Home-Made Trailed Chain Sawmill

[shavey]

Hi all thank you for your replies that trailed one is just the sort of thing i was thinking of shavey! how are you building the head? also what are chainsaw mills like? really slow? ive attached some pics of the one i used to operate.

 

 

the head is going to be something similar to Oakley's sawmill

 

i have'nt got a clue what the performance will be like :thumbup:

[HuntingHicap]

brilliant! do you have any more pictures of it, and of the head particularly that you can post? I want to copy it!!

[shavey]

here's another picture of the head

[Oaklay]

here's another picture of the head

 

 

Good skills shavey, that's so similar to ours!

[Oaklay]

[HuntingHicap]

Thank you very much for your help any hints tips good suppliers to use for the parts etc while building it? this is what i love about arbtalk!!

[Oaklay]

the cogs/chain/threaded bar/bearings was £150 ish from agg dealer and bike shop, the little wheels on the frame are called gate wheels and can be found on eBay for around £40, the wheels and axle and hitch is around £200 on eBay.

Hopefully u can see how it all works?

The only thing I've modified recently is I put some rubber flaps over the little wheels to stop sawdust jamming them up.

Good luck!

[wills-mill]

That's a brilliant looking setup Oaklay, well done!

[Robert Raven]

Hi there,

 

I built one very similar to these- photo to follow. I got some plans from the USA, Google 'procut sawmill'. They were pretty helpful and took out a lot of guesswork and therefore expense!

 

I did a lot of soul searching about wether to go for a bandsaw, having decided to go to the trouble of all the other bits. But like you I had a big chainsaw already, and for occasional use, you'd never save enough time/wood to cover the extra expense of the bandsaw. It's also not that slow- today I was doing some pine, made a three sided cant (which is where these mills excel- super accurate and square), 8.5" wide and 11 feet long, 1 minute 20 per cut, which I think is fine. Also, if you decided to at a later date, you could take off the chainsaw and mount a bandsaw on the same carriage without a lot of trouble- or just make a new carriage.

 

I got my bearings, sprockets and chains for very little online, they don't turn fast or with any weight on so don't have to be top quality. Also got the gate wheels off ebay, they are perfect.

 

Chassis was an old portacabin base, 24' long, made narrower and mounted on an axle off an old caravan. All very cheap and cheerful, quite fun to build. Wouldn't tow mine on the road though, too long and low.

 

My tips would include putting on plenty of log dogs and clamps and some very sturdy fences at 90 deg, once the log is secure you can just blitz through it with no messing about and get really accurate results and a good surface finish. I put adjustable legs (like a trailer jack) at each corner to level it up, then a pair of legs in the middle to stop it flexing under a heavy load. Also work out the gearing of the sprockets so that one turn of the handle alters saw height by 1/4"- makes it a doddle to get boards of totally consistent depth, without using a tape measure every time.

 

Sorry for the ramble! If you decide to go for it let me know and I can dig out the invoices and let you know the suppliers.

 

All the best,

 

Rob

[Robert Raven]

Oaklay that looks great, is that a winch for advancing the saw? I'm thinking of adding one, does it just pull a wire fixed at the end of the mill?