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Chris Padilla
02-26-2004, 11:51 AM
Dunno if this is appropriate to post here but there is a guy selling plans to build your own sawmill.

I was curious what thoughts you folks here had about it. I don't know this guy but he could certainly benefit from my post here.

It piqued my curiosity enough to ask around. One blow to me is that I don't know how to weld.

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=2382357809&category=20784


Thanks!

Admin: feel free to delete this if it isn't appropriate and my apologies....

Dennis Peacock
02-26-2004, 12:24 PM
Dunno if this is appropriate to post here but there is a guy selling plans to build your own sawmill.

I was curious what thoughts you folks here had about it. I don't know this guy but he could certainly benefit from my post here.

Thanks!

Admin: feel free to delete this if it isn't appropriate and my apologies....

Chris.....I can say that that is interesting!!!! Not so sure I would trust using car tires to drive the band on the mill without guards over them and besides that....just seems to unsafe.....but it would be a way to cut wood at home without spending a fortune.

Paul Downes
02-26-2004, 5:13 PM
Chris, I have been studying sawmill designs on the internet for 2 years or so. There are a lot of different porable sawmill manufacturers out there. Procutportablesawmills.com is another company that offers plans for the weld-it-yourselfer. The thing is, there are probably 10 to 15 designs out there that are real similar. I think there are 2-3 that use auto tires for the band wheels. I am interested in building one myself in the next 2-3 years, but I'm thinking about designing one to suit my own needs. I have recurrent opportunities to take down trees for friends and aquaintances and it sure has paid off to get nice wood for low cost.
I'm going to build a sawmill that will have 2 trolley gantries; a chainsaw gantry and a bandmill gantry. It is not uncommon to get a request to take down 1 or 2 large diameter trees. These trees need to be quartered before they can be sawn into lumber, let alone moved from the site and it is sometimes hard for the property owner to find someone to do the work resonably. I cut up one 4' dia. white oak last Spring and got it all q-sawn. No commercial sawmill I know of would take the log so I quartered it on site with a chainsaw, and took the quarters to a woodmiser guy.
I was thinking about buiding a sawmill this summer but I got sidtracked into building an outdoor wood fired boiler first. This past winter has been brutal on the pocket book and so priorities got changed. The thing to remember is not to be intimidated by the scope of any project. There is a need to be diligent in study, but if you break things down into their basic elements, it gets easier to accomplish what previously seemed like a lofty goal. If you look at these sawmill designs it soon becomes apparent that basicly there are 2 tracks parrellel to each other for the gantry to run on. The two tracks need to be stiff and strong enough to support a couple of tons worth of wood,etc,etc. Most of the woodworkers that post on this forum seem to have sufficient skills and talent to build accurately. Something like a sawmill is just bigger and heavier, but the same type of skills are employed.
As far as welding is concerned, Yes, it takes fine motor skills and attention to detail to be good at it. So..... take a class, or enlist some help, or barter for it. I happen to teach welding as part of my engineering duties. I learned something new about welding just this past week. Some things never change. Just when I thought I was fairly knowledgeable about welding, I had to grind out my own bad welds.(setting myself on fire in the process) Talk about humble pie, and in front of my sons to boot! "Hey dad, yer smokin!" We all got a good laugh out of it, and I learned that with flux core mig welding with additional gas shielding, you need to push weld @ about 3 to 5 degrees from 90 in order NOT to get porosity. Just like my friend tried to tell me. This produced a real smooth, almost spatter free weld on the stove boiler we were welding on. The neat thing about all this is, Hey honey, I need to buy a new welder so I can save us $3-4000 on the furnace. Cool way to get new toys! And she bought it too!