input on select sawmill bandmill double cut

[red oaks lumber]

we are in the planning stage of a fairly large expansion at the green end of our operation. looking to have average production of 6-8000 b.f. per day of 4/4 hardwood.
i'm wondering if anyone has any first hand knowledge of the double cut select mill,both good or bad. any input would be appreciated. thanks

[Dave Shepard]

I've only seen ads and YouTube videos. If I remember, they are a good chunk of change. Do you have a line on a used one?

[drobertson]

yep the guys I'm working for at times doing tsi work had one, and will check on the model, all I know from what was said was it was a bad a$$ saw,  blades are costly but production was over 6000 a day for certain.  They were in Tenn. sawing mostly poplar and pine, up and back was the norm. Pretty fast the way it sounded.

[Dave Shepard]

Was the 6000 feet a day for onsite milling?

[red oaks lumber]

gotta line on a good late  model, fair amount of coin but, anymore what isn't right?

[drobertson]

Heartwood 310 with a 6" band was Williams mill, 1000 feet an hour if set up right with a live deck and hands to handle at the tail ya know.   Lots of up front cash but, makes the lumber..

[YoungStump]

I've never been around a Select Sawmill in person, but I know once you go to a wide band like that there's some serious blade maintenance involved in keeping it sawing good. Quite a few guys around here run wide vertical bandheads with circle mill style carriages.

[shenandoahsawmill]

Select mills look great in their adds and video but I have never seen one in person. I have spoken to a couple of Select owners and they really speak highly of the mills and the service that they have received from the company. I run a Horizontal Double cut Povlsen model 36 with 5" wide bands and 55HP Isuzu diesel. The bands new run about $275.00 to $300.00 each. The stellite tipped saws are probably double that. There is no mud saw on my mill. Difficult to do when you cut in both directions. I made a jocky grinder for my saws and touch them up on the mill after every 3000 feet. The mill is easily capable of 6000 feet/8hrs but I work alone so don't get anywhere near that. The key is to have clean logs and a log deck and plenty of help off-bearing. My mill had a built in edger with two vertical circular blades but I did not use it because I wanted to get the horizontal bandsaw blade down to the middle of big oak logs for quater sawing and the edger got in the way so I removed it from the mill. If you want structural lumber the built in edger might be the way to go as a way to eliminate or  reduce labor in a secondary operation. I spoke to the original owners of my mill and they said that with two offbearers they could barely keep up with the saw. I think the wide bands offer greatly improoved production and acuracy or reduction in wavy boards even in wide cuts. There are several wide band saws in the Select class but they are in the $90,000 plus range then you have to buy the saw sharpener, swedger, shaper and  stretcher which can add another $10,000 to $15,000 to the cost unless you have a local shop to do the work. Other saws in the Select range are MinMax, which has a slant saw so the boards fall off the top of the log as they are cut.  Serra is a Bavarian company that sells a nice horizontal wide band. If I were going to get into a big operation I would not hesitate going with a wide band. There is a nice used Povlsen in Canada just north of you and a MinMax for sale in the NE on Sawmill Exch. if you are looking at used machinery.

[Dave Shepard]

I have been holding back on saying this, as I didn't want to distract from the Select discussion, but it sounds like the Select and other wide band mills are a very huge jump in both price, and maintenance without a huge increase in production over something like an LT70 or other large portable mill with no more than a 2" band. From what I have gathered, the LT70 can run around 1,000 feet an hour or more, while not really changing much else in the operation where an LT40 was. With good 3 phase, an LT300 would do even more, while still staying in the 2" or less band category. As I am sure you know, material handling to and from the mill is at least as important as the mill itself.

[YoungStump]

I've been wondering the same thing, because I know of guys that are getting as much production with LT70s as some of the numbers posted here.

But check out the speed the guy in this video is sawing, I don't think there's any way a narrow band can keep up with that, plus the double cut. I've seen other Select videos where there sawing much slower than in this one. I'm sure they have different models and power options.
http://youtu.be/wHq7FtiKbhM

One disadvantage if sawing grade would be that you couldn't see the face of the board your cutting, so you would have a hard time telling when your grade starts to drop. Unless you take the time to remove each board as it's cut.

[red oaks lumber]

i was looking to get away from having the slab and lumber come back off the mill, side load and unload looks to me to have easier mill layout, which might help with faster ,eaiser material handling. nothing against wm but,how much of the price is just the name?
given the nod for the lt70 or lt300 ...can someone give first hand knowledge pro/con on either one of these mills? solid production numbers

[stavebuyer]

I bought logs and timber for the man who bought the 1st one installed in the US. They will cut; but he had to put in a complete filing room. 6" bands need to be tensioned

[Andries]

i was looking to get away from having the slab and lumber come back off the mill . . . . . given the nod for the lt70 or lt300 ...can someone give first hand knowledge pro/con on either one of these mills? solid production numbers

CustomSawyer has a LT70 and he travelled to your place a few months ago didn't he?
He mills mostly hardwoods, and the end product was long timbers for construction mats. That may not be your business plan Red Oaks, but Jake will have reliable production numbers on all the 5/4 lumber that he produces to get down to his final timber product.

[ellmoe]

  I've known two different people that owned wide (6") double cut mills that had problems getting their bands where they could cot both ways, the return trip never cut correctly. Both of these operations sent their blades out to reworked. One mill started cutting only one way and , the other, switched to standard 2" blades, cutting one way. I'm sure there is someone that could make these blades cut like they should, but these guys couldn't find them. We are in the extreme SE USA and not many saw shops around.
Mark

[stavebuyer]

The 6" double cut will saw 18,000+ per day if the bands are properly sharpened and tensioned but that was a 7 figure setup.

A Wood-Mizer LT70 with log deck and out-feed conveyor will cut 6,000+' a day in 4/4 oak(10' length 15" diameter log average down to 4x6 cant). We have cut as much as 10,000' in a day cutting switch ties. Including two weeks vacation, holidays and breakdowns we cut 1,347,000 with our LT70DCS last year.

[red oaks lumber]

the more info i get,the farther away from that style mill i am moving starting to lean alot more towards a 70 or looking at the wm3500 .as always i appreciate all input

[Nomad]

the more info i get,the farther away from that style mill i am moving starting to lean alot more towards a 70 or looking at the wm3500 .as always i appreciate all input

     I think that's a good call.

[longtime lurker]

One of the most enduring realities of sawing with bands is this: bigger, stiffer, wider bands cut faster and more accurately for longer. Thats simply a matter of physics and the fact that the stifness of a band is directly proportional to its depth and thickness.

The real question is do you have enough of a resource to justify the mill and filing room? Remembering that a mill is but the first part of a system. It needs must be a system because no matter how fast you saw if you can't get it off the mill,  through the resaws and/or edgers, through the docker, into packs, them strapped and treated and sold; you might as well buy a slow sawmill.

A mill can only produce as fast as the slowest component of the system is also one of those unchanging laws of sawmilling.

If I was looking for a transportable midsize output band I'd be looking hard at the Sanborn. I think the slope rigged band allows for a good offload system.
If I didn't want to be transportable, I'd go for a circle with a West Plains 500 or a Stenner  behind it. That way kerf loss is confined to the number 1, but so is bark, mud, and all those other band destroying nasties.

[customsawyer]

A LT 70 will cut that. To do it right plan on getting your own sharpening equipment so that you can get the max out of your blades. Getting a log deck will help speed things up. One of the main things that is going to hurt your production is the smaller size of the logs that I seen in the log yard up there. Not saying that it can't be done just that it is going to be more difficult than it is for some of us others that have larger logs.

[Alligator]

One of the most enduring realities of sawing with bands is this: bigger, stiffer, wider bands cut faster and more accurately for longer. Thats simply a matter of physics and the fact that the stifness of a band is directly proportional to its depth and thickness.

The real question is do you have enough of a resource to justify the mill and filing room? Remembering that a mill is but the first part of a system. It needs must be a system because no matter how fast you saw if you can't get it off the mill,  through the resaws and/or edgers, through the docker, into packs, them strapped and treated and sold; you might as well buy a slow sawmill.

A mill can only produce as fast as the slowest component of the system is also one of those unchanging laws of sawmilling.

If I was looking for a transportable midsize output band I'd be looking hard at the Sanborn. I think the slope rigged band allows for a good offload system.
If I didn't want to be transportable, I'd go for a circle with a West Plains 500 or a Stenner  behind it. That way kerf loss is confined to the number 1, but so is bark, mud, and all those other band destroying nasties.

I was reading and thinking the same thing about production. The slowest part of a band mill I've seen is removing the sawed material. I did a quick little google search on Red Oak's mill location. On google earth, behind his mill looks like about 50 or more square miles of hardwood timber. I could be wrong but timber is not going to be a big problem. Moving material needs to be where the focus is. Getting logs to the mill, lumber away from the mill, and disposing of byproducts. Just looking my guess is, portability is not in the cards looks like this is already or is on the verge of a full blown production mill.
At some point the decision has to be made (a) "am I a small portable mill" or (b)"a small and growing production mill". If (b) then the investment needs to be made in high production equipment. i.e. off bearing belts, rollers, infeed chains. Two pieces of sawmill equipment that are hardly ever mentioned on this forum are debarkers and chippers. Not saw line debarkers, but whole log debarkers, almost totally eliminate the saw destroying nasties. Clean chips and extra sawing between blade changes will over time pay for the debarker and chipper and pay the electric bill. It's not obvious up front, but I've seen it. As lurker said something behind the main saw, so that isn't your only means of lumber production vastly increases production. Now you have 2 pieces of equipment producing lumber. My preference is the sash gang. Everybody says they are slow, but for a small production mill you lose a lot of the chain decks and roller beds, and just run logs. The one in this video looks like a good bet, although they don't have a proper in feed and out feed to do something with the lumber when it is sawed.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M40RGXbrFuQ

[red oaks lumber]

the original plan was to use the exsisting building but, after alot of talking and figuring it has become apperent that we must build the production layout first then plan a building around that.
procuring logs should not be an issue given the fact we are completely surrounded by hardwood forests in a 75 mile radius.
i won't be surprised if the total cost of this exspansion comes in around $250,000 but, before any money is spent the cash flow needs to work in a worst case senario.

[Alligator]

the original plan was to use the exsisting building but, after alot of talking and figuring it has become apperent that we must build the production layout first then plan a building around that.
procuring logs should not be an issue given the fact we are completely surrounded by hardwood forests in a 75 mile radius.
i won't be surprised if the total cost of this exspansion comes in around $250,000 but, before any money is spent the cash flow needs to work in a worst case senario.

I've been in and around sawmilling all my life. The thing that kills the most sawmills is the last thing you mentioned. Every 5 to 10 years the sawmill industry has a weaning. If you don't have the finances to make it through the weaning you get weaned. It's a different business from custom sawing and small time sawing. When you inventory ¼ to ½ a million bdft of logs and lumber and the price drops $100 it hurts bad. You have to have the money to hold or fold, sell and cut your loses. There were when we went into springs (March, April, May) were we had a ½ million bdft of rough saw dimension lumber and ¼ million bdft of logs on the yard.

[longtime lurker]

the original plan was to use the exsisting building but, after alot of talking and figuring it has become apperent that we must build the production layout first then plan a building around that.
procuring logs should not be an issue given the fact we are completely surrounded by hardwood forests in a 75 mile radius.
i won't be surprised if the total cost of this exspansion comes in around $250,000 but, before any money is spent the cash flow needs to work in a worst case senario.

We're making a similar sized jump right now. For me it's not the first time I've done this - I built a one man operation into a 25% interest in a 60 man operation once before... sold out... now I'm doing it again.
As Alligator says, cash reserves are important. It's near impossible to grow without finance, I think the secret is to pick what and how much you finance with care. That might not mean buying cheaper, older equipment either... A lot of the time in this business I think you're better with modern, more expensive gear that takes less manpower to operate. Old, labour intensive mills can be had cheaply because they might have production capacity, but it takes 6 men to make the system work.  My experience tells me that if I can do half that volume with two men on more automated gear that I can always throw more manpower at it to increase production, but I can also hold on at reduced output better when times get tough. I like long green chains for that reason.... Our show has 4 stations in the green mill: primary saw, resaw, dock and stack ... I can run by myself by having a long chain between each... Load up the chain then go to the next station. With two men this place averages about 80 tone of logs per week. Put in another guy and that doubles.

Guess what I'm saying is base decisions around being efficient, rather then production or price. While efficiency in terms of recovery percentage is important (and bands can give an edge there), the efficiency I'm talking is recovery per man per day. Here we have what Alligator calls "a weaning" about every 10 to 15 years - aside from mill closures because of resource shortages as production areas go online/offline its always the least efficient that get weaned, regardless of size.

[Alligator]

I can run by myself by having a long chain between each... Load up the chain then go to the next station.

That's funny and right.
We had long live decks in front of every station or behind each production station. Another advantage to long decks / chains is with a full crew, if you have a break down, you have 30 minutes to an hour of repair time where the saws in front or behind can keep running while you repair. I knew within 5 minutes of how much time I had to effect a repair on a particular piece of the mill before I reached critical mass and the whole thing shout down.

One thing that we never stopped doing was, looking a other peoples mills. See how they are doing it. Sometimes copying it sometimes just borrowing one little idea that made our mill operate more efficient. Sometimes it was big pieces that eliminated 3 men. The unstacker at the planer was a god send. It separated the sticks from the lumber and dumped the lumber on a chain to the planer feed table. Fork lift driver set the packs of stacked lumber on the feed chain the next person to touch it was the guy feeding the planer.

Attached mill layout.

[attachment deleted by admin]

[red oaks lumber]

i have always been efficent minded so, designing the mill layout will be based on most output with the least input we have a couple opportunites kinda of falling in our laps, we have been approached by a couple large hardwood mills in the state wondering if we would be interested in doing contract sawing. i have to be honest its got me thinking maybe doing that along the way will help create cashflow as we keep building log inventories and log supplies