input on select sawmill bandmill double cut

[longtime lurker]

Been thinking on this today, and I'm wondering how you'd go if you put in a Kara or Laimet rack bench in front of your existing mill.

They aren't a bad bench, reasonably fast, VERY accurate, and they can handle a log in the round out to about 30" or so. Log turner comes on the mill, as does a sawdust blower, and all you'd really need is a stop and load off your log deck, and greenchains on the outfeed side and away you go.
By themselves one should, given a decent infeed and outfeed system, handle your desired volume per day no problem at all.
If it could be set up so that you just used it for a primary and then fed sized cants into your bandmill then you'd get the thin kerf recovery and further increase production. Theres no reason at all you couldn't clamp multiple cants together and be cutting multiple boards every pass on the WM.
If one mill goes down the other can manage the days output - important when you're building a business and need to be seen as a reliable supplier.
The versatility in having two very different setups might lend to extra business - a Kara can run logs out to about 24' or so, and if you're chasing 2 X dimension lumber it's really in its element.

There would be a learning curve if you aren't familiar with a circle mill but thats not insurmountable. If your goal was to break down logs in the 24" range quickly and accurately it'd be ideal - and if you could set it to feed into the mill you already have and use that for a resaw then you should easily get your production numbers without having to depend solely on (a) one piece of equipment and (b) having to finance both a new primary and secondary at the same time. The slow part of the system assuming you could load the WM efficiently with multiple cants would still be the WM. and you could always upgrade to a muli head resaw or sash gang if things pan out the way I hope they do for you.

Just thinking outside the box...