Portable Sawmills

Portable sawmills are popular with rural retirees here in Southern Illinois. I have known several old boys who have bought one of these, and as long as they don't expect to make a fortune, that's OK. This one is a Wood-Mizer, and it is the most popular portable mill in my corner of the world; Kasco mills are a distant second. The Wood-Mizer uses a monorail to guide the carriage, and Kascos use two parallel rails that are down on the ground. Bailey's sells a mill that I have never seen in person, and it uses circular blades instead of the thin-kerf bandsaw blades.

These mills can go right to the woods to cut your lumber, but of course you still have to handle the logs and lumber. One of my friends thought he would retire in the log cabin building business, but a hernia and a back injury convinced him otherwise. Still, they are a mighty handy tool as long as you make yourself behave and use your head when moving heavy loads. There is very little waste with the thin kerf, so small logs can provide more lumber than the log scales would indicate. The lumber also is much smoother than it would be if produced on a traditional circular sawmill. With one of these mills you can produce all the lumber, including siding and paneling to build a house, and I know of a very nice hunting cabin that was built that way, not too far from me.

The sawyer in this little video is a logger, and sawyer, whose other sawmill is a traditional circular sawmill, powered by a Detroit Diesel.