...well as for "Read Woodshop's post again. He knows what he's sayin."... that may be stretching the truth a bit.
I do mill a lot of wood, much as I can to feed my "wood bank" for my woodshop, but I turn a lot away because no time. Only so many weekends, and I do have a life other than my mills (unfortunately
). I also cheat by using a rather expensive MS361 powered Ripsaw, a handheld bandmill that because its a thin band, needs only a 60cc saw to rip. When I rip logs into 14" wide cants with my Granberg, I need that raw power of the 395xp. Yup I learned in short order that milling slightly downhill if I have a choice, REALLY helps as the weight of the mill/saw and leaning my body into the mill allows it to run down the log without much pushing. Its amazing how milling uphill even with just a slight incline increases the energy needed, almost seems unproportionally more, but I'm not a physics major so can't explain that. Maybe spacemule or glens could. Tree Machine I like your strategy, and thats a nice cache of cants you got there. Hard part for me would be moving those cants around. Example, when they are 14x14x96" as they are when quartering a 30" oak, they are REAL heavy. Wet red oak is about 50lbs a cubic foot, so we are talking about a 500 lb cant. Kinda tough to haul around alone. I generally do all my milling solo, or with my Dad, who is 77 and probably should not be moving heavy cants. My wife follows me into the woods sometimes, but she is all of 100lbs herself. Also... don't know about you Tree or techdave, but I found that logs that have sat a while are harder to cut. Both my Ripsaw and Granberg go through wet logs easier than even partially seasoned ones. Depending on species, I often turn down "free" logs if I know they have been sitting for a while because of that. But hey, everybody has their own way to doing this, and thats the way it should be. I'm continually learning and trying to improve my "system". I wrote a small article on exactly how I mill at this point in my learning curve. I should post it, would be huge post though.