American-Made sawmills vs Chinese-Made

[eugene thomas]

is american made tools made here or assembled here....

[Michael Barker]

Good point Eugene. I guess there's a lot of combinations out there. The Canadian-built mills seem to be well-made and are reasonably-priced considering the quality.

[John TenEyck]

Any one had any experience with the Turner Mills with tires for band wheels ? They seem to have a lot of happy owners ??

No experience but using tires for band wheels leaves me a little cold because you can't get much tension on the blade with them. They show in their specs. the blade runs at 13K psi. That's woefully too little to cut consistently well, especially in a wide cut where the guides can't help much. My mill runs at 24K psi band tension at the factory torque setting. I have to say the pricing of Turner's mills is very competitive compared to most other domestic manufacturers and I imagine their mills work just fine unless you want to cut wide slabs.

John

[Michael Barker]

Thanks John ! I agree. Interesting that they seem to have many happy owners. You'll be interested to know that I have surrendered and ordered a Woodland HM130 MAX !!! Got tired of waiting on Cooks to return phone calls. Almost a month ! Not gonna beg anyone to buy from them. Really wanted to buy American-made but Woodland seemed to be decent build quality and good engineering as you stated. Really nice people at Woodland with great customer service !

[John TenEyck]

I'm sure you will be pleased with the mill, Michael. I am very sure you will be pleased with WM's Customer Service and Tech. Support should you need them. Let us know how you like the mill once you have it set up and make some sawdust.

The HM-130Max came out a year after I bought my HM-130 and I sure wish mine had that cut width.

John

[Michael Barker]

Will do. I'm sure it will be fine. Thanks !

[Thomas M Barnes]

Kentucky built Trucut mills are made by the amish. They're huge. A 70" and a 96"

[John TenEyck]

Kentucky built Trucut mills are made by the amish. They're huge. A 70" and a 96"

And in another class of capability and cost. You have a total of three posts, all about Trucut sawmills.

John

[Maurice Mcmurry]

I avoid Chinese steel whenever possible, it is becoming impossible. The Chinese are perfectly capable of making really good stuff out of top quality materials. Many Chinese products are not made well or with good steel. Our Woodmizer is over 40 years old and has sat out in the rain for most of those years. It is still in OK condition. I need to make a photo album of some Chinese steel items that are only a few years old. The steel rusts terribly. The plating does not last, nuts and bolts freeze and become un-removable very quickly. There are international manufacturing standards for everything. Many Chinese factories and steel mills are unregulated and do participate in ASTM. As I continue to work on the Woodmizer it becomes more and more Chinese including the MIG wire I am using for repairs.

I enjoyed this episode from Sampson Boat Co., My next mill will be homemade out of old junk.

[John TenEyck]

That guy is one mis-step away from a terrible death.

The quality of the steel is determined by the standards it's made to. Low standard, low quality. High standard, high quality; as long as the inspection process confirms it. And that's where Chinese steel may fall short. If the company buying it doesn't have a rigorous, on-site, inspection process, the probability of sub-standard quality increases dramatically, at least per the German auto parts suppliers I used to deal with. Grizzly has products coming out of China, as well as Taiwan. As far as I know, they seem to be managing the quality to meet their standards.

As for my Woodland Mills sawmill, it has been fine. I know several folks who have complained about the powder coated paint peeling off the sawhead. It's been fine on mine, just the normal touchup one might expect for something that gets abused and sits outside. I've had no issues with metal parts failing due to what I would attribute to low quality. I have had a couple of ancillary metal parts fail due to poor design, but that's another issue.

John

[Maurice Mcmurry]

That guy is one mis-step away from a terrible death.
John

I forgot how scary that mill is!

A shop I visit in KC MO from time to time has a big room full of hydraulic laminating presses, all made in China. They were custom made for this shop to very high standards.

[John TenEyck]

I watched the video all the way through and noticed that the sawyer uses what sure looks to be a Woodmaster CT blade to cut live oak. He said it was the only blade he had found that would survive. I also didn't see any blade guides on his homebuilt saw contraption. His tension method looked to be by guess - by gosh, or maybe it was calibrated to the limit of his strength pulling on the wrench. But it all seemed to work which is all that matters.

John

[Greg Parrish]

We use Cooks Super Sharp DuraTooth blades on everything from Pine to White Oak and they seem to work really well. And our mill is made in China also, but designed by an American company that builds a different line of mills here in the USA. We went with a Frontier OS23 because it fit our needs and 85 to 90 percent of the trees found on our property. Frontier is a product of Norwood. We added a track extension and went with the upgraded motor size for our unit (10hp). On a rare occasion I may wish for something more but we honestly don't need it for our hobby use.

Like John mentions above, we looked at the Norwood, Woodmizer and Cook units but all were way to pricey for our budget. The Hudson unit just didn't look like a great design to me and it was missing features found in others. There were a few others we considered like the Woodland Mills but the price at the time was a little better on the Frontier. Woodland Mills and Frontier seemed to offer fairly similar units.

Anyway, unless you are going to go into the lumber business, most any of the mills will work for hobby use in my opinion.

[John TenEyck]

One thing I'm really frustrated by with my mill, and it's probably similar on the Frontier, is that it's only 7" from the blade to the crossbeam. I often cut large logs, up to the full 30" capacity of the mill, and with 22" between the guides I often am cutting boards 18 - 22" wide. Besides being incredibly heavy, they tend to warp more than they would if ripped in two, but that's not possible with my mill. With my chainsaw mill I would sometimes cut those large cants through the middle and then rotate the pair vertically. That gave me two half width boards with each cut. But with only 7" under the frame on my mill that's not a good option; who wants 7" wide boards, that's the FAS minimum.

There are a couple of ways I could go about ripping these wide boards. I could movethem off onto sawhorses and use a vertical chainsaw mill, which have, on a 2 x 6. Not all that much fun. So I'm thinking about making a bracket that mounts to the sawhead that will hold a chainsaw horizontally in front of the sawhead. It would be mounted below the blade by at least 11" and that would allow me to rip wide boards in two. However, this still requires double handling. Another option would be to mount my big chainsaw on the sawmill and rip these large cants down the centerline, like I do with my chainsaw mill. Then I'd only have to handle the boards once.

John

[Richard Coers]

Just curious, you intend to buy and run a mill at the age of 71? Better have an employee to handle all the slabs!