Bandsaw mill guys on here?
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Topic: Bandsaw mill guys on here?
Posted By: Tracy Martin TN
Subject: Bandsaw mill guys on here?
Date Posted: 24 Aug 2025 at 5:26pm
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Any of you guys have a portable bandsaw mill on here? Looking for advise on a building for one. Thanks, Tracy ------------- No greater gift than healthy grandkids! |
Replies:
Posted By: acjwb
Date Posted: 24 Aug 2025 at 8:54pm
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If you use Facebook, search for Woodland Mills. The group has several posted. |
Posted By: DaveKamp
Date Posted: 29 Aug 2025 at 7:44pm
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I was gonna build one, then I came upon opportunity to acquire one from the estate of a close friend. It's a Woodmizer LT40, towable fully-hydraulic loading, log turning, clamping. Glad I didn't build one, this towable got me operational and making lumber much faster than if I'd built my own. I now see all the mistakes I WOULD have made...
 ------------- Ten Amendments, Ten Commandments, and one Golden Rule solve most every problem. Citrus hand-cleaner with Pumice does the rest. |
Posted By: jaybmiller
Date Posted: 30 Aug 2025 at 7:12am
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Make the building 10 feet longer and wider , taller too ! NOISE will be a huge issue as it bounces off the walls. Lighting will also be a challenge. Consider room needed to clean up the floor. Mine was outside so easy for the A-C forklift to lace logs onto the sawmill. Really miss the mill..it was fun to operate even though it never paid for itself..... ------------- 3 D-14s,A-C forklift, B-112 Kubota BX23S lil' TOOT( The Other Orange Tractor) Never burn your bridges, unless you can walk on water |
Posted By: Les Kerf
Date Posted: 30 Aug 2025 at 9:06am
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You need either a building huge enough to get all the way around the sawmill with a front end loader to handle logs, lumber, slabs and sawdust, or a tiny shed just big enough to park it out of the weather. Any compromise will result in frustration, so think carefully about which item you are most willing to deal with the frustration. We currently are running a Woodmizer set up in an open field with ample room all around. This allows a truck to sit behind the mill to pile slabs and edgings on, and we have a flatbed trailer sitting on the end to pull the good boards onto. This leaves the infeed side open for loading logs. We do have three of us keeping things moving so it works out quite well. A tiny shed with an opening just large enough to feed logs in and remove lumber out through the same opening can be used, it just slows things down and requires extra fiddling around. |
Posted By: DaveKamp
Date Posted: 31 Aug 2025 at 11:07pm
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Either that, or the building needs to have an overhead gantry with log clamp, and a floor with conveyor or auger. The sawdust is generally easy, and my Kubota BX1800 makes quick work of cleanup, helps push logs onto the lift, and carry cut pieces off to dry, but Lots of bark accumulates around mine. Mine DOE have the carbide-tooth debarking motor, which I didn't know anything about when I got the mill, and I didn't think it'd be very necessary, but after the first few, I realized how much it helped the blade stay sharp... Hydraulic loading and turning are a MUST!! ------------- Ten Amendments, Ten Commandments, and one Golden Rule solve most every problem. Citrus hand-cleaner with Pumice does the rest. |
Posted By: BuckSkin
Date Posted: 03 Sep 2025 at 12:34am
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I have had a band-mill ever since the 1990s. First, if you have any idea of making money custom sawing for other people or on order, tear up the order blank and don't take out the loan === there is no future in sawing for others; they want your prices as low or lower than what the real mills charge with them having to haul in the logs and haul away the lumber. I did not buy my mill with custom sawing in the plan; however, "helpful" others kept volunteering that I would do it and I ended up doing a bit of custom sawing and soon gave that up as a joke. Now, about the building; what others have said about make it huge or don't make it at all is good advice. However, if you live in a place like broiling HOT Super-Humid Kentucky, you either need to NOT saw at all from mid-May until mid-September, or get that thing under some sort of a shed. One idea that I have played with but have not yet got it in the works is to build a railroad track along and beyond the mill. Brace up one of those portable carports and put it on wheels that will ride on the track. Roll the carport down the track away from the mill for loading a log onto the mill. Once the log is on the mill, roll the carport back over the mill and plug in the many big fans hanging under it. With a stationary shed, follow the lead of the big circular mills = they don't place the logs directly on the mill with a loader - and you should not either. Use the loader to place the logs on an elevated rack that extends outside the shed. With a band-mill, you will need flip-over "bridges" to bridge the necessary gap between the log rack and mill. I have had a setup as above described and it worked very well; however, I sold that place and have not yet built one where I am now.
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Posted By: Tracy Martin TN
Date Posted: 04 Sep 2025 at 12:04am
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Buckskin, that sounds like good advice! Thanks, Tracy ------------- No greater gift than healthy grandkids! |
Posted By: Les Kerf
Date Posted: 04 Sep 2025 at 9:54am
Amen to that! I spent 30 years working in the big sawmills here in northern Idaho, 27 of those years I was a saw filer and for 13 years I was the Head Filer. Dirty logs, nails, staples, ceramic insulators, bullets, arrow heads, etc. raise havoc on saws. I still have in my collection a 20 mm cannon shell that took out a whole bank of saws in a 6" rotary gang saw. My online screen name of 'Les Kerf' is a spoof of my career as a saw filer because we were constantly striving to run thinner and thinner saws to increase fiber recovery.
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DaveKamp wrote:Posted By: BuckSkin
Date Posted: 04 Sep 2025 at 10:56am
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Don't forget horseshoes and barn door hinges. People find an old horseshoe or a big old rusty barn door hinge; and, instead of leaving them on the ground or taking them home, they hang them on a limb of a little sapling; after a few years, the growing tree envelopes and absorbs the horseshoe or hinge, where it remains hidden until the sawmill finds it. At least so far as bandsaw blades are concerned, they will just zing right through most ordinary steel objects, slicing them as clean as a hacksaw, dulling the band of course, but probably without loss of teeth. Cast Iron is a different story and Ceramic Fence Insulators are probably the worst of all. As for sharpening bandsaw blades in the 1-inch to 1-1/2-inch width, if saving money is your aim, don't sharpen them; just run them as far as they will go and throw them away = you will have more money in your billfold when all is said and done. If I shop around, I can buy quality bands for $18 to $22 apiece. I had an old guy, now in the graveyard, who was an ace at sharpening and charged me six bucks per blade; a band that he sharpened would cut better than a new one --- for a little while --- and then it would snap; and, you are very lucky when a band breaks if it don't get a belt or two as well. What happens with bandsaw blades is the metal fatigues and they get these miniscule invisible cracks in every gullet; the longer they go, the farther across the band the cracks go. If you will run a brand-new band until it is so dull it barely cuts and then throw it away, those hairline cracks haven't gotten long enough to reach the breaking point. If you instead sharpen that band as soon as it begins to feel dull, it may then cut like a new pair of scissors, but you are flirting with disaster; and, if you sharpen that band a second time, it will probably snap in the first log.
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Posted By: Les Kerf
Date Posted: 05 Sep 2025 at 10:35am
Your experience is somewhat different than mine  I have welded literally thousands of teeth into bandsaws that were broken out from FOD (Foreign Object Damage).
Those are indeed bad, but the absolute worst are the glass insulators. Bandsaws won't even scratch those. |
Posted By: ac fleet
Date Posted: 09 Sep 2025 at 9:33am
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got one here and it sits on my tri-axle trailer out in the middle of the lot! ------------- http://machinebuildersnetwork.com/ |