MillinginOz
ArboristSite Lurker
Gidday folks been reading this site with great interest for quite some time and decided to participate in this forum and relate to you folks how BIL (brother in law) and I got in to milling slabs ,after years of repairing chainsaws,mowers,etc BIL and me went to our annual Wood Working show ( Brisbane Australia east coast) we saw an Akaskan chain saw mill at work slabbing a 32'' red river gum 10/12ft long(hard wood when dry this was dry) running a Sthil can't remember what model and it cut that log in no time flat ,just seeing that got our intrest going , beeing bucks down (poor the price for an alaskan here in aus is about 3 times what you pay in the states+saw we just couldn't afford it ) we got chatting to the guys who were running the mill an asked them if we could take some measurements ,these guys were slabbing for sale and exhibition not to sell the mill set up,and they said no worrys go ahead mate ya got to love blokes that'll let you do that. 2days later BIL and I were the proud owners of an alaskan clone at first we only had a 125cc Danarm 24'' bar cross cut chain ground at 20dg and it worked a treat until my back gave out 3days flat on my back the girl I love not happy , tried it again a few weeks later twinged again but stopped at first hint of pain and decided that i was realy going to cripple my self big time if I continued (I have a work related back injury going back years so have to be careful) so Bil and me went to another wood show and saw a rail mill in acton and thought thats got to be easier on the back again talked to the blokes running this set up and again ask if we could check out every thing up close they said yep go ahead A bit longer about 3 months I had bartered and traded my labour to amass enough materials to built a rail mill , both BIL and I are able to weld due to our trades so making the rail was pretty easy the carriage was a bit more trickier but we nutted it out and we have sucessfully ran this mill last week cutting up 1 camphor laural log a soft wood as a test using a 610 Pioneer 24'' bar skip tooth chain ground at 15 dg thanks aggie ,wood shop for the grinding info will have to see how that goes on some of our australian hard woods, that old Pioneer just chewed through that log like nobody's bussiness ya couldn't stop it it slowed down but just grunted through just sweet and our set up worked great straight flat 1 1/4 boards consistantly we will not be using these old saws this was just for our test the only ones big enough that we had I have just bough a basket case Sthil 066 magnum siezed piston/crank 91cc ? and am in the process of bartering parts I do this cause it feels like no money changes hand and that suits me right down to the ground any way thats about it from me I do have some photos of our set ups and log pile but they were only taken on a digital camera 640x420 pixels very grainy when blown up so if I am able I'll try to down load them and remember keep ya chain in sawdust MillinginOz
and welcome to AS. Like your post, and I will be waiting
