Back in February I build a little website for my budding mill business, NWA Sawmill. After much reading here I decided to advertise in the "Shameless" links section on the front of the site. Well, 4 months later my site ranks very highly on google for many catagories, and most of my customers are finding me via the website instead of CL and such. I appreciate Jeff answering many questions, and helping me find my way through my website optimization. I appreciate all of yall for the answers, info, and making this site be such a heavy hitter for any advertisers that are linked on it. I am now busy enough in a few short month on my "side" job to consider buying a full hydraulic mill to keep up. Keep it up.
Ryan
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That's great news
YH
I just went looking for "sawmills in wesley arkansa". There you are, right up near the top of the first page. And yes, that was a typo -- didn't matter, I found you. Isn't that link great? :) :)
Congrats on moving the "side job" to your "day job"!!
Thanks guys, I am excited to see it pick up so quickly. Now the question is, how big do I go on the hydraulic mill? I want an LT50 so bad I can't stand it, but a used 40SH would do just fine as well. I am having to turn down requests for wide (36"+) slabbing fairly often, too. I wonder if I should get a chainsaw mill to do that, or look at getting a Peterson or Lucas slabber in a year or so. Decisions, decisions!
How big a mill you get would depend on lots of factors including how much help you'll have, support equipment, and money. I have an LT40 and with the right logs and setup, I can keep two off bearers humping. So either the Super or 50 will will cut in excess of that, so even if I had one of those, I could not use it to capacity.
My advice would be to not to try to saw everything, but rather identify your mainstream market and develop the setup for that. Then, catch the edge or fringe business later.
YH
QuoteI am having to turn down requests for wide (36"+) slabbing fairly often, too. I wonder if I should get a chainsaw mill to do that, or look at getting a Peterson or Lucas slabber
Considered a complete swingblade mill with a bolt on slabber? If there are big logs like that around, and no one with the gear to handle them, that sounds like a niche that needs filling? As well as being able to slab them, you cam also easily quarter saw those big ones, and the portability of the swing blade solves a lot of log moving problems.
And keep the manual band saw for the smaller logs
Ian
Quote from: RPowers on June 28, 2014, 11:59:35 AM
... Now the question is, how big do I go on the hydraulic mill?
I traded up from a manual LT40 to a hydraulic LT40. I'd love to have a Super Hydraulic or an LT50 (just because) but the fact is, the LT40 hydraulic is enough to do the job. One thing to keep in mind; when you're working alone, the sawmill only occupies a small portion of your time. Doubling its capacity doesn't double your output.
Example: I spend 2 hours a day actually running the mill, and the rest of the time talking to customers, taking orders, bucking logs, shifting them to the mill, moving timbers off the mill, edging and trimming boards, stacking and stickering, and writing invoices. If I increase the capacity of the mill by 33%, my daily production will only increase by about 7%.
The whole picture changes if you've got good helpers.
What I would definitely do next time around is go to a diesel engine.