I've seen a couple online never have used or seen one in person I'm very interested in it though anyone have any pointer in what to look for in one and any suggestion Which ones to look intoMicro mill suggestions???
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I've seen a couple online never have used or seen one in person I'm very interested in it though anyone have any pointer in what to look for in one and any suggestion Which ones to look intoIts called an Alaska mill. My brother used one for several years and cut quite a bit of wood up. Unless you really need slabs and place no value on your time, these types of mills don't get used for very long. Its also a good way to wear out a saw and definitely all the safety gear is needed. In order to cut any width, you will need a very large chainsaw,too large or heavy for normal fire wood duties and most likely you will dedicate the saw for this use rather than swapping the guides on and off. Folks underestimate how long it takes to cut a board especially hardwood. Its also easy to burn out a saw as its real easy to get a dull chain half way through the log and keep pushing it through to the end. The other skill you will need to acquire is the initial slab cut, they always show the log after a slab has been cut and from them on its relatively easy but making that first cut requires quite a bit of setup. The width of the kerf is huge so plan on turning half the valuable wood into sawdust if you cut boards. Cutting timbers is somewhat less waste but the trade off is even more setup time to get the right angles.
There are of course accessory jogs and fixtures to make it quicker and of course special chains.
The other thing to realize is that once you have cut that beautiful slab of wood, that you then have to figure out a way to dry it without splitting. It can be done but figure about a 30% spoilage rate and about 1 year for every inch of width.
All in all the process is quite interesting but unless the wood is incredibly valuable and you have no other way of cutting it an Alaskan mill is not the way to save money despite what the adds say.
There are of course accessory jogs and fixtures to make it quicker and of course special chains.
The other thing to realize is that once you have cut that beautiful slab of wood, that you then have to figure out a way to dry it without splitting. It can be done but figure about a 30% spoilage rate and about 1 year for every inch of width.
All in all the process is quite interesting but unless the wood is incredibly valuable and you have no other way of cutting it an Alaskan mill is not the way to save money despite what the adds say.
MDFisherman
Burning Hunk
I bought my large saw from a gentleman who purchased it for this purpose, to make his own boards. He said he was selling the saw because the price of gas to run the saw, chains, oil etc. it was cheaper to just go buy boards!
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