Guess I'm a Sawyer now? A 1991 Kasco "The Saw IIA" Sawmill is mine!

[deezler]

Well I have dreamed of buying a bandsaw/sawmill for a pretty long time now.

I'm not a very prolific woodworker. And I barely have any free time for projects or hobbies nowadays. But life smacked me right in the face with an opportunity, and I decided not to regret declining it and never getting one.

My crazy coworker Dale often told me about his sawmill that he shares with his equally crazy 79-year old father. Pops had bought it back in 1991 from Kasco mfg, which apparently was an offshoot of former Woodmizer employees who wanted to try their hand at some design improvements, and trying to make their own machines. After not too many years in business, they weren't very price competitive and eventually folded.

After several years of not being used, Dale and his dad had the engine tuned up and decided to saw the remaining pile of logs and then sell the mill. So I was invited over to check it out.

They ran their Kasco sawmill inside of their shop building - a bit curious since it's a 20HP gas engine with plenty of fumes, on a machine that makes some serious dust, but this fan setup worked very well, I must admit. Thats me giving the saw a go. It runs great!

They wouldn't tell me a sale price yet, and I had no idea what to offer. But the primary initial hurdle was convincing my wife to not completely lose her mind over this idea.

I was heartily encouraged to bring home as much slab wood as I could load into my truck, as they had no use for it. I set up a miter-saw station at home to see how easy it was to turn slabwood planks into firewood lengths - very easy! This was a major component of buying a sawmill for me - all the slabwood will turn into firewood (our primary heating source).

But I wasn't gonna buy a sawmill just to leave it outside in the weather. So the only real option for me was to re-purpose my existing metal carport. I started clearing it out even though I wasn't certain I was buying the mill just yet....

Annnnd, it's clear and level. ish.

 

[deezler]

Well they still had some logs to saw, and shop reorganizing to do, and I had a family camping trip to go on. So I had a couple weeks to mull it over.

Once back from camping, the pressure was on. "we're listing it for sale this weekend if you don't jump on it". A little negotiating, and a very nice friend-discount was secured. I guess this is happening!

On a gorgeous labor day morning, the pickup and relocation was set.

One problem: My 20' metal carport is actually only 19'7" inside the frame. And this sawmill track was a full 20' long! So I decided to sacrifice a foot of log capacity, and Dale torched a foot off the rails. Kind of sad, but necessary to make this all go easily.

Getting it onto my trailer went smoothly.

And Dale insisted on coming over to my place to help me get it set up and running right away.

Decently well leveled right off the bat, I dug a random elm log out of my future-firewood pile and we were up and running within an hour!

Bonus: Dale and pops had basically never re-sharpened their blades despite having the official Kasco sharpener tool. So this mill came with over 50 used blades, a few new ones, and some other tools and bits.

I do sort of understand not bothering to resharpen the blades when they somehow still cost under $30 apiece. That's a lot cheaper than I would have imagined! And hopefully with good clean logs, de-barked, and no metal hiding inside... they will each last a long time too.

So! I'm still pretty surprised that this happened. I don't even have many logs ready to saw. I don't really have a need to saw them. And I don't have anywhere to store my sawn lumber yet. So there might not be a lot of updates here. But it's pretty exciting nonetheless.

What tips and tricks do you guys have? What should I look out for?

 

[JeepHead]

Very cool! I hope to add one to my list of tools someday, too. Enjoy!

 

[HawkinsHollow]

Congrats!!! I am sure you will find plenty of opportunity to use it in the future. It looks like it is amazing shape and is a very capable mill. Cool backstory too!

I have not used my sawmill as much as I would like. But what I have milled is gorgeous and I will talk about it with pride the rest of my days as it is all trim, shelves and built ins in my new home addition/reno. Plenty of other stuff on my list to mill, just need to get the time to do it.

Enjoy it!

 

[deezler]

I have not used my sawmill as much as I would like. But what I have milled is gorgeous and I will talk about it with pride the rest of my days

Exactly! I really only have ambitions for a couple key, high-profile projects. I definitely want to replace our basic ikea butcher-block bar-top with a big live-edge walnut slab. Maybe try to get that going next spring.

 

[HawkinsHollow]

The next thing I want to do is get my hands on enough pine to cut a nice timber framed pavilion.

 

[deezler]

One thing I found kind of interesting about being able to pick up a sawmill just for fun, was that it wouldn't really have been possible or at all practical if I didn't already have:

• A bit of acreage with plenty of good trees and logs around
• A chainsaw (or three) and gear/know-how to be confident felling trees and bucking logs
• A tractor big and strong enough to lift the logs I want to saw
• A grapple to make gentle log handling achievable (I dropped my first log on the rails pretty hard by only using forks! won't do that again)
• A big long trailer to haul the mill back home on (or fetch logs in the future)
• A burly enough truck to haul a big trailer and heavy load
• Etc.

Feeling pretty blessed to be able to start this adventure. It's definitely taken several years to put all these pieces together. Some of my friends living on small lot suburban homes nearby think I am kind of crazy, haha. But I would go pretty crazy if I didn't have any projects to do.