Big J

You say that, but I'm on a 38hp Kohler V-twin and there are times where more power would be very handy. If you have reasonably consistently grained timber, you can almost push the band to dead stop without losing a flat cut. I am on a 2" band though, which is not standard.

Not possible on these mills, plus mobile mills (with their large trailers) take up whole containers, meaning they are expensive to ship. These wide mills would be probably best for established small sawmills who have a bandsawmill/swing mill but want something bigger for occasional use to break down those oversized butts.

I spoke to Herman at Logmaster today on the phone. They still do all the spares for their mills and they still build the manual LM1. Worth giving them a call to see what they can do.

Having spoken to Logmaster, Turner Mills and Hud-son, I have rough quotes from two of them, and it looks like it will come into this country, duty and all at about £10k plus VAT. That is for a 48" cut, 54" log. Anyone interested?

I had considered a swing mill, and the wide slabbing attachment would produce the kind of board I need sometimes, but they aren't cheap and the slabber is still a chainsaw (wasteful, and chainsaw chains are prone to snapping). Given that I am doing more softwood, the swing mill would be handy, and easy enough for me to allow someone else to use. It's the waste from a chainsaw cut that bugs me as much as anything - 2 cubic metres of sawdust from that big elm log the other day. That and the fact that 3 1/2 days of hanging onto that mill has left me fairly well broken!

Good mills, I know, but way out of my budget. I don't have the cash and I don't have enough of a market for wide boards either.

Sadly Logmaster are no longer in the business of making mills, though I would heartily recommend looking for a good second hand one. If you speak to Ed at Logmaster, he is happy to find you a good used Logmaster mill. The only issues I've had with mine relate to the engine (Kohler 38hp V-twin, which I wouldn't recommend) and it's been worked pretty hard.

The Cross sawmill looks like something out of Mad Max!

Regarding chains, I just don't know anymore. They all seem to break. I'm on Oregon chains at the moment and I've had no end of popped rivets and broken tie straps.

After a difficult week of chainsaw milling, I've resolved myself consigning it to my sawmilling past. It's a great way of producing timber if you don't cut timber all day, every day, but I'm pretty wrecked from a week of it, and a lot of things broke. It's not a productive way of cutting in a yard where you have forklifts and other machinery - it's best for breaking down logs in gardens and fields etc. So I'm looking at wide cutting manual mills for those occasional oversized logs that we get. A bit like the largest offering from Hud-son, but hopefully cheaper. I'm starting to look online at various US bandmill producers, but would anyone else be in the market for a wide cutting (I need 48" really) static bandsaw mill for about £7-8k? It's not going to be a fast mill at that price, and it will be very manual, but I figure it has to be quicker than chain milling and on a 4ft diameter log cut at 2", you end up with an extra 2 boards. So the mills I've found so far are: Turner Mills - I spoke to them a fair bit about my original needs for a bandsawmill, but went with Logmaster in the end. Nice folk and do wide cutting mills. Turner Mills - Home Sequoia Mills - just found them today, not sure I like the look of them but worth an enquiry. In budget. SM-145 - Sequoia Mills Hud-son do a couple of wide cutting mills, but they are out of (my) budget really: Oscar 52 Portable Sawmill | Hud-Son It would make sense if I were to order one to share a container with a few other folk. Thoughts?

The cuts certainly don't take long when the mill doesn't break. The issue is on a 7ft bar, nothing is really rigid enough and inaccuracies are hard to avoid. If all goes well with the double ended set up, then a through 50 odd inches of elm I get about 2ft-2.5ft per minute. I seemed to spend most of the time this week fixing things though. Frustrating. We don't use a winch. No need with two powerheads. I didn't get any pictures of the boards, but will take a few before the batch goes out.

Nasty. The blue stain on oak is always a pain. Had a lot of problems this week with chainsaw milling. Two broken drive sprockets, two snapped chains and the top it off the last elm log had so much metal in it that I dumped it. You are not alone!

I'd remembered that there was someone taller than me here - I can't remember when it came up, but I knew I wasn't the tallest Arbtalker. Steve - in the photo with the atlas stone, I am over 20 stone, but I'm a whippet like 15 1/2 now. Just seems to be the weight my body likes to sit at. I eat a pretty consistent 5000 calories a day and work like an ox. Different metabolisms I guess.

Very much so John, particularly the heavy pip and burr. Get them down and milled.

I'll have you know I was a lean, mean fighting machine at 77kg! Did a lot of taekwondo (the extra long reach without any weight to slow me down served me very well in sparring), but got sick of being mistaken for a drug addict and starting lifting weights to gain weight. Ended up enjoying that more so decided that strongman would be an interesting and novel way of giving myself long term injuries!

You midgets, the lot of you! 203cm/6ft 8" and 98kg/15st 6lb at the moment (BMI 23.7) At 19 I was 12st and looked like this (I was in Nepal and I was holding my birthday cake). BMI 18.6 And then aged 23 competing in amateur strongman competitions at 20st 6lbs (BMI 31.5):

We've just finished a second day of milling on a smaller butt (50 inches at the base, 60 inches at the fork) but it was brutal. Everything that could go wrong did - snapped chain, broken (brand new) drive sprocket, chain kept popping off (despite all efforts to tension it) and plagued by torrential downpours. Copford Sawmill - I envy your WM1000 - all you have to do with a big butt is band mill it. Chainsaw milling is brutal!

Oh bloody hell! You don't have much luck do you Will? I suppose the most damaging strikes have been two embedded rocks - one about 6 inches into a yew stem that did no favours to my chainsaw chain (that was not long after I started out) and more recently a fist sized stone embedded deep in the crotch of an elm log.

It is indeed lovely, but a very stressful species to deal with. Professional gambling really as it can be so inconsistent. Butts that look good are poor and butts that look poor can be good. It was so heavy that the middle pack of boards only amounted to a total of 6 before my three tonne lifting forklift was starting to feel light on the back end. Anyway, all done, 20 boards. Some heavy shake on some of the centre boards, but a bit better overall than I had thought it would be.

This log is sold, but I do have some more lumps in the yard. I'll have a rummage and see what might fit the bill. This saw is from Jonesie, so hopefully they can do something.

Had a very large HIAB to shift it for us - it would lift 16t close in. As he was loading it on site, it had to go onto the drag and the crane locked out on him. The driver was muttering to himself that that never happens with that lorry! He reckoned it was 9.5 tonnes.

We're half way through a rather large elm felled by JimM, which is to say that we would be done by now had the crankshaft bearings on the MS880 not decided to self destruct Sods law really - 15 year old battered 088 on one end, 13 month old (so one month out of warranty) MS880 on the other, which is going to break? We had to turn the log (took both forklifts to do that) as it was so far off going through the 1.75m throat of the saw. Lovely colour, so lovely burr, but some structural issues too. Poor quality photo due to antique phone.

Just outside Edinburgh, but pallet delivery is very inexpensive. Kent is about £120-140 for a double pallet, so about £1.50 per cubic foot for 80 odd cube.

Bumpety bump. White woods should be into the yard this week, still lots of elm, though lower grade now, so same price as white woods. Would ideally suit any craftsman/woman looking to build up a large stock economically.

OliB - are you going to be using the mill in a mobile capacity? Additionally, it would be worth considering importing a mill from either the States or Europe (very good exchange rate on the Euro at the moment). This one on German eBay is £13400 for instance: Blockbandsäge Bandsäge Sägewerk TTS-800 Premium mit Hydraulik | eBay I don't know what the quality would be like, but worth the research, as £10k cheaper than competitors here.