Any one have their own saw mill ?

[buckeyefarmer]

I loved reading about the saw mills today, on TBn and the forestry board. I would love to have one of the woodmisers, Like the LT15. wish I had one about 30 yrs ago. When my dad built his house, he started by bringing in a portable sawmill and sawed all the wood for his house. He also built a couple barns with the wood. Growing up, we had 2 large lumber piles still drying, covered with old roofing tin. Later it was all stored in one of the barns. He still has a good bit of lumber left from then, and some he sent out to have sawn later. He sent out a large oak once, that was well over 3' diameter, still have some really wide boards from it. growing up I did a lot of woodworking, using the oak, cherry and walnut.

How hard would it be to transport an LT15 on a trailor? seems like you could mount it on your own trailer for less than what their trailer on costs, course it would not be as convenient to operate.

 

[MotorSeven]

I just sold my LT15 & plan on upgrading to a LT35 Hydraulic in the future. It would be easy to put an axle under one and weld on a hitch.

I figure I saved around $25K cutting my own lumber for my house build and all my other projects. All that for a $5100 investment 5 years ago which I sold for $4600...not too shabby in my book.

 

[newbury]

How hard would it be to transport an LT15 on a trailor? seems like you could mount it on your own trailer for less than what their trailer on costs, course it would not be as convenient to operate.

REAL simple. All the small manual mills rely on a stable base, I use 6x6's. Since they are narrow they should be relatively easy to move around. Some of the ads for the LT15 show it being slid into the back of a pickup. What they don't show are the four guys it takes to get the mast up in there. I think they told me that the mast on my LT10, w/ motor, is about 500 lbs.

 

[TnAndy]

I just sold my LT15 & plan on upgrading to a LT35 Hydraulic in the future. It would be easy to put an axle under one and weld on a hitch.

Not familiar with the differences now between an LT35 and LT40.....back when I bought mine (1991), there was an LT 30, which was the 16' bed model, and the LT40, which was the 21' bed model. Everything else was pretty much the same on them (engine options, etc).

From having used mine for going on 25 years now, here is what I would do if I bought a new one today:

1. I'd go electric motor on it. The most maintenance intense part of the mill has been the gasoline engine. Plus the noise factor. Since I never take mine 'on the road' to custom saw ( I'll only custom saw if folks bring me their logs), it would be nice to simply flip a switch and start sawing w/o warm up, oil changes, noise, etc.

2. My LT40 is the 'manual' version....the bed drive, up/down and blade guide are all electric 12v, but the rest of it is manual. I would NOT get a hydraulic version, unless, again, I was planning on taking it on the road to custom saw. Most of the logs I saw are in the 18-20 inch diameter range or less, and it simply isn't that much effort to turn them by hand, or roll them in off my wood log deck by hand, and so on. The cost and maintenance of the hydraulics simply are not worth it unless you plan to saw professionally.

3. What I WOULD spend money on is the debarker option instead of hydraulics. The savings from not running your blades thru crap in the bark would very soon pay for that option.

4. If I were going to make it portable, I'd simply buy it with their trailer package.

5. ALSO, (you didn't mention this), I would NEVER EVER put a seat on one. I watched a guy for 1/2 day once that had the seat option. I'd be worn out just from jumping in and out of that seat all day. Plus, (and you probably already know this), you can set the mill to cutting, and be taking a slab or previous cut board off WHILE the mill is doing it's thing.....seat guy didn't do that. By the end of 1/2 day, I KNOW I could have outproduced him 2:1 ( and he DID have the hydro version..ahahahaa )

 

[motownbrowne]

What do you mean about "setting the mill to cutting and taking off a board"? I have a Timberking b-20, with a seat. I love my chair, forgot to bring it to a job one time, and I was sorry. The operator station on my mill is stationary, and the chair is right where it should be for a brief rest. I think the woodmizer seat looks funny up there, I wouldn't want that on mine. I usually have someone else on the job when I'm sawing, and with the hydraulics, it means I can spend a good amount of time in my cushy chair.

 

[TnAndy]

Don't know how the Timberking works, but my Woodmizer, I can engage the 'carriage forward' lever ( it has a detent ) and simply let it start cutting. The operation station on mine is mounted on the carriage and moves with it. Then I can turn my attention to something else....like taking a slab or board off that I had flipped onto the bed from a previous cut. While the saw is sawing, I can be stacking.

 

[motownbrowne]

Yeah, that's not a feature on my mill. It could be, but as I understand it, they see that as a safety problem. I don't think the new woodmizers let you do it either. I think a guy with a Jackson harvester band mill had a bad accident using that setting, so they don't use it anymore.

 

[Sodo]

Not a money saver ? Seriously ???.<snip>?.Nothing like a hobby that makes you money to get one ahead.

Well thats certainly a way to look at it, lots of hobbies only USE money.

Last summer I cut 3 6x6x12' dry cedar posts from one down cedar tree. Those are $128 each at the lumber store. That would cost $384+tx = $420 (of after-tax money) so I guess you could say would cost ~ $530 in work-dollars.

However, if I had to PAY the $420 out of pocket I could choose a lower cost lumber than Cedar. Pressure-treated would save $175, costing $245. These days, pressure treated lumber doesn't look any different than Cedar to most people. Even though its pockmarked with injection holes it looks absolutely "normal" to most people, even on your entryway, so the extra cost of cedar is no genuine benefit.

So where's the (measureable) savings? It has a lot to do with how you look at things, and your time. And depreciation of all the other systems that you use to support your lumber hobby. Everybody I talk to thinks it's cool to cut my own lumber but very few of them would truly be entertained by how much actual work it is to create that lumber. They'd say yeah that was fun then go buy the pressure-treated and move on, happily.

Anyway nobody's taking away my sawmill! I'm hooked on the hobby part & the satisfaction part. It allows me to make stuff I want with the lumber size that I want. (usually oversized, and full-inch). But I'm stopping short of saying its a moneysaver (yet) considering time and all the other resources.

I guess for those who have time, projects, trees, chainsaw, tractor, sawing space, drying space, waste storage, and lumber storage; I guess you could say they're WASTING those resources by NOT having a sawmill.

 

[newbury]

I guess for those who have time, projects, trees, chainsaw, tractor, sawing space, drying space, waste storage, and lumber storage; I guess you could say they're WASTING those resources by NOT having a sawmill.

Yea, what he wrote

Also you should have a need for wood and something useful to do with the "residue" (bark covered outside cants, sawdust, twisted wood that dries wrong etc.)

 

[Verticaltrx]

I agree with TnAndy, a sawmill can be a huge money saver on a farm or homestead. Granted, my sawmill cost less than $3000, but this first shed I'm building would have been that much in lumber alone. I'm also much more inclined to build things around here knowing that my only out of pocket costs will be fasteners and roofing. I'm even sawing oak for making farm gates (no more $60-120 farm store gates) and 2x2 locust posts to use in place of T-posts. I'm also inclined to try TnAndy's idea for greenhouse hoops.

I already had loaders, tractors, trucks, chainsaws, cant hooks, etc long before I ever thought of getting a sawmill, so I can't really count those into the cost to make lumber. Every part of the tree get used around here on the farm in some way. For softwoods the tops and slabs get chipped and used for bedding in the barns, the hardwoods tops and slabs get burned in the wood stove. I haven't gotten into fine woodworking (yet) but that's where you can save/make some real money with a small sawmill. The prices of good furniture grade woods are astronomical at the stores.