Toying with the idea of getting one when I retire in 9 months.I want a shop/outdoor kitchen area and don’t want to pay the metal building price.I have past experience with a friend’s traditional mill .just not with a band mill.any of you have opinions on which brands are good or bad?I want something in the 4-8 grand range.I will use it for my sons projects later and can always sell it after.only problem I see is getting logs to cut.any idea’s on that?
John in MD
Member
- Location
- Md
I've got a 20 acre woodlot with lots of dying oaks. In your price range the mill will be very labor intensive, no bells and whistles. I'm assuming that you are in your mid-sixties and think you're in great physical condition. A sawmill is a humbling experience; you are not 20 years old anymore. Unless you have lots of young help, ( that don't carry phones in one hand at all times), spend more money and get something that has lots more features and upgrades. I started with a Woodmizer LT 15 was a lot of work but a good machine. In 2 months, I had ordered an LT 40 wide with all the bells and whistles, de-barker, hydraulic loader, variable speed cutting head, log turner, wide head,etc. The biggest problem is finding help that can keep up with your production on a bigger saw, all they have to do is offload and stack, but you can't do that with a phone in your hand while you're sitting in the shade. My recommendation is to pay someone with a portable mill to come in and do the milling.
Steve in VA
Well-known Member
- Location
- Natural Bridge Virginia
Every word John says is true in my experience. I will add that around here you will find good lightly used mills for sale because folks buy one with high expectations and decide its not for them. Look around and you might well get a chance to try the mill to see what you lije and don't like.
Bob Bancroft
Well-known Member
- Location
- Aurora NY
Similar, but different. Even though I have perfectly capable machinery, Since age 70, I hire someone to cut my soybeans. I get TWO more people with that. One combines, one runs my cart, and I unload.
Without logs, and without help, I just can't see how this works for you.
We did a bunch of this work back in 1991 or so. The guy with the mill rode a seat back and forth. I can't imagine pushing the cutting head through all the cuts, and pulling it back. I was busy with a tractor bringing the logs. The land owner stacked boards.
I bought a Norwood lm29 doz years ago.
Forget the 're' in retire , you'll be tired, it is strenuous work with any substantial size log.
You will need Helping hands. Hope ya have a tractor.
The learning curve...what to do with a bunch of Wavy boards, and then all the waste.
Oh, it has paid for itself several times, but, getting, moving logs is even More work.
I had a logger bring me loads, all softwood.
Take the above advice and have someone come and mill for you...IF you have the logs ready!
Forget the 're' in retire , you'll be tired, it is strenuous work with any substantial size log.
You will need Helping hands. Hope ya have a tractor.
The learning curve...what to do with a bunch of Wavy boards, and then all the waste.
Oh, it has paid for itself several times, but, getting, moving logs is even More work.
I had a logger bring me loads, all softwood.
Take the above advice and have someone come and mill for you...IF you have the logs ready!
Loosehandle
Well-known Member
- Location
- Wisconsin
I have a Woodland mills 26, it works pretty good but is work/exercise. Getting the slabs off larger logs is the worst part. A skid steer with forks helps a lot, especially with turning the cant alone. Bark dulls blades fast also.
DanielW
Well-known Member
- Location
- Haliburton, Ontario
I don't claim to be an expert: I'm more of a circular mill guy: Between the two farms we have five circular mills (had six up until recently, but I finally decided to downsize). But we also have a Woodland band at one farm which is great when you want the recovery of a band instead of the speed of a circle. And I've been around a lot of other portable bands, and work for a company that builds much larger industrial sawmill equipment (though I'm off on parental leave right now). So while I'm definitely not the leading expert, I'd like to think I can comment with a little knowledge. A friend asked my thoughts on getting a bandmill a while ago and they were looking at a Woodland (a popular econo mill, and superb value for their price). Here was my response (for what it counts for). Note that because we're in Ontario, I primarily reference Canadian-mills as they're more readily available and a little cheaper to get due to lack of shipping fees.
Regarding your looking at a mill from Woodland: I know I'm always very critical on smaller bandmills, and to some extent still maintain this position. I will concede, however, that for the stuff you plan on cutting it's the way to go. For what my thoughts count for, here are a few of them:
One of my coworkers recently bought a Woodland to supplement his circular mill; he uses the circular for structural and high production and the band for quarter-sawing or custom 1" hardwood. Some of these notes come directly from him.
i) The Woodlands are cheap for a reason. Much (most) of the stuff they design is fab'd in China and crated back. Some larger portions of the frames are now made in Canada, but smaller weldments and castings are from China. They're built light. The steel also doesn't meet North American 44W/A36 standards. Not necessarily problematic, but you don't want to be loading hefty hardwood directly on it with a loader unless you're careful. The Woodland guys tailor their designs specifically to keep shipping weight down, to decrease import costs and make it easier to ship out. One of the reasons they're so successful is that they're able to cater to the Alaskan fly-in/fly-out crowd who require a light, modular mill.
ii) They don't like to be unsheltered: The paint quality isn't great. He mentioned this, and if you read online you see others have similar experiences. He bought his after using a friend's. He said his friend's - only two years old - works great but looks like it's sat outside for decades. If you keep under cover obviously not a problem.
iii) Blade tension, guide pressure, and set are the big things that make for accurate bandsawing. With the commercial headrigs like we build, piles of design work go into tailoring the wheels and guides to give the right pressure (pressure is not to be confused with tension) on the guides. This requirement for accuracy isn't much of a concern with hobby mills where you don't have to achieve unbelievably small variance, but it's not to be ignored: To achieve anything close to accurate results with a narrow hobby blade, a good manufacturer should sets the guide to give a goodly amount of pressure. To my knowledge, Cooks and Select are the only portable bandmills that do the guide pressure correctly (Cooks has a great video explaining it). Other mills have good-looking, solid guides, but they don't inherintly put any pressure on the blades.
I'm going to elaborate as this is such a critical point: The guide pressure is required to bias any blade wander away from the wheels and (most importantly) to stabilize the sinusoidal "whip" of the blade as it leaves the wheel. This is why the guides should be set to bias the blade off the wheels; you're effectively not giving it a chance to find its natural oscillation. Why do I harp on about this? None of this is too concerning if you're job requires rough-cut lumber. One of the selling features of portable bandmills is how good and clean the wood looks after cutting, compared to a circular mill. No argument there; it looks fantastic. If used in its rough-cut conditions this is ideal, but the oft-heard claim that band-cut wood has an inherently more accurate cut is incorrect. Surface finish is certainly much, much better, but surface accuracy is a different story. Even Woodmizer, who make some of the best portable bandmills, notes that 1/8 variation in thickness can be typical over the length of the board in some woods. A (properly aligned) circular mill, while often having a terrible finish, can't wander anywhere close to this much if the guides are set right. This is notable if you've ever planed band-cut wood on a small, micky-mouse thickness planer that can only takes small cuts. It looks beautiful - like it hardly needs planing at all, but it often takes at least 5 or 6 passes per side to get the whole surface to clean up. Whereas lumber form a circular mill might have a rougher finish, but will be much more accurate and thus clean up in only one or two passes. Don't mix up surface finish with surface accuracy.
How does this reflect on your purchase? In HP and Tension (note: tension, not pressure). Because very few manufacturers apply any guide pressure, their only way of keeping an accurate, pencil-thin kerf with no oscillation is to have some way to crank the blade tension up to extreme values (usually some sort of pirate-looking hand wheel, but in larger mills they use hydraulics). That has two negative effects. a) Taking a lot of power. b) Not allowing the blade any room to stretch as you've already stretched it to the max. Not allowing it to stretch and wrap over the crowned surface of the wheel (Woodland and some others don't crown their wheels uses a cheaper, but effective system - a rubber belt around the centre of the wheel rather than a crowned wheel) causes it to wander in the lateral direction (direction of carriage travel), be less accurate, and wear out blades much faster. What can you do, knowing all this? Not much, unless you want to spend the dough on a mill from Cooks or Select mill that actually takes this into account. All you can do is acknowledge that cheaper mills don't do a good job with their guides, and you can't skimp on the HP because of this. Go with the biggest engine available on whatever model you choose.
iv) Everyone who owns and uses a smaller bandmill regularly agrees on the same thing: You'll soon want a sharpener/setter. Don't be too concerned about blade or tooling manufacturers; lots of people assume blades are specific to mills/manufacturers, but they aren't. There are a few common progiles for your standard 1-1/4" width blades, and most sharpener/setters are available with the right stones & configuration for whatever you have.
I think Woodland is great and they're also nice, local people. As such, I think it's great to support them in any way possible and in general I'd encourage buying from them. That being said, I'd also take a look at what else is out there for other mills, not necessarily to buy instead of a Woodland, but just to get an idea on pricing and design. Don't be too caught up on service/parts; there's almost nothing special/unique about a bandmill that can't be purchased from industrial suppliers. In this area it's often assumed that there are the big mnufacturers (Norwood, Woodmizer, Baker) that cost crazy amounts of money, and then the Woodland. What people don't realize is there are tons of small companies like Woodland that build similarly priced mills, sometimes better, sometimes worse. A few manufacturers worth looking at for design aspects:
Vallee: More money than Woodland, but possibly the best bang for your buck in portable sawmills. Made in Quebec, these are the only sawmills in the under $10k region that have electronic head positioning (a big plus), Honda engines, and a very heavy frame - probably at least as good as Norwood's.
SMG Champion: Also made in Quebec, They have a few excellent features: alternator on their saws for electronic equipment, lots of motor power, 20" wheels rather than the more conventional 19" (helps a lot with stability/wander). Wickedly heavy duty clutch, Auto-positioning, &c.
Clark: Built in Lindsay, they're the choice around this area for commercial-use bandmills. Very simple, but rugged. I don't know about pricing, but probably out of your budget as they're more for full-time industrial users. I think their smallest model is probably about the equivalent of Woodland's biggest. The operation where Jim bought his planer used a mid-sized Clark mill.
Norwood: They make mills in Orillia that are at least as good as many of the Woodmizer at a much lower price. They're known for a laminated channel frame that's practically indestructible. Unfortunately the company was bought out by a large conglomerate recently and is 're-structuring'. Might be worth waiting to see how things settle before diving in with them.
Timbery: Well-made and good looking bandmills. Probably not worth looking at too much, as they don't offer anything that the other manufacturers don't, and they're made in Indiana so often priced more. I mention them as there's a distributor in Bancroft that a few years ago they had some really good, clear-out prices on slightly used models (the ones they'd take to shows). Not sure if they often have similar deals, but might be worth looking into.
Regarding your looking at a mill from Woodland: I know I'm always very critical on smaller bandmills, and to some extent still maintain this position. I will concede, however, that for the stuff you plan on cutting it's the way to go. For what my thoughts count for, here are a few of them:
One of my coworkers recently bought a Woodland to supplement his circular mill; he uses the circular for structural and high production and the band for quarter-sawing or custom 1" hardwood. Some of these notes come directly from him.
i) The Woodlands are cheap for a reason. Much (most) of the stuff they design is fab'd in China and crated back. Some larger portions of the frames are now made in Canada, but smaller weldments and castings are from China. They're built light. The steel also doesn't meet North American 44W/A36 standards. Not necessarily problematic, but you don't want to be loading hefty hardwood directly on it with a loader unless you're careful. The Woodland guys tailor their designs specifically to keep shipping weight down, to decrease import costs and make it easier to ship out. One of the reasons they're so successful is that they're able to cater to the Alaskan fly-in/fly-out crowd who require a light, modular mill.
ii) They don't like to be unsheltered: The paint quality isn't great. He mentioned this, and if you read online you see others have similar experiences. He bought his after using a friend's. He said his friend's - only two years old - works great but looks like it's sat outside for decades. If you keep under cover obviously not a problem.
iii) Blade tension, guide pressure, and set are the big things that make for accurate bandsawing. With the commercial headrigs like we build, piles of design work go into tailoring the wheels and guides to give the right pressure (pressure is not to be confused with tension) on the guides. This requirement for accuracy isn't much of a concern with hobby mills where you don't have to achieve unbelievably small variance, but it's not to be ignored: To achieve anything close to accurate results with a narrow hobby blade, a good manufacturer should sets the guide to give a goodly amount of pressure. To my knowledge, Cooks and Select are the only portable bandmills that do the guide pressure correctly (Cooks has a great video explaining it). Other mills have good-looking, solid guides, but they don't inherintly put any pressure on the blades.
I'm going to elaborate as this is such a critical point: The guide pressure is required to bias any blade wander away from the wheels and (most importantly) to stabilize the sinusoidal "whip" of the blade as it leaves the wheel. This is why the guides should be set to bias the blade off the wheels; you're effectively not giving it a chance to find its natural oscillation. Why do I harp on about this? None of this is too concerning if you're job requires rough-cut lumber. One of the selling features of portable bandmills is how good and clean the wood looks after cutting, compared to a circular mill. No argument there; it looks fantastic. If used in its rough-cut conditions this is ideal, but the oft-heard claim that band-cut wood has an inherently more accurate cut is incorrect. Surface finish is certainly much, much better, but surface accuracy is a different story. Even Woodmizer, who make some of the best portable bandmills, notes that 1/8 variation in thickness can be typical over the length of the board in some woods. A (properly aligned) circular mill, while often having a terrible finish, can't wander anywhere close to this much if the guides are set right. This is notable if you've ever planed band-cut wood on a small, micky-mouse thickness planer that can only takes small cuts. It looks beautiful - like it hardly needs planing at all, but it often takes at least 5 or 6 passes per side to get the whole surface to clean up. Whereas lumber form a circular mill might have a rougher finish, but will be much more accurate and thus clean up in only one or two passes. Don't mix up surface finish with surface accuracy.
How does this reflect on your purchase? In HP and Tension (note: tension, not pressure). Because very few manufacturers apply any guide pressure, their only way of keeping an accurate, pencil-thin kerf with no oscillation is to have some way to crank the blade tension up to extreme values (usually some sort of pirate-looking hand wheel, but in larger mills they use hydraulics). That has two negative effects. a) Taking a lot of power. b) Not allowing the blade any room to stretch as you've already stretched it to the max. Not allowing it to stretch and wrap over the crowned surface of the wheel (Woodland and some others don't crown their wheels uses a cheaper, but effective system - a rubber belt around the centre of the wheel rather than a crowned wheel) causes it to wander in the lateral direction (direction of carriage travel), be less accurate, and wear out blades much faster. What can you do, knowing all this? Not much, unless you want to spend the dough on a mill from Cooks or Select mill that actually takes this into account. All you can do is acknowledge that cheaper mills don't do a good job with their guides, and you can't skimp on the HP because of this. Go with the biggest engine available on whatever model you choose.
iv) Everyone who owns and uses a smaller bandmill regularly agrees on the same thing: You'll soon want a sharpener/setter. Don't be too concerned about blade or tooling manufacturers; lots of people assume blades are specific to mills/manufacturers, but they aren't. There are a few common progiles for your standard 1-1/4" width blades, and most sharpener/setters are available with the right stones & configuration for whatever you have.
I think Woodland is great and they're also nice, local people. As such, I think it's great to support them in any way possible and in general I'd encourage buying from them. That being said, I'd also take a look at what else is out there for other mills, not necessarily to buy instead of a Woodland, but just to get an idea on pricing and design. Don't be too caught up on service/parts; there's almost nothing special/unique about a bandmill that can't be purchased from industrial suppliers. In this area it's often assumed that there are the big mnufacturers (Norwood, Woodmizer, Baker) that cost crazy amounts of money, and then the Woodland. What people don't realize is there are tons of small companies like Woodland that build similarly priced mills, sometimes better, sometimes worse. A few manufacturers worth looking at for design aspects:
Vallee: More money than Woodland, but possibly the best bang for your buck in portable sawmills. Made in Quebec, these are the only sawmills in the under $10k region that have electronic head positioning (a big plus), Honda engines, and a very heavy frame - probably at least as good as Norwood's.
SMG Champion: Also made in Quebec, They have a few excellent features: alternator on their saws for electronic equipment, lots of motor power, 20" wheels rather than the more conventional 19" (helps a lot with stability/wander). Wickedly heavy duty clutch, Auto-positioning, &c.
Clark: Built in Lindsay, they're the choice around this area for commercial-use bandmills. Very simple, but rugged. I don't know about pricing, but probably out of your budget as they're more for full-time industrial users. I think their smallest model is probably about the equivalent of Woodland's biggest. The operation where Jim bought his planer used a mid-sized Clark mill.
Norwood: They make mills in Orillia that are at least as good as many of the Woodmizer at a much lower price. They're known for a laminated channel frame that's practically indestructible. Unfortunately the company was bought out by a large conglomerate recently and is 're-structuring'. Might be worth waiting to see how things settle before diving in with them.
Timbery: Well-made and good looking bandmills. Probably not worth looking at too much, as they don't offer anything that the other manufacturers don't, and they're made in Indiana so often priced more. I mention them as there's a distributor in Bancroft that a few years ago they had some really good, clear-out prices on slightly used models (the ones they'd take to shows). Not sure if they often have similar deals, but might be worth looking into.
Mule Meat
Well-known Member
My advice. Hire the first few cuttings. That way you can ask questions, get answers and gain a little experience before you leap.
Push throu band mills will work your butt off. To fast or to slow and your lumber will be more wavy than a Greatful Dead song. The worse thing about them. Normally the bed is low to the ground and keeping them clear of sawdust is a pain.
Portable sawers here normally charge between $400-$650 per thousand feet if you can get one to come out. Most do not like dragging their mills around and would rather you bring the logs to them.
Push throu band mills will work your butt off. To fast or to slow and your lumber will be more wavy than a Greatful Dead song. The worse thing about them. Normally the bed is low to the ground and keeping them clear of sawdust is a pain.
Portable sawers here normally charge between $400-$650 per thousand feet if you can get one to come out. Most do not like dragging their mills around and would rather you bring the logs to them.
1948CaseVAI
Well-known Member
Look at the YouTube channel Out Of The Woods. He has a great many videos and many, if not most, are about his bandsaw sawmill (he just recently acquired a blade sawmill but there is not a lot of content about that yet) business which supports him and his family quite well. YouTube will give you a lot more info than you could ever get on this site.
if I would have to buy logs,is it even worth it?
Well - I am the other way. I have owned/used a WM LT40 for many years. It's not a business, although I can stay busier than I want if I allow it. It came with a sharpener/setter outfit. Bottom line is it takes about 20 minutes per blade to recondition. And it's assembly line work, boring. Life it too busy to fuss with that. I'd rather read/post on YT. I can send a box of blades off to a pro (WM used to do it, but not anymore) and receive back a box of reconditioned blades with the worn out ones replaced for less money than I consider my time worth.
When I got the machine it had about a hundred blades with it, 96 of them needed sharpened. That's how much fun it is.
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Tgrasher
Well-known Member
- Location
- South Southern illinois
For what it's worth, I buy and sell cut raw cut lumber. Do some cutting on a Baker resaw to make specific pieces that are required by coal mines. All my lumber is bought from sawmills big circular and band, but mostly from small bandsaw ones, Amish and other individuals.. The quality of the lumber varies but for the most part it relates to the sawyer operating the mill. Just this week I met Jim, 82 years old, and as mobile as a 60 year old. He has operated a Woodmizer for the last 40 years while doing other full time jobs. Now retired, he cuts full time on lumber ordered by individuals. He uses a JD 3010 with a forked loader to handle the logs and cut lumber. For me, he cut down a few of his dead trees, as I needed oak 2 x6's cut to a specific size. Others bring him logs or power poles to cut for their needs. His Woodmizer band saw is hydraulic and pulls itself, but he still has to walk along it. He did a wonderful job of cutting for me.
Dad had bought one of the original Clarke mills. At the time they were building them in the garage next to their house.
It was mostly manual when new. We added some power features over the years. Cut an awful lot of lumber with it. The manual carriage wasn’t bad so long as you kept the wheels clean. Basically lean on it and let your weight do the pushing.
Blades is the big part, blade maintenance is essential. There are services that will do it for you, but you need different blade spec for different lumber. Hard vs soft wood, frozen vs green summer logs.
To the OPs question about logs, if you don’t have the timber, you can likely buy lumber just as cheap and put your efforts into something else.
Ya - people want me to cut power poles, I hate it, nasty stuff. If I can't get out of it, I charge a premium. Not to mention the embedded metal aspect....
urbancase
Well-known Member
- Location
- Southeast Indiana
Woodmizer is built a mile from my farm, and shoot trap with one of the supervisors. I think they are one of the best, I know 3-4 people that run them and the build a lot of support equipment for them also.
Batesville Indiana? I probably shoot at the same gun club.
urbancase
Well-known Member
- Location
- Southeast Indiana
Yes, I shoot at oldenburg mostly but also go out to coonhunters sometimes.
560Dennis
560Dennis
- Location
- Madison,Ohio
Can you wait ,go to this show in October and they will have all of them in action .
www.thepaulbunyanshow.com
Show Schedule | The Paul Bunyan Show
View this year's show schedule for the Ohio Forestry Association's Paul Bunyan Show.
www.thepaulbunyanshow.com
urbancase
Well-known Member
- Location
- Southeast Indiana
I you shoot at Batesville let me know we can hook up and shoot, I shot league there some years back, a lot of the guys I shoit with go back and forth however I always busy so try and keep it to once or twice a week depending on the season.
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