There are three types of small sawmills out there:
1) Chainsaw - simplest and cheapest. The big expense here is a good chainsaw capable of handling a long bar. This is also the most manually intensive - requires the most work from you and produces less wood for your efforts. Still, folks swear by them. These mills come in all ranges of complication - from a simple ladder type jig that bolts to a log to a more sophisticated rig with it's own bed.
2) Circular - these are the most expensive. The benefits include longer blade life and smaller kerf.
Now that you have had this saw mill and used it for awhile, would you get the hydraulics and other goodies if you were going to buy a sawmill again? Any other comments on experiences and knowledge learned would be helpful as well. I guess my biggest question would be how much wood would you have to cut to pay for and justify the cost of a saw mill?
No hydraulics - may live to regret that some day. If it were to be the basis of a business, hydraulics would be a good investment - the faster you can make wood, the more money you can make. For personal use, I'd buy a log skidder before hydraulics. These come in the form of trailers that can be hitched to an ATV or tractor and make the process of moving a log from fell to mill.
We probably had the mill paid off in the first year. Would have spent at least as much as the mill on lumber for some of the projects around here. The trade-off is that you don't get nice, uniform lumber as you would buying off of a lumber yard. Some of this stuff can bow or warp when curing. There are a lot of things you can do to minimize it - even lumber yard products will be warped to some extent. The wood is also harder than store bought lumber. For me that's a plus. You'll notice it most when cutting and nailing. We don't bother nailing anymore - after bending a handful of nails the first time, we switched to a drill and screws. Takes a little longer, but work can be disassembled and holds together better than nailed, store-bought lumber.
Something I also see as a plus is that it generates a lot of scrap - slabs, flitches and odd parts of the tree that don't fit into standard dimensional lumber. We have found all kinds of uses for these odds'n'ends. The last stop for unusable scrap is the starter bucket for the wood stove. Cured scraps really make nice starter for fires.
This will be one of my next investments is a Saw Mil, looked at them for years and have used them before have friends who have them but they happen to be about 50 miles away and that will be no good after the S hits the F, so I am looking for a miracle not a good price.......
