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Alaskan portable mill mk3


Arbkid93
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Yes, quite a lot of people on here have them. Try searching for the milling pics and vids thread for some idea of what they can do.

 

The 076 will comfortably pull a 48" bar so it's worth looking at the 36" or 48" mill. Chainsawbars.co.uk is a good source (run by Rob D on here) and quoting arbtalk will get you a free gift when you order.

 

Alec

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A lot of the speed comes down to the set-up, and also not underestimating the time spent moving big, heavy bits of timber.

 

For contrast:

 

Tree 1. In December Burrell and I milled a 4' x 20' oak in the most awkward position imaginable, involving wooden fencing, chainlink fencing, berberis and a collapsed deck it had landed on. Milling spec was through and through on the top 10', into a mix of 3" and 2.5" with a 4" thrown in (legs). The bottom 10' was quartered and milled into 2.5". We arrived on site late due to bad traffic and started at 10am. We finished at 5pm, having kept two other people fully occupied with stacking all day but the organisation and forward planning was spot-on, with a really helpful customer and other pair of hands (who is the member on here who arranged the job).

 

Tree 2. Almost identical sized tree but clear, perfect access. Arrived on site at 9am and it should have been easy. It wasn't - the owner was disorganised. The other pair of hands suddenly wasn't available but we couldn't re-schedule so that left us doing the stacking as well (5 man-hours lost), the owner didn't have a clear spec. in mind so we were constantly fiddling around re-setting depths while he changed his mind. Also, for some reason he had only sent pictures of the tree from the 'nice' side and neglected to take any photos of the huge lightning strike down the other side, which the tree was laying on, leading to various rot damage through the structure of the tree which we had to try and cut around and he also neglected to mention the large amounts of nails and wire in the downward side (which would have been much easier to remove before he had the tree felled, so I had to jack the thing up in the air to get them out. The timber was also very stressed and 'grabby' so it kept pinching the bar, and the Ripsaw bandmill was unusable. He also wanted the very large offcuts removed to the edge of his lawn (another 2 man-hours) and was then somewhat put out when we didn't finish milling everything. We left it fully broken down into quarters, with about 60% of it milled, the widest cut remaining to be made being around 20". He carried on and milled it with a friend, taking another two days, but failed to grasp that this is -not- how long it would have taken with a bigger saw.

 

Anyway, point is, things are very variable in milling and it can sometimes take forever, sometimes be really quick, but a lot of it depends on the organisation around the job.

 

It's also important to have the right additional gear for the size of butt you want to tackle. If you're working alone, 2' is a good upper size. 2 people with the right kit can handle stuff up to around 4' but will really struggle to move full width boards. Bigger than that and you need lots of hands or access for loading gear.

 

Alec

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