mill realistic outputs

[Treemover]

Hello everyone!

 

I'm just doing up some figures and I would be grateful if somebody could give me a few figures to crunch.

 

What sort of output are people getting per hour or per day on the following

 

Alaskan mill

entry band mill

and hydraulic mill

 

Looking forward to the replies!

 

If you can quantify the spec of what your running all the better, but I haven't a clue as to what output each has.

 

Cheers

[Johnpl315]

That's a very difficult question as so much depends on what spec you are cutting and also on the timber itself. If you have a huge section off log I find i am a lot more productive.

Looking forward to hearing other peoples experiance.

[Treemover]

Hi John, so what is the worst day you have milled, and the best day? you can PM me if you prefer?

 

I havent a clue if people can mill approx 4 cubic metres per day or more or less?

[kinderscout]

Best day I have had ,was making beams of a 22ft oak 30 dia.

Around the 10 hour mark.two days to recover.

[Johnpl315]

Ok, so my worst day, chainsaw milling, I got a late start, had to stop at the chainsaw shop to pick up some bits, got to site, set the ladder on the top of the tree, got the top off and then about a foot in to the first plank, my chain snapped. Days productivity-nil. I have never really chainsaw milled more than one big butt in one hit, it is easily possible but it's hard on your back and I get worried about hand arm vibration.

 

My main sawmill now is a turbosaw swing blade circular saw. I can cut quite a lot if I have the saw set up and timber stacked in such a way that I can just roll it underneath. But often if I am on a big tree it can take half an hour or more to manouver a big butt under the mill using a hand winch and felling bar.

 

Sorry I have never worked out my productivity in metres. Not close to four yet, but I am very inexperienced.

Please don't laugh at my lack of productivity!

 

I am chainsaw milling an oak tomorrow I will take some photos of my entire days work.

[Dizzer]

We have milled up over 200 10ft 1/2 inch live edge cladding boards with about 50 2x2's in a day on a woodlands mill. That's 2 men no forklift just hand balling them on, we have also been on site and milled 8 oak butts for a customer with tractor on site and there was probably about a few thousand pounds worth of oak milled for them

Hope this helps

But there has been days where blades have snapped and messing around with tracking and runners to get straight cuts and stuff and not milled that much up

[agg221]

The problem with comparing these three mills by volume of product is that they are rarely asked to do the same thing.

 

I can probably mill the same number or more of cubic metres of 18" square oak beams x 20' long out of 30" forest grown dead straight butts in a day using an Alaskan as Big J can mill feather-edge cladding 6" wide x 1/4" to 3/4" taper out of gnarly stuff with rot patches to cut round. However, whilst Big J would probably be very happy to swap the product specs. over I really wouldn't!

 

A lot of time goes on moving logs, moving boards and stacking, so whether or not you have any help (or machinery) for this makes a big impact.

 

Probably the most I have produced in a day with an Alaskan and chainsaw driven bandsaw combination is just over 2cu.m of mostly 2.5" quartersawn boards from a 42" mid-diameter tree.

 

Alec

[Big J]

The biggest limiting factor is not your mill but the folk supplying it and the folk clearing the boards away. I'm in the middle of a 130 tonne order at the moment and it all falls down if I have to leave the controls of the mill. I need a constant supply of pressure washed logs and a constant supply of labour to offload the mill. Then there are the waney edged boards that have to go through the edger. All of that requires three men, plus me. Then factor in sawdust removal and slabwood removal. At the moment we produce 2 cubic metres and 2-3 tonnes of firewood a day. That takes time to clear.

 

Anyway, at the moment it's taking us 4 days to clear an artic load. That's cut at 4x6.25/4x8/4x8.5/4x9.5 and inch offcuts mostly at 6.25" wide. So 18-30 logs a day, about 4.5 cubic metres of finished product, though a lot of that does depend on how many customers come and other interruptions.

 

Hardwoods are a bit easier. On a general day's production cutting average logs and average thickness, we do about 4-5 cubic metres. That's pretty leisurely though, and includes all the sawdust scraping, anti fungal treatment and stacking.

 

On the raw cutting, I'm usually a cubic metre an hour on most things if I don't have to do anything other than cut. Can be double that on some nice soft elm or cedar though.

[aspenarb]

Gary rashered off all the wide oak planks in two days on his Alsakan. That was with the help of the yard forklift and one of my labourers. As big J points out without them production would be considerably slower.

 

 

The Mizer made very short work of cutting some oak planks for the bed of the low loader . Two hours ish for these and some beams.

 

 

[Forest2Furniture]

Hello everyone!

 

I'm just doing up some figures and I would be grateful if somebody could give me a few figures to crunch.

 

What sort of output are people getting per hour or per day on the following

 

Alaskan mill

entry band mill

and hydraulic mill

 

Looking forward to the replies!

 

If you can quantify the spec of what your running all the better, but I haven't a clue as to what output each has.

 

Cheers

 

I don't wish to appear rude but why do you want this info?