New to sawing and new to this forum...

Mesquite Man · October 21, 2002, 07:33:07 PM

Hello everyone,

I have been posting a little over at the woodweb site and decided to join here. I am totally new to the world of sawmilling. I actually do not even have a mill yet but it is on it's way. I ordered a TimberKing1220 mill last week and hope to have it in a couple of weeks.

My interest in becoming a sawyer is simply to saw for my own use as a hobby. I have always had a real interest in wood and have always wanted to work with a saw mill so I bought one!

I have about 1,000 bf of mesquite waiting to be cut as soon as the mill gets here. I also have a nice black walnut log which is not common in this part of Texas.

Does anyone have any good words of adice for me before I get my mill and jump right in? I am sure I will have lots of questions and thank you all in advance.

Curtis Seebeck

Kevin · October 21, 2002, 07:44:44 PM

QuoteDoes anyone have any good words of adice for me

Lock the head down and don`t saw the dogs. :D

Welcome to the abuse. ;D

DanG · October 21, 2002, 08:06:22 PM

Hi Curtis! Welcome to THE ForestryForum.

Before you get your mill and jump right in, my advice is to get your mill and jump right in. :

Read all the stuff here, and over at the other place, too. Keep the saltshaker handy, though. The names will become familiar to you, and you will soon learn who to listen to. We have a small, but solid group of folks here, who make every effort to not steer anyone wrong. I, personally, am here to gain knowledge, and entertain myself until I can get my milling business under way. The best I can offer the forum is a few generic comments, a little humor(very little, I'm afraid), and a term to sling around when one is frustrated or amazed. Oh yeah, and I'm pretty good at giving advice to newbies, since I seem to be a perpetual newbie, myself.

;) ;) :D

Bro. Noble · October 21, 2002, 08:08:31 PM

Curtis,

Welcome

I would suggest you visit as many sawmill operations as you can to see how they do things. Your operation will end up unique to you, but you will learn something everyplace you visit. Look through past posts on this forum, you'll learn ALL KINDS of stuff.

Noble

Frank_Pender · October 21, 2002, 10:07:46 PM

Wel a board, to The Forestry Forum. Yes, it is a goood idea to visit some small operations to see what is what and who is who. It simly inhances your baseline for the learning curve you will have for the time you own a mill. Best of fortune to you in your sawing ventures. DonT to share all of the fun you have with the rest of us around here. ;D

Mesquite Man · October 21, 2002, 10:17:53 PM

Thanks guys for the suggestions and welcomes so far. I would love to visit some local saw mills but there really just aren't any. Central Texas is not know for our timber! There are a few mills but they are few and far between.

There is one near my hunting camp that I plan to visit while up bowhunting this coming weeknd. They run an electric WoodMizer of some sort. Not sure the model. I stopped in there a whale back to ask about buying mesquite from them before I decided to buy my own mill.

Thanks again for the suggestions.

LeeB · October 21, 2002, 11:31:21 PM

Hey Curtis! If you make it up to Liberty Hill, stop by and see me. I have a TimberKing 1200. Pretty much the same mill as yours. Will show you all the mistakes I have made. Maybe you can bypass those and go on to your own. It's a lot of fun. You'll work your tail off, but it's worth it. Welcome. LeeB

Weekend_Sawyer · October 22, 2002, 06:37:18 AM

Welcome! I also came over from another forum. Ya just feel more welcome here. I would suggest that your first log not be your best log. My first log I just cut stickers out of it. You will need LOTS of stickers! All your best sawing can be ruined by improper stickering.

Enjoy!
Jon

OneWithWood · October 22, 2002, 07:23:42 AM

Welcome from another newbie. I too have a mill on order. It is a Woodmizer LT40HDG25. I pick it up on November 1. My wife has even agreed to come along and be trained on the mill. 8) Of course this could be dangerous because if she gets into it I will have to jockey for mill time! :D
I second the advice to save your walnut log until you have sawn a few dozen sticks. I will be learning by sawing a few hundred stickers and the timbers for my sawshed.
There are a number of us just getting started on this forum. It will be fun to see how we all come along 8) 8) 8) 8)

Frank_Pender · October 22, 2002, 07:32:11 AM

Sure is nice to have a lot more kids on the block. That way we can have more teams of experience teaching by experience. :P The broader our base of knowledge the greater the learning curve. ;D

Tom · October 22, 2002, 05:39:14 PM

welcome, Curtis.

Here's two cents worth. It is fun and easy to cut re-e-a-a-a-ly thin stuff with a bandmill. It's something we all did with the first log. You will do it too and find that you won't know what to do with the wood. I still can probably find some of my first log out in the woods cut up into 1/2 inch boards.

The best thing to do is practice squaring the log. A diamond cant (pushed over parallelagram) doesn't make good lumber and one must learn to identify when this is happening.

Here's two more cents :D read books on wood and learn to identify all of the local woods. Your customers will expect you to be an expert just because you have a sawmill. It won't take long for them to figure it out if you throw them a bunch of bull and it's bad advertising. It also ends up being some of the best advertising if you know the right answer or tell them that you will find out. (that's where the guys on this site can really help.)

Your going to love your sawmill. DonT get too busy too fast, you have to have some time to have fun. ;D

Bibbyman · October 22, 2002, 05:42:53 PM

OneWithWood,

Having two sawyers and one mill in the family can be a struggle some times. For two years, we had two Wood-Mizer mills. One LT40 manual and an LT40HDG35 Super. Sometimes we ran them both at the same time. That was when we were the most productive! ;D

Actually, it worked well as we were often juggling orders. We'd load up the manual mill with smaller logs and the used the Super on the bigger logs.

Welcome and have fun!!

CHARLIE · October 24, 2002, 10:05:23 PM

Welcome to the Forum Curtis!

How many DanG Texans do we have on this forum now? Hey Jeff, is there a limit per state? I know you are over the Canadian limit. I think the Texans are trying to match up with the New Zealanders.;D

Max · October 25, 2002, 08:53:37 AM

This really is an informative forum, have been reading it for quite a while but still have sooo much to learn. I went to Mt Vernon MO and picked my new and first mill about a month ago, so far with a lot of help from reading this forum it is working real well. Thanks!!

SawBilly · October 25, 2002, 01:33:43 PM

Welcome MAX and Sitruc,
There ain't nothin like putting a blade in the log to get started learnin. you can read all you want( and it is recomended) but none of the books I have seen have talked about what happens on the mill when you are sawing, or in my case slicing dicing choping and generally making a fantastic mess of things ;D. Books tell you about grade and strengths, and grain pattern and what to use for what to build with, but practice tells you to set the dogs BEFORE you saw and to LOWER your posts BEFORE you saw and to engage or throttle up the engine BEFORE you saw and to set the tension on the blade BEFORE you saw,

There is a lot to learn jsut to make the mill work right, and the only way to do that is to put a junk log....correction there is no junk wood on earth, God made everything for a reason....put a "not your most valuable log" on the mill and start cuttin. You will need a DanG load of stickers so cut some one inch french fries out of the "not your most valuable log" and stack them. you can also cut some 1/2 inch stuff and make boxes 1'x1' put a botom on it and fill it with quickcrete and a handle to make weights for your stacks.

I dont think I have seen one post that had bad information in it yet. Keep reading the forum and you will learn....

It is not the taste of the french fry that makes it good...it is the ability to hold ketchup that make us love it. 8)

Bibbyman · October 25, 2002, 01:46:20 PM

Welcome Max to the Forum and congratulation on getting a great mill.

Will and Marty are great guys down there. They'll help you out if you get into a bind. What model did you get? Tell us all about it.
8)

Max · October 27, 2002, 09:40:34 AM

Sawbilly..thanks for the reply, Yep...am learning about all of the things you have mentioned. So far have been lucky enough to only drag the blade guide on a log a couple of times am sure all the rest of fun stuff will come in time. It sure is fun though...have watched lumber good to waste for a long time and this is much better..

Bibbyman..... It was pleasure meeting Will and Marty, the program that WM has on training etc is a great idea and the guys at Mt Vernon were really good at it. They saved me a lot of trouble before I ever got started. The model of saw is an LT30G25. The only thing extra I got was the toe boards, I could imagine what a pain it would be to block logs the hard way.

Sorry am so long in getting back to this thing, wouldn't be here today but it's very wet here, started raining about 2:00 this morning and hasn't really stopped. The plan of the day was to go cut some standing dead ash trees....maybe next weekend...