Sawmill Arrives

We finally made it to the top of Remi's list which means that he moved his mill onto our yard and started milling.

We had a bunch of trees felled when we started building our house a year and a half ago. That pile got added to after the the huge windstorm blew a few more over. Best estimates put the pile at 2000 board feet, not that I have any sort of handle on how much wood that actually is. I know that 3 days into the milling processes I have way more wood than I need to build the soffits, board and batton siding, and all the sort of trimmings.

The rig is a Woodmizer bandsaw mill. The lumber dimensions are less precise than with a circular blade mill, but there is significantly less waste. The mill lifts the log onto the bed hydraulically, and can turn the log using a series of wheels. The blade assembly runs on rails and pulls itself down the log using a gear chain. It makes a hell of a racket and leaves a crapload of sawdust.

Tonight Remi finished and the mill is now gone. It took him 4 full days to mill up all of my wood. I just got the invoice from him and it came to just over $800. I figure that's about half of what I would've paid if I had have bought the lumber from a mill.

The picture to the right is only part of the finished pile. These are the 16-20' pieces. There's another larger pile with all the 8-12' hunks.