dave can break almost anything. About 15 years ago he called up and said his fairly new pro grade Husqvarna chainsaw wouldn't start so he brought it over. It had no compression. Turns out he managed to melt the piston over the rings using it in a chainsaw mill. Got him a new piston and installed it, cleaned the melted piston streaks out the cylinder and the saw ran fine again. He'd taken the non running saw to the local dealer he'd bought it from and they told him it was ruined and offered him $50 for use as a parts saw. Saw is still running fine although he got rid of the mill kit.

  14. #14
    Boolit Grand Master


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    I always grind down the rakers, so the saw will dig in and cut as much as you want. It will bog down a saw if you force it too much. I had a piston and cylinder replaced in a Husqvarna 266 once and soon after I burnt it up again. It was very hot and that saw had a bad reputation. It was maybe too highly tuned and I possibly forced it too much. Saws are best run rich so you are sure you get enough oil. Rich in the gas oil ratio as well as the high speed richer than max speed. Unfortunately, today those adjustments are getting harder and harder to do. So far I haven’t been overly impressed with the new all electronic saws. Maybe they are better for novices, but for the moment, I still like to do my own adjustments.

    Wasting wood with each cut is relative. If you are cutting a lot of half inch boards you are going to loose a lot more than cutting three inch planks. Not much at all is waisted squaring up a log to make a beam.

  15. #15
    Boolit Buddy

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    Had a Echo with a 28" bar used the chain saw mill to cut southern red cedar into a nice thick mantle, made a cedar bench and cedar porch post for my log house. Brother borrowed it to make a big walnut bench. Sharp chain cuts easy, I used a electric hand planer to smooth the chain marks out of the wood, works well for thick cuts.

  16. #16
    Boolit Master

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    I have a Haddon Mill-uses a 2x6 as a guide. I busted out some timbers for hay wagon beams-3"x12", 4" by 8", 16 ft long. Stuff like that. Good enough for that kind of stuff. I would want something MUCH better to make boards ( anything under 4") or any quantity. I plan to buy a band saw mill. I have lots of mills around who might cut my lumber for me, but the loading and hauling is not trivial.

  17. #17
    Boolit Master BJK's Avatar
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    I made lots of lumber with an Alaskan mill. You need lots of HP in the saw, I used a saw with 5+HP but not just for making lumber I also use it for making firewood. It makes short work of turning a tree into stove length with the appropriate bar. I was turning out a 8' board in under 60 seconds, just keep the chain sharp and the logs clean. But it also turns 1/4" of wood into chips with each cut, so there's plenty of waste. I see it as worth more for timbers than boards but I made lots of boards since I had/have the trees. I did it as an experiment and it didn't take me long to pile the boards up. But it's time consuming, work, and uses oil and gas. But if you're back of beyond it's worth doing. If I lived where lumber wasn't available and I owned plenty of trees it would be the way to go since just get the mill and associated required items in place and make as much lumber/timbers as one needs as long as the fuel and oil lasts.

    Oh, and one needs a good way to square up the first edge. I used a long piece of channel iron screwed into the log.

  18. #18
    Boolit Master
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    I went with the Wood Mizer LX 25 which is their lowest priced hobby mill. It will cut up to 22" wide and 12.5 feet long. It uses a .031" thick blade which with the set teeth still cuts less than 1/8" of waste. It's quick to set up a log after you get it on the saw frame. It will cut a 12 foot log of soft wood in a minute or less but I don't have access to hard wood logs so I'm not sure how fast it will cut hard woods. I have only cut some smaller pieces of hard wood about 5 or 6" in diameter whic were a bit slower than the soft woods. At $3000 it's spendy compared to a large chain saw and the mill attachment but if you are going to use it much, I believe it will pay for itself in time and lumber.

  19. #19
    Boolit Grand Master


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    A friend bought one of the lower priced Wood Mizers. I worked with him and it worked really well I thought. First he added extensions to cut longer logs Then two years later he bought a bigger version, with a computer built in to calculate all the cuts. It all depends what you want to do and of course, how much you are willing to spend.

  20. #20
    Boolit Buddy
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    This is a very, very interesting thread to me. I am not as mechanically inclined as most, though. I have seen those portable lumber mills and always thought that, for a person who is patient and has a mechanical bent, the mills would pay for themselves easily for someone building a barn, house, or a lot of three-plank-and post horse fence.

    8mmFan

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