Owning a chain saw mill is a cheap alternative for a home owner instead of acquiring lumber from the store especially when one's familiar to steel works or he/she knows a guy who knows a guy who will build it for him/her.
This mill in the blueprints is more or less exactly based on my mill in the video shown above. It has quick release log dogs actuated by eccentrics (see the next picture below). It is my own design since I got fed up with the common screw type log dogs cause they left marks in the finished timber.
6 m long railroad will enable you to cut logs up to 5 meters in length but you can add another section and cut up to 11 meters at once like I did on my sawmill. The railroad is constructed in a manner that allows you to add sections on-demand later on. You'll be able to cut logs up to 60 cm in diameter with an 18" bar.
I built my sawmill first with a 3 m railroad and screw type log dogs for 187 Euros not including my own work and the electric motor. Then I sold the short railroad and built myself two 6 m long sections of railroad I joined together and it cost me another 100 Euros. The budget should be around 450-500 Euros including all material, bar, chain and a used 5,5 kW electric motor but not the labor.
The lumber I produced in a day was worth several times more than I earned on my previous job as a draftsman in a local furniture company. So building this meant saving money since I didn't have to buy the boards for my sauna project.
Now I'm on the verge of finishing the sauna project and no piece of lumber in it is bought. All of it is homemade, milled by me and most of it is from my own forest. It makes me warm and fuzzy inside when I think about it.
The blueprints do not contain wiring and info on the electricity because depending on the country you're living in the voltage, electric switches, plugs etc are different. I hope you enjoy cutting your own lumber like I did!
Blueprints contain drawings for:
- Frame
- Wheels
- Motor Mount
- Bar Mount
- Bearing Housing
- Flange
- Shaft
- Pulley, 80mm
- Chain Tensioner
- Bar Spacer
- Bar Mount Plate
- Oil Tank
- Railroad
- Log Clamp
- Eccentric & Log Dog
- Height Adjustment & Brass Bushing
- Pulley, 160mm
Additional information:
- Material listing
- Hardware
Chain saw mill blueprints available via PayPal for 33 USD:
Consists of 30 pages. Size 262 KB
Chain saw mill bar mount plate CNC .dxf file available for 6 USD:
Zipped drawing of the slotted and bored steel sheet
where the bar is mounted to. Size 4 KB