This is a little project I've been playing with for a while. My welding skills aren't the greatest but I finally got it done with the help of my friend Dennis (holding the chainsaw in the pic).

I checked out quite a few designs on the net and combined a few to come up with this one. It's pretty basic really, being clamps which hold the chainsaw bar with a raiseable frame to adjust the thickness of the cut (adjustable to the same maximum as the diameter of the log to be milled - 400 mm or 16 inches).

One places a good stiff plank on the log and uses that to guide the first cut and keep it flat and straight, then one just uses the log itself to guide the second and subsequent cuts.

The tree Seun (holding the frame in the pic) and I selected is a bit more than 30 cm or 12 inches in diameter and was a good 25 to 30 foot high. Cutting wet/green wood is real easy and we cut the log we wanted to a length of 2.3 meters - a bit less than 8 foot. It was incredibly heavy and took a huge effort for the two of us to get it loaded on my trailer, but with some maneuvering and using levers we got one end up and then it was relatively easy.

Where I am there are tens of thousands of bluegum trees (eucalyptus) which are water sucking aliens from Australia (the koala bears feed on them). Each tree uses about 300 liters (60 gallons) a day and there are no insects or pests which control or threaten them so they're fair game for eradication because they run wild and take over from the indigenous plant and tree life. They were originally imported here for use as mine props. I grew up on a massive plantation farm in northern Natal where my dad planted bluegum and black wattle (black wattle bark is used for leather tanning extract) so it's been a bit of a blast from the past playing with these trees again.

Here's the first attempt at milling a log and it was very successful and encouraging. I'll get more detailed pics of the "alaska sawmill" posted sometime. At this stage it's in it's most basic form but the last pic gives an idea of more or less what I intend to end up with.

I'll use a hand held circular saw to trim the plank to whatever size/width I want it. Probably end up building a frame for the circular saw so that it can run up and down the length of the plank on a bench and tracks like in the last pic.

Wow, that quite the undertaking Graham! What will you do with all the planks you mill?
Your'r not importing Koala's???
Congrats , you are a talented man

Hehe no Koala's JoAnn. I ripped a few more planks today (boards really I suppose) and I'll go back for what's left of the tree I felled the other day. I've been reading up on how to cure the planks and it seems quite straight forward and shouldn't take more than four to six weeks in the relatively dry climate here.

I got started on this because I want some large wood pillars - 12 X 8 inches and 7 foot high - for the 8 foot wide entrance from the lounge to the dining room and kitchen of the rock cottage I'm (still) working on.

There's just so many possibilities with all the wood around here that I want to pursue some other ideas I've got but haven't quite crystallized yet.

I've made some adjustments to the chainsaw attachment, by welding a second rectangular frame of the same 25mm square tubing to the bottom of the frame, so that it can also cut planks/boards up to 25mm thinner than it was first able to. Hey this is not rocket science, trial and error and some experimentation is what it's all about.

Yesterday I added a new toy to the little project...a planer/thicknesser which will thickness the planks to a uniform thickness and leave a really nice finish. Cutting the planks with a chainsaw (as opposed to a circular saw) gives one a fairly rough cut. Sandpapering by hand or with an electrical sander won't be necessary and seldom produces a uniform finish.


This is the planer/thicknesser I decided on after reading a number of positive reviews. I would have liked a DeWalt machine but they are like double the price for pretty much the same end result although DeWalt machines are of excellent quality.




Over here the machine is graded "Industrial" and that doesn't say much about the machines capabilities but it means that in terms of service and spare parts, one gets a bit of priority. It looks huge in the pic but is actually quite small although really heavy at 32 Kg (about 70 Lbs I think). Before I use it I need to build a new multi-purpose bench that I can both rip the planks on and have the planer/thicknesser mounted on. I couldn't find the 30 cm long and 12 mm thick metal bolts I need for that yesterday but was told I can have them produced at a fair price and with only a 5 to 7 day order time...one of the "perks" of living fairly near an industrial mining town

Oh yeah, I've also found a nice grove of Saligna trees nearby, which are fair game because they're also water sucking aliens originally from Australia. It's a hard wood with a deep red color and some white around the edges, so I'm keen to start them. They grow massive...up to 65 meters high but I'll start on the smaller trees until I figure how to cope with logs that are a meter or so in diameter