Bandmill for firewood

[Knute]

Wondering if anyone has used their bandmill to cut larger firewood logs into halves or quarters to eliminate handling those large rounds and cut down on the amount of splitting.

[Dave Shepard]

Yes, I have. I had a few large, old hard maple logs last fall that I knew were going to be very difficult to split with a maul. I cut them into 4"x6" and then cut them to length with the chainsaw. I had some of the nicest spalted firewood around. :D

[Al_Smith]

I don't have a bandsaw as of yet but have a good start on a home built .However on more that one occasion I've chainsaw ripped down to size gnarly big crotch sections  rather than try and man handle them into a splitter .

I'm getting way too long in the tooth to be rolling around 250 pounds of nasty gnarly sections of oak and what not .Good firewood but kind of a tough nut to crack in a manner of speaking

[Meadows Miller]

Gday

Justin in NZ picked up a job busting up logs that where to big for a loggers firewood processor I think he has run of the log yard and his mill setup alot in there now  ;)

Regards Chris

[Knute]

Thanks. I'll give it a try this spring. My back doesn't like lifting those large rounds onto the splitter anymore.

[JustinW_NZ]

Yip - good memory Chris!



This was breakdown for a commercial firewood processor machine.
They didn't like slab wood much (feeding problems) , and cant take anything over 550mm so I can just quarter bigger stuff like the above...
I did make some mean firewood for kindling etc, bit of overkill but meh...  :

Chris - this was a good spot but they started to want it all done for them, and leave me with nothing! so not there currently and looking for logs to just buy.

Cheers

[AdamT]

I had some sycamore logs full of shake, so I firewooded them on my mill. I already had the mill setup, and it's more fun than bending over all day at a splitter.
This past December I had a customer that had some good saw logs that we made lumber from, and a pile of firewood logs that we "split" with the mill.

[Magicman]

I personally do not like to use sawmill split firewood because it has no irregularities to allow the fire/air to flow between the sticks.  If two pieces get together it is almost as if it is not split.   :-\

[Dave Shepard]

Those are the all-nighters. :D I didn't measure out the cuts I made, they were random thicknesses, some around 4x6, some might have been 3x5. I didn't seem to have much trouble with them plogging up the stove. I just knew I wasn't going to be able to stuff an unsplittable 24" long, 24" diameter round in the door of the stove.

[fuzzybear]

  I just wait until it's -40 outside and even those monster blocks crack with one hit.  ;D

[Knute]

May just need to be a little more careful on how wood is placed in stove if it is sawn rather than split. Usually will still have at least one rounded side.

[Busy Beaver Lumber]

Knute

Just cant see this as being time or cost effective. No way someone is going to make firewood as fast on a bandmill as they could on a splitter, plus you have the cost of the blades to factor in.

You mention not wanting to lift the big rounds onto the splitter, then why not get a splitter that goes vertical or one that has a hydraulic lift for the big logs.  I deal with the bigs ones by setting the splitter into vertical mode. These oak logs were a piece of cake to deal with on the splitter. The one standing up in the back was close to 42 inches in diameter



 

Trust me when I tell you after 3 back surgeries, i have gotten pretty good at finding ways to spare my back.

I cut the hug section off the log, tip it over onto a pallet jack, which does not take much effort at all, then use the pallet jack to put it under the log splitter wedge in the vertical orientation. Once you split it a time or two, it is simple to move the remaining parts around. Depending on the wood, I sometimes use the 4 way wedge head and can really make some decent time splitting.

[Jim H]

I quartered some large logs for a customer, they had set a bit too long to use for sawlogs. Most were 16"-20". He would set a log on the loader with the forks, then drove around the mill and took off the cut pieces of the previous log and piled them to be cut to length. I was kind of surprised at how efficent it was, most logs required between 2-4 cuts, we worked about 3 hours and I don't think the wood could have fit on a tandem log truck. He was planning to finish the process with his splitter but didn't wan't to handle full size blocks.