Before You Buy a Portable Sawmill | Things I Wish I Knew About Sawing Logs (Updated) by Sawing with Sandy
I am going to talk to you guys about the things I wish I knew before I bought this sawmill because at some point in time I was like many of you guys. I went surfing the internet and thought “I can make my own lumber and make projects with that lumber.” There are things I’ve learned since that time and I am going to share them with you today and hopefully, that ends up helping you guys.
The Biggest Effort in Making Lumber
What I am about to tell you applies to many manufacturers of sawmills, not just my sawmill, but I am going to talk about this one because that’s the one I ended up buying. When I was looking at buying a sawmill I just had in my mind the idea that I had logs available, trees around me, and I had lumber. What I forgot are the steps I should have considered in between.
The biggest challenge or the most demanding work will be getting the logs right in front of you. There are options, like calling someone to do the work for you, and spending a bit of money, so you can just mill the logs. Or you can harvest the tree yourself, and cut the trunk to the length you need prior to it being milled into lumber.
For me getting the logs is probably most of the battle, making lumber is a very small part of it, but getting the logs from the tree, getting them from the bush, and getting them to sit in front of you is difficult.
Importance of Keeping Logs Clean
Having snow from the ground keeps the dirt out of the logs. But if you are skidding logs and there’s no snow, they get caked full of dirt, and although you may think “I can just brush it off.” You can’t get every morsel of dirt off of there. This is very important and something I didn’t know, because that dirt ultimately dulls your blade and that will cost you more time, more effort, and potentially more money. So keeping your material clean is very very important.
I highly recommend harvesting trees in the winter. By harvesting them in the winter, they are not going to touch any dirt, they are nice and clean, and you’re not gonna dull up any blades as you would if they are harvested and dragged across the muck.
Also to make really good lumber without waves and crooks and all that junk, You need to have a perfectly flat base for you to have a good cut.
Stack the Lumber after Cutting
I have an open-air shed that air dries and I didn’t know that was needed before. Lumber also needs to be perfectly flat to avoid curves or arches, and it is also important to give a lot of space between the lumber. You will need to put pressure on the top so it will not curl upwards or bow too.
Some species of wood I’ve encountered like poplar will often crack when it dries, I don’t cut a lot of hardwood so I don’t have experience with that. But I understand many hardwoods as well, require you to get some sort of sealant on the end, and many people use latex paint just to prevent that cracking.
Having a roof for your lumber when stacking it up is essential and should be one of the things you need to do before starting sawmilling. It will prevent you from having a huge problem when it snows.
Log Waste
I thought log waste would not be a problem and I just needed to put it behind the mill pile it up and deal with it afterward. But eventually, that pile became unmanageable, which was a huge effort to deal with. So it is important to find something to do with the waste wood and figure out what to do with it before buying a sawmill. It not only applies to the slabs and the offcuts but also to the sawdust.
Timing is also huge. If you have a log that you’ve cut in the wintertime and you leave it there and the weather gets warm, you do not have an infinite amount of time to move that log unless you want bugs in it. Bugs will create holes in your log that will not only discolor it, but you will then have a log with many holes in it.
So when you cut a tree down, you want to have it processed in a timely fashion especially when the weather gets warm. Cut the trees in the winter, get them over to the sawmill, and cut before it gets too nice out. I cut the trees down right when I need them, and make the lumber at that time, instead of leaving the log sitting in the bush.
So if you are someone that is thinking of buying a sawmill, think about all those things that go into going from a nice log to some lumber, and consider the whole process. It is undoubtedly enjoyable and rewarding but you definitely have to understand it’s certainly some work.