Sure … here’s a cutaway view of one in my collection. The screw device on the top of the cylinder controls the location of the “contra-piston” which permits changing the compression ratio for starting and running.
This is the marine version with water cooled head and pulley for rope starting along with the U-joint type drive connection.
well, hells bells barge monkey, that’s a serious operation. I have a woodmizer LT 40 super hydraulic i brought back from the dead, a forklift and working on getting this truck. at most I may hope to haul 2,500 BF to a big city once or twice a month and sell the stuff in home depot parking lot or something like that … I run it like a hobby as I have real work around the ranch here to do but if I actually sold some lumber it may get to be more than a passtime?
Have you thought about doing portable sawmill jobs?
If you have stacks of your own lumber already you could try selling on FB marketplace/Craigslist. Take a good picture of a stack that’s well stacked and stickered. It should sell pretty quick. Lots of people want 100BF for a little project not willing to pay box store prices.
I’m interested in a good portable bandsaw mill for use on my own land.
What does a mill like that cost? What’s the lead time? How do I contact the Amish that build it?
A friend of mine bought a $28,000 Hud-son mill with a one year lead time. It looks good, but it’s limited to about 14’. I’d prefer to be able to saw longer logs.
yea rafterman, I’ve taken my mill out for a few jobs along with the forklift I can tow behind a rig. it’s fine to do but not for real big jobs but most of mine don’t get over a couple thousand BF.
Bargemonkey, seldom does one encounter krap in trees here. I did saw a walnut last year that caused the blade to take a dive but that tree was a yard tree which i avoid like a dog with fleas! I’m charging 550/thousand and thinking of going to $600 because I don’t want that much work, I don’t want to be in competition with the two locals and i feel my mill does superior work to others and I spend a lot of time cutting sticks, banding it and making it look good. People know when they see a load I cut !
Northern NY. Theres 30+ firewood processors / 50+ sawmills within 1hr either direction of me. Boats are just a fall back option when fuel goes nuts / stumpage / weather, going to see people starve to death soon the rain doesnt stop, doesnt freeze up. Put in a brand new stationary amish built mill 2x yrs ago, had 2x circles and a large resaw, wore out a NY built TimberHarvester.
That crane came out of Rye NY, picked boats its whole life, salts gotten the best of it but works for us.
Unless youve got a decent customer base dealing with the general public is a waste of time, they pick thru the pile for 3 boards, we have a 70x24 building just for lumber, decent sized kiln, Logosol 4 sided, big single sided, now its by order only. Mobile sawing is another great way to lose your shirt, yard trees, stuffed a horse shoe thru a circle mill yrs ago, sawing up hardwear all the time. The amish here will work for practically nothing, Jebediah was sawing for .26-.30ish a ft, everyone here is .50+ but we are paying insurance, labor laws, taxes. Out here your never gonna win, they drop a load of finished lumber off at Lowes / HD, turn around and take a load home to Quebec, 8-10ld a week all during covid when wood prices where hot.
The last I checked a woodmizer like mine was around $40k and near a year lead time.
this one i overhauled is probably worth something like $25k or maybe more? the woodmizer website has some used units on there but most stuff seems to be back east.
Tried moving posts on too small of a device, got them out of sequence.
Anyway…
The Hud-Son I’m familiar with came with a track made up of 6-foot bolt together sections. Could get as many sections as required to saw any length log. Light weight sections however, required a solid base, cement pad or whatever to keep it from flexing.
yea, heard that about hudson, frame flexes, neither are those mills with the hydraulic hoses that follow the carriage. always getting wood chips and krap stuck in there. There is some good competition with the Woodmizer out there but I’m not watching, I probably won’t get rid of this mill as I border the Nat Forest and have 80+ private acres of wood around here. I try to do most of my sawing on shares, that is, I’ll saw someones logs and I get half of it. Many people are ammenable to that.
I have a Lucas 21 inch swing blade made in Australia that works really nice, ive had it since year 2000. i have cut logs up to 5 foot diameter, totally portable, you can saw any length you want, just buy more extensions. i have one set of extensions and can cut logs 27.5 feet long.
5 FT. is huge, I can’t get much more than 36" and that’s a bit much, anything bigger I have the neighbor cut in half!! sounds like one of those outfits you put on the log?
you can set the saw mill up around the log. if you cut your 5 foot diameter log in half its still 5 feet diamter.
yabut, one can turn it on the side, my mill will cut quite a ways in height , probably taller than wider so that works but a 40 inch log has to get whittled down a bit by bit and isn’t worth the effort, wastes blades and such.
welcome to the forum, I usually am on the pro mariner part or the marine engineers part and seldom read much else.
Not many big trees around here. A few here and there are 24 inches (61 centimeters).
Most of the forest in southern Maine was cleared for farming in the 1700 and 1800s. Almost all those old farms have now been long abandoned and many have come back to white pine.
We had a strong wind storm the other day that took down a couple white pine, the biggest was 120+ years old and about 19 inches (48 centimeters).
I have an old photo of that area when it was all open field, now mostly white pine and hemlock.
i recall being in conneticut back when and seeing all the farm land that had been overgrown with what we typically call brush out here, sapplings, small trees but what i really noticed was all the rock walls laborously hand stacked into fences, now that ground does nothing and the associated irrigation systems have fallen away, and try getting water rights nowadays for new ground !!
tick around zman, interesting stuff happens here sporatically !!
Maine has the most forest cover by percentage, 90% , of any state in the U.S.
Map of wood-filled areas in the United States, circa 2000[1]
