Posted: 12/28/2012 8:52:14 AM EDT
| I keep kicking around the idea of buying a bandsaw sawmill like Hudson or timberking to build a cabin. I have literally thousands of GA pine trees that I could put to some use and save some money in the long run. |
| The problem is they are rather expensive for a one time project. Perhaps troll craigslist for a used one, or post a want to rent ad for one in your AO. I'd rather give someone with one in good shape $1000 to rent it for a few weeks and let them recoup some of their investment than spend $5000 to buy a new one, use it for a few weeks and then have it sit. Another thought is the chainsaw based mills which waste some wood with their larger kerf, but for a one-off project would probably be fine. |
| I used to own a large circular mill and got rid of it. Today I borrow a friends bandmill to saw what little I do and just pay for it's use. If I were going to build a house and some sheds or barn I would buy a bandmill and saw. When all the projects were done you could just sell it and get a good portion of your money back. just my .02 |
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My family used to have a woodmizer LT-30 band mill. It cut great demensional lumber. We bought it when a large grove of pines on our property started to be killed off be bark beetles. Dad wanted to build onto the barn and build an euipmentshed so he bought it. We sawed all of the pine trees down and sawed them into all manners of lumber. Dad ended up seeling enough to pay for the mill and build everything we wanted and have lumber left over. Dad bought it used from one of his cousins and it was well cared for. A thirty minutes tutorial by the previous owner had us sawing on our own lumber. we also kept about 20 blades. While we kept 10 on hand for sawing the other 10 were rotated back to Woodmizer for sharpening.
You also will end up with a lot of fire wood from the slabs and cull logs. I burned cut up slabs for firewood for years. I loved working the sawmill but it hard work. |
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My FIL has one (bandsaw type) while I knew how it work and had seen them before I never had any idea they were as badass as they are. I went and found a ceder tree in the back, cut it down, drug it up with the bobcat and cut into 10' sections. Loaded the section on the bed and went to town.
His doesn't have a power feed. Power feed would be amazing. Within 5 hours I had turned a standing tree into fence panels and a gate. It was kind of a empowering feeling. Edit to add pics, gate isn't level because it wasn't set yet. 
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I paid a guy $180 to bring his woodmizer out and cut 800 board feet of cherry from logs a friend gave me.
I think it took him three hours or so, all I did was stack the slabs off to the side. If you can stage a pile of logs for a day's work it might be more cost effective to rent someone else's machine, especially if your only prospect is buying new. Posted Via AR15.Com Mobile |
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I paid a guy $180 to bring his woodmizer out and cut 800 board feet of cherry from logs a friend gave me. I think it took him three hours or so, all I did was stack the slabs off to the side. If you can stage a pile of logs for a day's work it might be more cost effective to rent someone else's machine, especially if your only prospect is buying new. +1, Then you also don't have the learning curve factor. Plus most of these Ole guy's, Have a story or two to tell. And it's worth your time to listen. My wife's uncle bought a used mill when he retired. And has built 95% of the buildings on his now farm. And he draggs the mill around doing jobs, most of the time for some cash (fuel cost) And the rest is barter. Guns,Side of Beef, Feed for his goats,ect, ect. Anything to fuck the old tax man. And If you do decide get some wood cut. Save those slabs. The can make some nice stakes for the garden. |
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Just my 2 cents to save you money and headaches.I manage a log home mfg. co. in northern Wi. We hand peel our logs and mill everything in house on our sawmill. You didn't say whether you are building a log home or you want to mill your own lumber for a stick built cabin. First off yes I suggest a woodmizer, or bandsaw type portable rig. My suggestion on that is hire someone that has one, my reason for that is :
1.Being a sawyer or the person operating the mill takes years of knowledge to be able to look at a log and know what the best yield will be for each log, they will get the best yield out of every log.They will tell you if you can get material longer than 100", and trust me you need big timber for that. 2. you will need heavy equipment to get the logs over to and loaded on the sawmill.After that you will need to move the piles of lumber around. I'm assuming that you don't have a means of kiln drying the lumber, so you will have to air dry it.The last thing you will want to do is build something with wet lumber. 3.You will need someone to show you how to stack and sticker your lumber, so that when it is dry you can actually use it ie: not all warped and twisted. 4. You will end up with a lot of slab wood that you can use for the fire pit. That been said my point is hire someone who already owns a portable sawmill.In my kneck of the woods you can get a very good price to have your lumber milled. Hope this helps davidk |
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If it's something you want to really dive into as hobby, go for it. Beware of cheap brands- especially if it's something you want to keep long term. There are quite a few small fabricators that don't have the R&D into the machine and lack customer support. Norwood is a company that builds a very solid machine and has a great reputation for customer support. Others that come to mind are Woodmizer, Timberking and Log Master. I've operated portable band mills from the most basic manual design to hydraulically powered automatic machines and several in between. I can tell you that small details in design can make a big difference in how efficiently the mill operates. Don't pull the trigger until you fully understand what you are buying.
Sawing you own lumber is fun an rewarding but lakes lot of time, cash and work. It can pay off financially in the long run but it take a lot of volume to offset the initial investment. My Dad and I own a bandmill and several chain saw mills and they have paid off for us. I've included some pics for inspiration... Log cabin at the ranch- 6x6 timbers for walls, timber frame roof. 
Running a buddy's woodmeizer a number of years back. 
One of my chainsaw mills. 
A table I built from slabs 
A friends bad ass hydraulic mill we cut most of the cabin material on. 
Another CSM. 
This is the most recent pic I have of a barn I built for storing the material we have milled. It's pretty much full now. Most all of the material I used to build the barn was either milled or scavenged, including the structural steel and sheet metal (I work in commercial construction). I have less than $1500.00 out of pocket in a 33'x40' barn. 
If you get into this it can easily get out of hand as you can see. 
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