Crusarius’ sawmill build - started with Linn Lumber basic kit

[Dogwreck]

Wow Cool build here, I am defiantly following and using this as a reference when I start mine. Thanks for the time it took.Through your post I noticed a few others building mills too with variations of the LINN, great work also.I am gonna read this entire post a couple more times before I start mine.Thanks again.

[Crusarius]

Glad I could help. If you need any clarification or more pictures let me know I will do my best to get them for you.

[Hoopty5.0]

So curious, do you use this as much as you thought you would? (assuming this is your first mill)

I guess my biggest misconception is how fast I could mill logs. I have a pretty healthy stack, and after the first couple, all I could think was "man, this is gonna take a while. I need a bigger mill."

[Crusarius]

I have a big pile of logs waiting to be milled. Unfortunately milling is challenging with a manual mill. Trying to figure out what the log wants to be, avoiding stresses in the log, and actually making smooth cuts. 

Once that is done, now you have a pile of lumber. Now what? 

Well we have to stack and sticker it. Crap! forgot to make stickers or ran out. Now need to make stickers. Great that is done. Now where am I going to stack this pile. 

Oh yea I can put it over there. Hmmm do I have a skid? Nope. crap need to make a skid or find one. 

Now that I got that taken care of I need to move all this stuff out of the way to get it over there. Ok, so we spend another half a day moving stuff to make a nice place to stack wood. Great. 

Crap I just blocked in my other pile that I need to get to. I just cannot win. 

Ok, lets move that pile again. Good now it is out of the way. Of course its not stacked the greatest to put another stack on top. Ugh I can never win can I.

The little story above is a normal day milling for me.

So the answer to your question is. No. I do not use it nearly as much as I thought I would. But I think the main reason for that is the rest of the work involved in making lumber. If I could just load logs and cut them into lumber My pile of logs would be gone already. But unfortunately, its all the rest of the work involved that takes up the most time.

[btulloh]

True. It's been said many times on here: sawmilling is a lot of material handling with a sawmill in the middle. 

Eventually the handling and storage issues get to be routine and it gets a lot more efficient. Getting a good stock of stickers also helps. About 10,000 is a good numboer. 

[Hoopty5.0]

I had two people tell me, "the sawmill is the easy part."

I now know what they meant.

[btulloh]

True dat!  

The goal is to make the other parts easy too. That's a bit tougher for a hobby guy like me but I enjoy the challenge. I can't really justify some of the toys like a telehandler, fork lift, unlimited storage, etc. 

Adding the solar kiln made life a lot easier. 

[Crusarius]

Solar kiln is on my list. I also need to make an actual lumberyard I can access a little easier. Right now everything is deposited around the trees on my property. I have ditches all around those so I have to drive through those to get to the stacks. Makes a big mess.