The Benefits of Portable Sawmilling

If you want to learn much more about sustainable saw milling, take Dave Spicer’s upcoming (27 November 2011) 1-day course, where you can gain from his extensive expertise in this area.

We all need to be loggers and we all need to be greenies. We all live in timber houses. — Bill Mollison

Low tech and high tech saw milling

In 2006 I brought a portable Lucas sawmill and have been milling timber ever since. I must say it’s a great feeling turning a raw resource into a useable product on site.

“Mill to the log”

I’ve milled timber in town right in the front yard, and on farms with no hauling.

There are many types of portable sawmills, even a chainsaw used to mill timber.

My brother Pat, hard at work in Tasmania on a Lucas mill

I use a Lucas mill which is a circular saw for cutting timber/lumber. This model can cut up to 150mm x 300mm up to 8m in length and it also has a chainsaw bar and chain attachment for slabs that can cut 1200mm wide. But, there are other types of circular saw mills that can do the same job. I chose a Lucas for its portability.

On average you can cut 2 to 4 cubic meters a day depending on log quality, but you need a machine/tractor to load logs on to runners to roll under the mill or if there is no machine available you can simply break the machine down and move it to next log.

These trees were destined for firewood — we cut 4 cubic meters of timber and 1.5 cubic meters of slabs and there is still 3 to 4 years worth of firewood left.

There are also band saw type portable sawmills, which have less waste in the cutting process but are bigger and harder to get into difficult places and need a machine/tractor to load onto the deck of the mill or, with some models, onto hydraulic arms to lift the log onto the deck.

The average stationary hardwood mill generates about 60% waste, whereas portable sawmills have on average 20% waste. Of course it depends on what you call waste and its up to your imagination on utilizing the waste.

All permies, I think, should know about these machines, whether it’s for your own place, or for consulting, aid work, farm forestry, or managing natural forest — knowing that you can bring in a portable sawmill and mill timber/lumber on site to the dimensions and length you need.

The cost savings work out to be around 50% cheaper or more.

So the advantage of these machines is we can go in and have minimal impact on the environment, selectively thinning the forest, spot milling and then just move to the next area.

• No expensive and destructive roads need to be constructed
• No big machines/tractors to snig logs out of forest.
• No trucks to haul logs to stationary mills.

In urban environments you can simply take the mill to the tree that needs removing and break it down into high value timber or slabs, rather than wood chips.

The timber industry in my town is in a position of only being able to cut uniformed logs, so there are trial plots here that were planted from 1928 to 1950 by State Forest that the mills can not take, and now they are being sent to the local pulp mill for paper and boiler fuel simply because industry is geared up for the monoculture of forestry and not a diversity of species.

If you want to learn much more about sustainable saw milling, take Dave Spicer’s upcoming (27 November 2011) 1-day course, where you can gain from his extensive expertise in this area.