Lumber Cutting with Commercial Mills

Depending where you live, there normally an abundance of large and small saw mills available, usually within an hour or so drive. (there are exceptions to this). Just check out the areas of your region, the yellow pages are a good start, as is the web - they are normally located in areas of high forestation, but you might have problems in such areas as "Death Valley"!

Another good source of knowledge is local woodworkers, especially custom furniture makers - but I think the big commercial manufacturers might not have the time to give you the information you need.

Types of Saw mill available

Generally there are two main types of saw mill available, fixed and mobile and both of these tend either to use large circular saws or band saws.

 

Traditional saw mill still working at Jerome, Arizona.

 

State of the art Sawmill, Swifts Creek woodmill in Victoria (shown on the right), Australia uses a precision computer controlled, laser guided system designed in France.

Large commercial sawmill located in Herrala, Finland - most of the operation is computer controlled, so fitting your one or two trees into their system is not going to happen I am afraid!

A Finnish tree harvester at work in mid-winter. From selecting the tree, cutting it down, removing all the branches and then cutting the the tree into pre-determined lengths (3 to 5 m) it takes about 30 seconds yes 30 seconds and that is for a 25 m tree.

Large Portable/Fixed band saw mill. These are probably most versatile form of commercial mill available for woodworkers, they are normally hired out by the day, but other options may be available.

A word of warning, you will probably be liable for replacing the blade, if the blade hits a stone or metal object embedded in the tree. These blades can run into the hundreds of $.

So for the occasional woodworker that has the odd tree to cut now and again, these commercial mills offer the cheapest option normally. Most mills will allow you to bring your tree along and they will cut it for you, I used to pay by the hour for the use of the mill. But again they will be sceptical about trees that come from near a road, track or back garden and you may have to sign a waiver against damage to the blades.

You will obviously have to pay to transport your lumber to the sawyer and trees/logs when wet, are extremely heavy, so it will probably need some crane/loader, plus a large trailer or truck. Alternatively get them to come to you, but you will obviously pay more for this service - you just have to balance the costs.

If like me, I tend to use quite a bit of wood, so I cut and mill my own, that is the subject of the next blog (# 3)

Tags: lumber

Categories: General