Making money with a portable sawmill

[Dave Boyt]

The Norwood is a fine mill but if your going to do custom sawing and give a good vague for the money you really need a fully hydraulic mill.

Norwood is actually a great "door to door" mill, and I have gotten it into tight places where a hydraulic mill wouldn't fit. The manual version weighs less than 2,000 pounds, and tows easily. You can add any hydraulics at any time. No one has ever complained that I cut too slowly, and it is not unusual for a customer to pay more than what I charge. Any mill can make straight boards out of straight logs, but what do you do when a customer needs specialty cuts? Last week, I milled 30" wide pecan slabs from a crotch that was only 34" long. I don't know of any other portable mill that could have done it.

Here is a photo of a recent milling job where I set up right in a driveway.

 

[mountainlake]

The thing is with a good hydraulic mill you can put out 2500 to 3000 bf in a day with a couple of good off bearers , that's not going to happen with a small manual mill . Steve

 

[hamish]

Thats great to hear! What kinda mill are you running?

Running a Norwood ML26 manual mill. With one good off bearer can usually get in excess of 2000bf a day.

 

[4x4American]

I talked with Cook's today. Nice folks for sure. Thing is they only have one location down in Alabama, which is a 20 hour drive for me. Now I don't mind driving that far, and I would like to see more of Dixieland. I think my truck can make it, but who knows it has close to 200k miles and it's a Dodge. That would kill a weekend making that trip and cost quite a bit. If they were to ship it, it will cost around $2,500, and I don't get a lesson. With the woodmizer, I can pick it up right down the road and get a lesson on it and make it back home and saw the rest of the weekend. Also, they have a cheaper hydraulic mill that can handle 36" logs. The Cook's rep said that it takes about 30-40 mins to set it up on site. WM claims to be able to set up in minutes. I like that the Cook one is fully hydraulic and uses parts that you can get anywhere...tough decision I've got here.

 

[mountainlake]

A LT40 is no comparisons to a AC36 Cooks even if it can handle 36" logs . Cooks is being more honest on the setup time, from reading post on WM setup it takes a while also. If you want a lot of repairs on a over complicated mill get the WM. Steve

 

[4x4American]

Anyone else running a WM LT40 or a Cook's or Baker or Norwood or Woodchuck or whatever you got on here that wants to chip in anything?