Alaskan In Colorado Springs

[adventure bob]

Anyone have and Alaskan mill and live close to COS?
Im considering buying one but would actually like to see one in real use and talk to someone who uses one.  Theres always those little things you only learn by doing.

I have beer.

[Bill Gaiche]

Welcome to the FF. Someone will be by and give you all the lowdown on your question. bg

[Chuck White]

Welcome to the Forestry Forum, Adventure Bob

[clww]

Welcome to the Forestry Forum.

[Magicman]

First, Welcome to the Forestry Forum, adventure bob. 

Looking at the Member Map above I see that Misfit is in Colorado Springs.  He does not have a sawmill yet but I know that he is looking.  You guys might get together.

[Mountain Guardian]

If you are wanting an Alaskan mill I would suggest putting one together yourself, I looked at Alaskan mills for years, but was very unhappy with the price vs quality.

I finally got tired of wanting one and designed my own, I am on the third generation of this design now, it is simple and effective and quite inexpensive.




The last two of these I welded up myself but was not completely accurate with keeping everything square, for this one I went to a local welder/fabricator and had him throw this together according to my specs, he did a much better job at keeping things accurate.  This little bit here cost me about $45 to have it made up.

To finish this I take any old piece of square tube pipe and bend it into a handle that crosses back over the top attached to the sliding bar, this helps to counter balance the weight of the saw a bit.  I then mount a piece of u channel steel bolted to the bottom of this that slips inside or outside another piece of u channel.  I buy a 16 ft or 20 ft piece of u channel to run this on and then use shortened lags to attach the u channel to my log.

You can even get fancy and get some sticky back tape measure to put on the slide metal, not really needed though.  I do have to drill a hole in the chainsaw bar to attach the chainsaw to this.  After that you set this unit and the chainsaw on to the u channel and adjust the slide bar to where you want to cut, when you get to the end you pull it off and change direction back the other way.  I used this for making cants and beams, 4x4, 3x3 and rough 1 inch slabs before I had my band mill for building animal barns and what not.  Handy thing is you can haul it out in the woods and use it quite easily in the trees and only haul back your lumber.

When you choose your Uchannel, keep in mind the weight, heavy duty is good for keeping everything stable and straight, but a 3/16 th's uchannel 20 feet long in the woods is no fun at all..... I know from experience, I very quickly changed to 1/16th inch wall thickness, granted there is more flex in 1/16th but the weight difference made it much more useable.  I can set this entire Alaskan mill up from start to finish for about $100 to $120 using all brand new material, less if I can find used metal to use.