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New member intro, looking for some information.

Started by Crusarius, March 01, 2017, 01:05:31 PM

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Crusarius

Hi, I am new member on this forum. Been reading it for a while finally decided to sign up. I live in Candice NY. I have delusions of grandeur on everything I do. I do steel fabrication and carpentry projects.

I have been in the house I am in for about 2.5 years. I purchased the house with 10 acres of woods but without a shop. I have decided I want to build a shop. I have a large area of pines that need to be removed to build the shop. This is where you guys come in :)

I have had lots of thoughts and ideas on how to remove the trees and build my shop. I think the one that is the most appealing to me is to buy a bandsaw mill and do all the work myself. Unfortunately, I have zero experience with sawmills.

I noticed there are a few members very close to me with mills. Would anybody mind if I come check out their sawmills and maybe pick your brains? be great if I could actually cut a few logs to. I am willing to travel anywhere.

I have been looking at Hud-Son mills and Woodmizer. I know the right answer is Woodmizer but that is a little out of my price range.

Just to be clear I am not sure if I will ever try to do this commercially. Right now it is more for me and my father.

Thanks for any help on this.

ChugiakTinkerer

Welcome to the forum!  I was in a similar situation and ended up buying a small manual mill.  You might give some thought to hiring the milling work out, if your focus is more on having a shed than on having a wonderful new tool.  But if you want to spend some time milling with your father, buying a mill sounds like the perfect thing to do.
Woodland Mills HM130

mattyo5

If you can make it to CT some time you can check out my Woodland Mills hm126 with custom 30ft rails.  The hm126 is $3k right now from them plus ship.   IMHO the hm126 and the hm130 are likely the best bang for buck in the industry.  I have youtube video's as well.

https://youtu.be/8YDQdnIepKE

check the rest of my channel for other milling vids... some ramblings etc on how to work the mill.   I built a 16x16 shed with the mill and 90% of it is milled pine.   Its quite sturdy. 

best of luck whatever you do....


oh...  btw... sawmilling is one of the rare things in life that is just as much fun as you can possibly imagine :)
Woodland Mills HM126 Sawmill - modded
Husqvarna 385xp rebuilt and ported
Husqvarna 372xp rebuilt and ported
2x Husqvarna 350 ...rebuilt and ported
Hitachi CS33etdb top handle saw

Crusarius

Thanx for the offer Matty. My wifes family just happens to live in bristol CT. There is a very high chance of being able to do this. If I decide I want to kill a weekend I may take you up on the offer.


Crusarius

I just went to woodland mills site and watched a nice video. definitely looks like a nice product. To bad it ends up at $4000 when I add the extra track and the shipping. That price is for HM126. I would prefer the HM130 for sure.

Darrel

Welcome Crusarius. Another thought is to purchase a used mill. My old WM LT40 was purchased at about the same price as a new LT15. And it's hydraulic. There is nothing wrong with new, somebody has to buy new mills, but some times you can get a heck of a deal on a used mill. You can spend the money you save on something else. And believe me, if you buy a mill it won't be too long before you discover that you need something else. That's just the way it is when you own a sawmill and get sawdust in your blood.
1992 LT40HD

If I don't pick myself up by my own bootstraps, nobody else will.

mattyo5

No need to order extra track.   Assuming you don't need portability, just order steel angle at up to 40ft lengths from your local steel place.   I got 30ft... almost wish I did 40s hehe. 

I'm in Farmington, right next door to Bristol.   

The hm130 has the 14 hp motor.   btw, the 14hp motor you get get for $600 on ebay, and if you swap them  i'm sure you get get $300 or so for a 9.5hp kohler on craiglist.... maybe a lot more.   which means the upgrade wouldn't be that bad.  depends on if you need the extra goodies on the hm130 or not. 
Woodland Mills HM126 Sawmill - modded
Husqvarna 385xp rebuilt and ported
Husqvarna 372xp rebuilt and ported
2x Husqvarna 350 ...rebuilt and ported
Hitachi CS33etdb top handle saw

Crusarius

Darrel, I have been searching for a used mill. Around here they are either impossible to find or sold before they are posted.

Matty. that is a good point about the engine swapping.

Good news is I am just starting my search and am very open to any ideas and change. Glad I found this forum. The info on here has already helped a ton. Lots of things I would not have thought about. I think I already have sawdust in my blood. I come from a long line of carpenters...  I was the red headed step child when I started doing steel fabrication.

Theo

You are in NY ?

Hud-Son is in NY too

Hud-Son is made in the USA (Woodland is not)   

Plus Hud-Son are all (exempt 1 model) sold ready to use (no assembly) so you can use it at the same day after an 2-3 houres drive

I thing for the price you want invest you have an nice Hud-Son mill plus you help you local job's

just my  0.02 cents   :)

Theo
HUD-SON and Range-Road & KASCO Canada Dealer

Crusarius

Theo, I do agree. that has been a very strong point in going with them. I have already been to their facility twice. One time we setup a mill and I did a little cutting.

Does anybody not like the angle iron bed? I don't know why but I seem to keep shying away from it. Very tempted to just buy the mill without a bed and custom make my own.

ChugiakTinkerer

Can't speak to other manufacturers, but Woodland Mills claims their bed rail is laser cut on the top edge, making for a truer rail than you would get from angle iron.  Looking at it, it does have a nicely cut top edge that may in fact be better.  For my purposes I doubt it would make a lick of difference in the quality of the final product compared to a rail made from angle iron.  One continuous piece of steel has the benefit of being smooth whereas a track made from multiple 6' pieces has a joint that doesn't always align perfectly.

I thought about building a 24' bed from angle iron, but opted to buy an extension just to get up and running.  It sounds like your steel fab skills are leaps and bounds beyond mine and you could no doubt make yourself a much better rail bed for the same or lesser costs than buying the parts from a manufacturer.
Woodland Mills HM130

Crusarius

I don't know how perfect you really need the rails to be. If you are doing furniture grade you will be planing the boards. If you are doing framing members, as long as they are straight you can get away with a good amount of slop. Naturally the better the rail the better the finish good.

If I do decide to make my own bed it would be 2x6 box with 1/4" plate bolted to the outside and sticking up far enough so the saw wheels can ride on it and not contact anything. Similar to woodmizer bed. The 1/4" plate bolted to the outside be real easy to fix or replace when I have an oops.

Nice thing about the custom frame is adding an axle and hitch to it would be very easy at that point.

Crusarius

I was watching Norwoods information DVD they sent me last night. That also looks like a very nice mill. Unfortunately the price is a little more.

Anybody have any experience with Norwood?

Remle

FYI saw this on the Rochester, NY Craigslist. Located in Nunda, NY

For sale Hudson large diameter portable saw mill.36 inch diameter. 16 foot track mounted on trailer. It's a manual mill with 16 hp Briggs&Staten vanguard with extra blades.electric start. Auto raise and lower. Great working mill serious inquires only absolutely no trades. $5500

ChugiakTinkerer

Quote from: Crusarius on March 10, 2017, 12:00:12 PM
I was watching Norwoods information DVD they sent me last night. That also looks like a very nice mill. Unfortunately the price is a little more.

Anybody have any experience with Norwood?

You've probably already seen it, but Norwood does have a pretty active forum site.  I imagine the participants might be a little biased towards Norwood, but you can get a sense of their owner experiences. http://forum.norwoodsawmills.com/forum
Woodland Mills HM130

Crusarius

Thanks Remle. I may have to look into that.

Chugiak I did see the forum but I have not checked it out yet. I am sure most members will be biased towards norwood. but after watching the videos yesterday I can understand why. It really looks to be a very solid product.

Crusarius

Finally, after much time trying to setup a demo. my wife was great in letting me go play with a Norwood LM29 on sunday, mothers day.

I am glad I finally got a chance to run a mill. We cut a cedar telephone pole into 4/4 boards. Was more work than I thought. Of course we started with an obvious bad blade. I ended up changing the blade since I was the only one with gloves. Then we milled the rest of it. The new blade definitely cut much better than the damaged blade.

One thing I did not like is he only had 1 cam clamp on the bed. during one of my cuts the cam slipped and the blade dove real bad jamming. Was a pain to get it out but came out without any damage to the equipment or blade.

Norwood was a nice machine. But I am not sold on it yet. now I need to find some other brands to go run. 

jdtuttle

Welcome to the forum,
I'm about 2 hours away in Candor NY if you want to saw a couple logs at my place. I have a Woodmizer 1992 LT 40HD. It's all original with a fairly new motor. I bought used because I wanted the hydraulics, Lot easier on the back. PM me if your interested.
Jim
Have a great day

Sixacresand

"Sometimes you can make more hay with less equipment if you just use your head."  Tom, Forestry Forum.  Tenth year with a LT40 Woodmizer,

Crusarius

Thanks for the offer JD, not sure I want to torture myself by running that nice of a machine :) especially since that is way out of my price range.

But a nice 2 hour drive is relaxing :)

Thanx for all the welcomes.


Bruno of NH

NH craigslist has a nice LT15 for a heck of a deal
Lt 40 wide with 38hp gas and command controls , F350 4x4 dump and lot of contracting tools

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