Homemade bandsaw mill

Hello everyone My name is Michael I'm new to this forum, A friend of mine suggested I check it out. I have built many things over the years, but one of my biggest things I would say was my cabin from the ground up and I have slowly finished the wood work inside. I for years now always wanted a sawmill because I have trees on my property that I would like to mill for some great lumber for wood working. A mill has always been out of my price range, but in the last years or so I got talking with a friend about home built bandsaw mills, I started looking into them and I decided this last spring I would try to build one. It took me a little over 4 months to build, with about 50 hours of build time, the first 2 months were mostly savaging parts and pieces for it and the last 2 months were welding it up. With salvaging parts, the mill only cost me about $350 to build and now I'm milling great lumber from trees I already planed on taking down for more light anyways, I took photos documenting my build and made a video of how I went about building a mill, because when I was researching in the spring before building it, I did't find any good youtube videos with detailed step by step and close up photos of drive train parts so that's why I made this video.
I'm posting a link to my homemade bandsaw video on youtube, This shows how I built my mill with the free to cheap parts I found when building it, I hope it encourages others to set out on building there own! In no way am I saying to build it just like my mill, instead work with what you salvage and come up with maybe even a better mill!
http://youtu.be/dFNpKC3JTVQ

I hope you enjoy the video

Michael, welcome to SMC!
That was a very ingenious build and very cool first post.

Thank you Bruce! I'm looking forward to checking out other peoples projects and ideas on the forum.
I'm planing on making a video in a few months on building a log arch from salvaged parts for moving logs easier.
I just built a jig to cut beveled siding on my mill as well, I will post info on this soon.

Dude, you're my freaking hero. That was AWESOME. I've been dreaming of being able to resaw logs for the last year. I've looked at chainsaw set ups to woodmizers and everything in between. Money being tight, such machinery is out of the question for me. I have time though... I can spare $500 for parts and materials here and there for whatever I can't find... Just need to start drawing up some plans. Very, VERY inspiring Mike. Thanks so much for posting.

Hi Michael, the only thing you did not cover was the size of blade, TPI and type?
rgds,
Richard.

Inspiring! Thanks for posting.

Thanks for sharing. Your use of motorcycle wheels/tires for the bandsaw tires is ingenious. What inflation pressure have you found to be the best for tracking and does it appear the tires are going to hold up to the service?

Thanks guys for checking my mill build out! Richard Casey The blades I use on my mill are free used blades, salvaged from my work. They are carbide tipped 1.1/4"wide and about a 1/8" thick, TPI is hard to say because there variable pitch blades. Alan Heffernan I'm running about 45 PSI in the motorcycle tires and that seems to work well, Tracking is real simple, only had too adjust it when I first built it and that's adjusted with the motorcycle axle adjusters. The tires are holding up fine, plus I stopped by my local motorcycle shop and dug through there old dismounted tire pile and found a few good used FREE tires for spares! Yusuke Heller I'm glad your inspired by my build! I was like you thinking about how nice it would be to mill my own logs into boards, I just did not have an extra $5000 to put out on a mill, but like you I had time and was resourceful in finding things I needed to make it work. I'm looking forward to seeing the mill you come up with :) PS a friend and I just went in on an old 1964 diesel John Deere 2010 crawler with a blade and winch, this will make log moving a lot better!

Hi Michael,
thanks for the reply, I was wondering what happened to you. I was going to build my own using large old narrow car wheels but this has given me a whole new perspective on the design.
Regards,
Richard.

Hello again from Michael :) I thought I would post another video I made of my bandsaw mill I built a few years back. I have cut a lot of lumber for wood working projects around my place and for friends! Here's a short video of me cutting a cedar log into siding for my mill shed, Hope you enjoy :)
https://youtu.be/ZqozSmn0xA0