HOME

The Saw Mill

Plan Example

Hardware Pkg

HELPFUL ADVICE

Before Purchasing your Portable Saw Mill

There is nothing easy about sawmilling, it is hard work and takes perseverance, but it can be very enjoyable and a satisfying worthwhile endeavor. Especially when you see a stack of your wood, cut into your lumber, by your hands.

This section of our site includes advice, charts and

The text below concerns only the small sawmiller, cutting their own wood off their land, or purchasing small quantities of logs to cut into lumber. It is of no concern to the person who wants to set up a sawmilling operation cutting a steady supply of timber, 8 hours a day, 5 days a week with supporting equipment and employees. This is another story altogether and needs a serious look at all aspects, with a proper business plan.

This concerns the average person who has wanted to cut his or her own timber, the most affordable way possible, with the least amount of frustrations and probably does not know all the "ins and outs" of the business.

I am sure you are enthusiastic and want to purchase a saw mill so you can get at it, but there are several steps you must do before you even think of purchasing a saw mill, that can save you a lot of frustration in the future.

Before you look at a saw mill you must have a good look at your timber supply. Take a walk through the woods you have with a tape measure and small axe. Note the general size of the trees, measure around the occasional one and jot this measurement down. Check to see if they have lots of limbs (branches) on them, wack off a few limbs you can reach and see if they are nice and sound at the trunk. Are the trees mostly a certain diameter or are they all different sizes, and with a critical eye estimate the percentage that is quite small. You also have to take into consideration the height of the trees, and if you are not used to cruising timber, it is a given fact you will way over estimate the average height of the trees. I know this sounds like a lot of work, but it is enjoyable to just walk through your woods, and this walk and miniature cruise can save you thousands of dollars and a huge disappointment and frustration in the future, it is a must.

A small example:
A local customer phoned one day asking advice about what kind of portable saw mill he should purchase. He had 8 acres of trees on his property, mostly S.P.F. (Spruce-Pine-Fir) and he wanted to cut them into lumber for a workshop, barn etc. He was insistent he was going to buy a sawmill and save lots of money on lumber, as he was sure he could get thousands of lineal feet of lumber for himself out of these trees. He lived close by so I went and had a look. To cut a long story short, and after a quick cruise of his timber, I gave him the news. He did have a lot of timber, but in his enthusiasm he had over estimated the average diameter (he did not measure one tree) and height by a considerable margin. I fell and limbed a tree for him and let him measure it and he was very surprised. He could only get 1-16 feet log length out of the tree and by the time I had a good cruise through his woods, he did not have enough to even pay for a low cost saw mill, never mind his labour, skidding etc. To save him time and a lot of money I suggested he make solid log buildings with his trees and showed him how to cut two flat sides of his logs in one pass with a rig I designed years ago, using 2 small chainsaws. With this rig he was able to cut even his small diameter trees, flatten 2 sides of a log so they sit flat on top of each other (8 feet long) between 2 upright logs. Needless to say he was very happy as he did not spend a lot of money on a sawmill, he was able to utilize all of his small logs and his cost was only $300 to make the rig. So keep in mind, look at your trees before considering buying a portable saw mill and make sure you have the volume available.

You must then turn your attention to the average size (diameter) of your trees in general. If you have larger trees (over 24") at the butt, you could buy a sawmill that can handle large diameter logs, but it is not necessary. Let us say you have a good volume of large trees, then you must look up about 16 feet or so, are they still large or are they a manageable size? If you can only get one log length that is large and the rest of the tree is manageable, why purchase an expensive sawmill to be able to cut only that 1 log length from your trees. Look at saw mills that can handle 24" or less (because of the cost) because you will have lots of log lengths 24" and under to cut. So what do you do with the larger butt end log length? If you have other commercial saw mills in your area then sell that larger prime log, as it is worth considerable dollars in your pocket. You will then have cash, your own sawmills, and the rest of your logs to cut, and you will not be fighting large logs needing supporting equipment to move them around. A friend of mine did this and those butt logs paid for his portable saw mill, plus all the skidding of the logs. If you do not have commercial mills in the area, you probably have no choice but to buy a larger capacity sawmill, but be advised, they are not cheap, it takes a lot of lumber to reap back just the cost of the sawmill. It could take all the timber you have, just to make up the cost. So, you have a good volume of timbers, they are a decent size (8" diameter and up) they are not too crooked, or a massive amount of limbs. Now your next questions should be, where am I going to cut them into lumber? Am I going to use one site and bring all the logs to the mill? Or am I going to take the mill to the logs. No matter what anybody tells you,

Several decisions are needed to accomplish this. You will have to decide what you are going to do in the woods. What are you going to use to skid the logs, are you going to skid tree length or log length? It all depends on what you have to pull them with. I have skid logs many different ways in my life from using skidder, dozer, loader, tractor, horse and pickup. The best way is to pay someone with a piece of equipment to skid your logs for you if you have nothing to accomplish this with. If you want to do this yourself and you have a tractor or whatever but it has no way to lift the end of the log, then make sure when you are falling you get the cut as low as possible to the ground. This allows the log to slide over the low stumps without hanging up on them. If you have a means to clear the sawmill site or landing, then bring out the whole tree, limb it and cut to length on the landing. You could also limb in the bush and just bring out the clean tree (please note this does create a fire hazard when all those limbs dry out). If it is necessary then cut the tree to the size you can pull but do not guess at the length. Measure along the tree from the butt at least 33' if you are cutting 16' lengths or 25' if you are cutting 24' lengths.

So what have I used for skidding on some of my own sites? Two of the cheapest skidders I used were pickups. The first one was an old Chev pickup, 6 cylinder, 2 wheel drive. I welded the back diff gears so both wheels had drive to them and chained up the wheels. I cut off the box and mounted a tripod (steel) at the back welded to the chassis, then used a boat trailer winch with log tongs on the end, so I could lift one end of the log off the ground. I pulled a lot of trees out of the woods with this system. Total cost including the pickup $800.00. My next truck skidder was a Dodge 4x4. I did the same to this pickup as the first one, but added all sorts of other equipment. I added an electric winch with chokers to pull trees to the truck, added a compressor for air, a belt driven welder, then I purchased an old forklift front end with lumber forks, made up a small grapple and installed this on the front end, with a pulley drive hydraulic components. This old Dodge worked for many years on my land, until I sold it, the last time I checked it was still being used in Alaska. Do not let anybody tell you something cannot be done, where there is a will, there is a way, with enough ingenuity, we can accomplish just about anything.