Casey,
In my quest for a carriage chainsaw mill i ended up with both the Woodbug and the HudSon. I bought a used Hudson on ebay, and while searching for a 066/660-088/880 i found a used 066 that came with a Woodbug....and the price was right. I haven't used the Woodbug yet, but it appears that it will be a better design for milling 6x6 ERC logs for my house. The reason is that the Woodbug uses fixed stops, the log can be cut with less flipping and moving, and with a 3rd section it will cut to 27'. The Hudson uses a horizontal mounted bar with a crank system...it may be tedious to make repetive sized beams/logs due to this crank adjustment. The Hudson comes in 2-7' (cuts to 12')sections, however it is 3x3 angle and building longer track would be rather simple.
I could only get one mill up to my place(this trip) in TN where i was working on an old shed. I used the Hudson to cut 2 16' ERC posts. I had to let the smaller end hang off the track and had some trouble with it not cutting perfectly square. I only cut 2 posts, so i may have not dogged them down correctly, or their length may have thrown things off, but for whatever reason the beams were both slightly out of square. I think that the Hudson would work much better as a slabber where one doesn't have to flip the log as much....just keep cranking down to the next slab thickness. I will withhold final judgment until July when i can get the Woodbug up there and run some wood thru it.
As far as building one, it can be done, but you may want to buy the the unique stops and dogs. The frame is just angle, but i woulddn't want to build one without having an original to measure and "coon finger".
Jake,
The Woodbug's roller saw carriage detaches very easily from the frame allowing re-fueling/sharpening/storage. And no they ain't cheap, specially if you had to pay shipping and duty into the US
.
RD