Mobile milling

[Brett]

how can that Ash log, yield £1200 or more? or am i missing a serious trick somewhere

 

I dont think he says that 1 log is worth £1200, clearly you don't see the rest of the timber. if not I'm going to have to have a serious look at my log pile!!

[muttley9050]

If its any help we had a Lucas in a few days ago and did around 180 cubic ft. One large oak, half into 8x1" some 8"x2" and the rest 7.5x4.5". Was a good day and would estimate that the haul was worth around 3-4k.

[treequip]

how can that Ash log, yield £1200 or more? or am i missing a serious trick somewhere

 

Don't ask me ask them, that's someone else's business all I care about is what they charge per day

[delabodge]

If its any help we had a Lucas in a few days ago and did around 180 cubic ft. One large oak, half into 8x1" some 8"x2" and the rest 7.5x4.5". Was a good day and would estimate that the haul was worth around 3-4k.

 

sounds good mate, I have very little sucess drying 1"oak even stickered right,and under cover, seems to warp quite alot,, I tend to cut it slightly thicker now and plane it up, be interested to see how it drys,,,

I rent a lucas in occasionally as it really does cut true boards,fast,,,

[muttley9050]

That's interesting clive, did s load of inch 5 year ago and they came out ok, so we will see. They are very clean boards from a straight grained tree so im hopeful. The Lucas is delinately the way forward for big butts, very tempted in a Peterson myself right now, but May hang around and see if a used one comes up.

[Big J]

That's interesting clive, did s load of inch 5 year ago and they came out ok, so we will see. They are very clean boards from a straight grained tree so im hopeful. The Lucas is delinately the way forward for big butts, very tempted in a Peterson myself right now, but May hang around and see if a used one comes up.

 

If you have moving equipment, I would argue that a chainsaw mill and bandmill makes better use of large butts. For instance:

 

A four foot diameter oak butt could be easily broken down into 4 perfectly accurate quarters with a chain mill (mill the log in half, ratchet strap up middle and one end, rotate 90 degrees, chain mill in half again, moving the ratchets when required). Then pop it onto the band mill and you have a quarter sawn butt, which is massively more stable, more attractive and more valuable.

 

Jonathan

[muttley9050]

You can quarter saw straight out of the log with a swing mill too, i reckon id be a fair way through the milling by the time you had yours quarter sawn. But without getting into the whats better, swing or band mill argument, there is something about swing mills that fullfill more of my manly urges than the alternative.

James

[agg221]

I can well believe you can clear £1200 worth of timber in a day with most mills. If you're going thick enough you can do it with a straight Alaskan - timber being priced per cu.ft, not per square ft of cut surface. With anything quicker, it's easy to go much higher if you stick to high value species. The limit becomes supply and market.

 

Personally, I prefer a bandmill. I would really like to get something decent sized - say 3' diameter butt capability x 20' length, but at the moment I'm limited to chainsaw powered mills, but they do me well enough (particularly with the chainsaw powered bandmill), the big advantage being true portability. I've never really been a fan of swing mills. I can see they have their place, but for my purposes they're too limited in scope. The main issue is the width of board. I really do want to be able to cut a clear foot width as a minimum, preferably up to about 2', and they just won't meet this need.

 

Off to fulfil my manly urges with a mallet and chisel, fitting some more rafters!

 

Alec

[muttley9050]

Clip on slabber is only £1200 extra and will cut 5ft wide boards. But im still very undecicded. As isaid in another thread a swingmill will fit in my current lockup, a trailered bandsaw mill would not.

[Big J]

I wouldn't be able to sell boards from a swing mill easily. Customers are usually after reasonably wide boards, often with a waney edge. The new band mill on order has a 24ft x 3ft capacity, so should handle most things.

 

It's versatility mainly that appeals - that I can take it to site and get most things through it - the band mills are very quick on softwood dimensional timber. With one labourer, I was turning out around 32 8ft 4x4 spruce posts an hour a couple of months ago for instance. At the rate I sold them at, it's £288 an hour, minus the negligible material costs. The new mill will be quicker, and with small softwood, much of the time is simply log handling (I could have cut nearly as many 16ft posts in that time).

 

I'm just of the opinion that swing mills are a bit of a hobby machine. All large hardwood sawmills run bandmills, and there is a good reason for that.