Big J

You've got me thinking again about the Logmaster! Price for the LM2 (21ft 6" x 36 inch log capacity - same diameter and 1ft long than the Woodmizer) with 38hp Kohler Petrol (diesel is a $5500 option) and hydraulic debarker is only £16600 plus delivery and import taxes (about 1.5%). I reckon I could almost sell my Woodmizer and buy that without incurring extra cost. The thought of a nice new mill without a single electric motor (all hydraulic) is very tempting. Jonathan

I have a self built screw splitter which I am very fond of, though it is limited in it's applications. For sawmill offcuts, it is superb and with two people operating (one loading the table and cross cutting, the other splitting) you can fill a cubic metre crate every 15 minutes. It is also extraordinarily quick on smallish roundwood (sub 12-14 inches) provided it is fairly clean. As it is belt driven, it's pretty much useless on very knotty timber. The belt slips and it gets stuck. It's also a pain to knock the timber off again. Either way, it cost peanuts to build as I either had the steel work, or traded timber for the 20hp V-twin or welding services. I would have a hydraulic splitter too for knotty timber, but for my needs in the sawmill, the screw splitter is better. Jonathan

If you can handle the wait, I'd just go for a Logmaster LM2. Very solid machine for the money and seems the most robust.

Excellent! I've only been to Bremen once with some family friends when I was about 13 (I think). Very flat with big canals is what I remember. My wife's parents are in Northampton too, so I can appreciate how much nicer it must seem over there. Northampton itself is a special kind of dive! I'm not saying don't mill it, but unless you have a mill in for the day, it might not be worth it.

Lots of hydraulic mills on the market, but the reality is that the only mill company established in this country with reasonable aftersales backup is Woodmizer. If you are looking for a used machine, this will be your only option. Fairly new into the country are Timberking, who I really like the look of. The 2000 model is an excellent all round mill equivalent to the Woodmizer LT40. It is however a bit cheaper and will produce larger boards. There are also other benefits. There are a good range of American hydraulic bandmill manufacturers out there including (but not limited to) Logmaster, Baker, Turner, CookSaw and others I can't remember at the moment. For dimensional timber, I think that the Logmaster LM2 looks to be a cracking machine, and at $25k, it's bloody good value too. The only UK manufacturer is Autotrek, and from speaking to a couple of folk, they aren't well regarded. Aftersales support is also supposedly rubbish. There are several marvelous German manufacturers, such as Serra and Wimmer. I particularly like Wimmer, and spoke to the chap who runs it. Not a cheap saw though - I doubt that you would have much change from £70k once it was in the country. Hope that helps, Jonathan

And to you too Clive. I have an old 2.5 tonne (but really closer to three) lifting Nissan that is quite remarkably nimble and small for stacking timber and operating in my barns. Whilst I would sometimes like the reach and traction of a telehandler, it could only ever be my second forklift. Make sure to post some photos when you get one!

I am not a huge fan of them. All I use mine for is accurate cross cutting.

Good for you! Usually go for a new years swim, but this year didn't really fancy it, despite it being a fairly nice day. Perhaps the swim at the swimming pool yesterday turned me soft!

Costs to set up an Alaskan Mill with an MS660: * Powerhead - £810 from FR Jones (inc VAT) * Sugihara 36 inch bar from Rob (Alaskanmill.co.uk) - £129. You need a high quality milling bar. Standard Stihl/Husky bars aren't tough enough and burr too easily. * Ripping chain - about £45 roughly, though you want two * Precision sharpener - £60 * Alaskan mill and extra handle - £255 So about £1344 including a couple of chains and VAT. Jonathan

Rob D on here is a distributor for Alaskan Mills in the UK. He is your best bet, especially as he has been milling with them for years, so the after sales support is excellent.

Not really worth the effort to mill it unless you have a pile of other stuff you want to mill. It is nice and straight and there is little shake, but the sapwood band is very wide. If it were me, I'd make the first cut so that it skimmed the top of the heartwood, mill through and through until you reached the end of the heartwood and stop. The top and bottom slabs will be very thick, but walnut sapwood is worthless except for firewood. Jonathan

For that size of timber, I would use an Alaskan. The percentage wastage on small logs is far worse than on larger logs. A small, manual band mill would be your best bet, but it's a larger investment. There are lots of inexpensive manual mills on German Ebay: Blockbandsäge BBS 500 Kleinst-Sägewerk | eBay Wood-Mizer Bandsägewerk LT10 Woodmizer Blockbandsäge | eBay R-65 Blockbandsäge Sägewerk Bandsäge Sawmill | eBay

Good advice from Andrew above (interested in that 45ft Oak btw if you can put them in touch with me?). Best advice I'd give is put them to one side in the yard (off the ground - that's very important for any sawlog. Even though Yew is very rot resistant, the sap wood isn't and the contrast between the two is marketable). Keep doing this until you have about 5-10 tonnes of nice quality logs and get a woodmizer (or similar) in to mill them. Cut them to a variety of thicknesses and stick them to air dry. Your bandmill hire will only cost about £350-450 and will give you a minimum of £1500 of timber even if selling at rock bottom prices. The key though is to sell it prior to it being milled. If you drum up the interest in it early on, it's not even speculative. Please don't firewood them though. Good yew (and this is quite reasonable quality - the occasional branches are a bit of a shame, but the uniform trunk cross section and lack of star shake are unusual) is quite hard to come by and is fairly valuable. I've sold nearly £5000 of yew boards in the past year (after having paid about £330 for the roundwood logs). Jonathan

Very good point! Sorry - I hadn't realised that you didn't have a forklift. Best thing you can have in a yard though - got mine prior to getting the Woodmizer. Not that it's any use with a tax bill to pay, but you could get something like this: Climax DAQ 3 t Diesel forklift | eBay For about £2k delivered plus VAT. There are some days where I spend hours on my forklift moving stuff round (not just for fun, I should stress!). Jonathan

Have you thought about Alaskan milling 6 inch slabs for resawing on the woodmizer? I'm a great fan of the narrow cut resawing on the band mill as you can cut at a hell of a rate. Also, very limited wastage cutting it this way. Jonathan

Thanks! No issue with the football either as I don't really follow it. The biggest plus that I can find so far is that there seem to be very few people doing mobile sawmilling. I really think that there is a market niche as most people have a fair bit of land and barns. With the abundance of high quality spruce and other timbers, getting 10 tonnes of roundwood in and then getting someone like me in to cut it has to be the most economical way to buy dimensioned timber. My only concern is that I remember the roads being quite tight, and the thought of driving an 8m trailer around doesn't fill me with joy!

Thanks for the input and also the links to the forums - I am needing to work on my written German and trawling those forums is certainly a good start! WoodKraut - I'm certainly aware of some of the issues in Germany, particularly in inner city areas, but my impression of the countryside is a bit better. The Hochwald on the Hunsruck east of Trier is heavily forested, so there should be plenty of work there. I suspect that I would find it harder to get into forestry there than sawmilling due to qualification requirements, but either way I would be self employed. The main reason for choosing that area is that I have family in Trier. My uncle retired from Arboriculture having run his own company for about 10 years. It should give me a pretty good start for getting a business off the ground. Looking at the community website for that particular village (Schauren) it seems they are very well organised for new building, both commercial and residential. They have about 40 odd serviced plots available for 22.50 euros a square metre (average plot just over 1000 square metres so about 25000 euros) and then an industrial area where land is available for 12.50 a square metre. Here is a link to the website: www.schauren.de - Herzlich Willkommen in Schauren an der „Deutschen Edelsteinstraße“ und der „Hunsrück-Schiefer und Burgenstraße“ im Naturpark „Saar-Hunsrück“ mit der historischen Stumm-Orgel lädt zum Urlaub mit wandern, radfahren, schleifen, Golf sp Jonathan

This is a picture of a slightly larger oak we milled earlier in the year illustrating the benefit of having a person on the far end of the mill:

Not bad at all for first effort. A couple of (hopefully!) constructive criticisms: * Get a couple more handles onto the mill. It's best to be able to vary your hand positions regularly. Additionally, the one you have is back to front. * On large logs particularly, it pays dividends to have a second person guiding the far end of the mill to stabilise the saw. You get a much cleaner finish and less of the deep gauging. Otherwise, excellent and keep on milling!

Sorry for the monster picture size!

Couple of googled photos of the area. It's almost completely forested in places:

I am just the other side of the bridge and could bring the Woodmizer over to you. It wouldn't take a full day to mill that, so I wouldn't charge you a full day's rate (which is £350 plus VAT and mileage), but we could discuss something. If you are interested, could you please send me a PM with a photo of the tree. I would be then able to best advise on what to do with it. Jonathan (Robinson Sawmilling and Tree Works)

My Navara has been fairly terrible. My friend and I each got a new leased pickup at the same time nearly two years ago. Mines been to the garage almost 20 times, his (a Hilux) has only been in twice - once for a service, the other time because a Fed Ex van drove into the front of him. If you can live with the lower tow capacity, get a Hilux. Personally, I'm done with pickups - when I get shot of the Navara I'm getting a VW Touareg 5 litre V10 TDI. 313bhp and a 3.5t tow capacity for 24mpg. Yes please!

Nice logs, particularly for their lack of star shake and fluting. Good luck with the sale.

Been thinking about this considerably more and we're more or set on moving to the Hunsruck region east of Trier. My uncle is in the area and used to run a tree surgery company, so there are contacts that I could use. Here is a link to the Hunsruck tourist board: Hunsrück-Touristik - Vacation, Hiking, Cycling and Culture in the Hunsrück region It's a pretty basic website, but gives you an idea of what the area is like. It's not the Alps in terms of scenery, but in terms of a place to live, I think it's pretty lovely. Also, in terms of cost of living it is amazing. This house is the one I like the most: Ehemaliges Bauernhaus mit Backhaus und gemütlichem Garten Haus Schauren (2KB9C3W) A third of an acre, a barn, a disused bakery and a terrace as nice as that for £40,000. There don't seem to be too many sawmills in the area, and certainly none that do any specialist timber (as far as I can find). Other things that I quite like are that everyone has a right of access to all forests, which essentially means that a third of the country is available for hiking/cycling etc. Weather wise, the best climate data that I can find is for towns in the valleys and it's around 3 celcius warmer in summer and 5 degrees colder in winter (compared to Edinburgh). Less rainfall too if you are on the eastern side of the range of hills. Anyone want to buy £50,000 of sawn timber!?!