Sawyer (milling/drying) Forum?

[ian maybury]

Hi guys. I've been absent as my computer has been in for repairs - but good to see some momentum developing. Just to say I've voted and put through a contribution too.

Dead pleased to see the preference for keeping the forum open/public - in that even if we have a fair amount of in house knowledge it should pull in outside expertise too.

Some interests for me are:

(1) The preparation (stress relieving and conditioning) of project sized batches of bought commercially kilned wood to improve (and predict) its stability and workability/to approach that of air dried wood. (think many of us play roulette by buying kilned wood of essentially unknown condition - which was either dried over aggressively, or which has perhaps picked up a lot of moisture since kilning)

(2) Nitty gritty/hands on level techniques (schedules, processes etc in detail) and equipment solutions for DIY/budget sawmilling, drying and kilning of smallish quantities of wood for personal, project or small/speciality/high quality commercial use. (this in one respect is the key - there's quite a lot of information/discussion out there already at the general level, but it's not always very specific, and tends to relate to larger scale operations)

(3) Tech, user feedback, pros and cons and sources of smaller scale equipment useful for the above. (e.g. the Logosol mini kiln is for example a very cost effective looking solution claimed to be especially effective at delivering minimally stressed and equilibrated wood - but it's proving difficult to dig up good manufacturer/user recommendations on how exactly to use one)

(4) As a subset of the above - there's possibly a market for well prepped turning blanks and interesting pieces of wood, but very little information on how to process them using a small kiln.

[Danny Hamsley]

Seems odd to me that 25% of the woodworkers responding here have no interest in how lumber is milled and dried. In my experience, you cannot be as effective a woodworker if you do not understand the basics of how lumber is cut from trees and how it is dried for use. I guess for some, lumber just grows on trees.
However, I apologize for the comments, not meant to be snide. I have a pretty serious wood fixation.

[Keith Outten]

One reason that people prefer to have this topic remain in the General Woodworking Forum is to keep the information in a forum that they frequent. The majority here rarely visit more then one forum area.

Based on your requests I have created the new Sawmills and Kiln Drying Forum which is now open for discussion of both milling and drying lumber.

[Cody Colston]

Thank you, Keith.

[William McAnelly]

I have a harbor freight sawmill that I made a 30 foot track for. It works ok if you have sharp blades if they get dull it starts getting wavey(sp) not bad for the price.