red oak score

[Brian Endres]

A friend of mine had a guy come in and fell two huge red oak trees on his property.  In exchange for helping him clean up the aftermath he gave me all of the wood I wanted!!  I now have roughly (8) 8 foot by 30" diameter logs laying in my yard waiting to be milled.  I have contacted about 8 sawyers in my area and only one of them answered me and is willing to travel and cut at my location.  after he gave me his rates and asked me a couple questions he has become unreachable. (I could go on a rant here about hiring people to do work and how I can never find people/companies willing and able so I usually end up doing it myself but I will hold my tongue)  So after watching hours of you-tube videos and a lot of convincing to my wife I have decided to just design and weld-up my own mill and cut the lumber myself.

If anyone is interested I can try to do a build thread on the mill here at WTO or I might do it on the Garage Journal forum.

[Brendon_t]

If you enjoy using red oak, then I guess that's a plan.  Around here,  kiln dried red oak costs 2$ a bf and I don't like using it so it wouldn't be worth my time to build, cut, then dry but that'll sure keep you in wood for a while. 

What kind of mill you planning on building? If you don't plan to mill often, may want to just consider an Alaskan mill or even buying the green mill harbor freight sells.  There are actually some good reviews of it for what it is. 

[Chet]

Unless you plan on using it a lot, Brendon is right, look at the Alaskan mill aka chainsaw mill.  They are probably cheaper then what you are thinking of buildng

[Eric.]

Congrats?

[Brian Endres]

I know there are a bunch of people that don't like like red oak, but I make a lot of projects out it and do enjoy working with it.  Around here kiln dried red oak cost about $5/bdft for 5/4  using an online doyle scale I am estimating there is roughly 2000 bdft of lumber there.  I have also lined up a kiln to do the drying for me and am guesstimating that will only cost a couple hundred bucks.

as far as the chainsaw mill, I have considered it, but I don't like the extra waste that is created from the kerf of the chain.  I have priced all the parts and steel that I need to purchase and will be spending less than $800 and a few of my weekends to build the mill.

 I think that once the mill is built I can/would continue to receive logs from other sources.  "if you build it, they will come"...or something like that.

[JosephThomas]

I always enjoy a journal, do it. I would be surprised if you could weld up a good setup that quickly though..don't rush

[davewyo]

Yeah, I would like to see the journal too.

[xxdabroxx]

Do it, and do the journal.  Always interested in how others build things to solve problems.  I think I would go chainsaw mill, then maybe use a bandsaw to further break stuff down from there.  Say only cut into 4x material with the chainsaw then down from there on the bandsaw.   It would be a great excuse for me to get a decent bandsaw. 

[estesbubba]

It would be cool to see a journal of what you end up using to mill it and how you do it. I think a lot of the hate for red oak is the crazy gain but if you rift and quarter it, it becomes more pleasing to the eye IMO. A guy I buy some of my wood from rifts and quarters all of his red and white oak. He has a technique for doing that, and says it takes more work, so you might want to look into that if you don't want the cathedral grain. 

This tool cabinet is all rift and QS red oak.

[JosephThomas]

Yeah rift or quarter sawn is a big improvement for white or red oak

Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk

[BeautysBeast]

Where are you located?

[Brian Endres]

I

40 minutes ago, JosephThomas said:

 

Yeah rift or quarter sawn is a big improvement for white or red oak

 

I do like quarter sawn and rift saw log and am hoping that I will be able to get some good quality cuts from these logs.  I have a couple logs to practice my skills on, but they are no where near the diamter.

 

2 minutes ago, BeautysBeast said:

Where are you located?

I am located in Central IL near Champaign-Urbana

[BeautysBeast]

My guy in kenosha, (just over the IL/WI border) charges 35 dollars an hour. But you have to take it to him.

[Brian Endres]

That is my problem. because of the size of the logs I am only able to carry 2 of them at a time. So driving a couple of hours to take them to the mill isn't very cost effective for me

I had a few sawyers that list themselves at mobile reply to my inquiry saying they leave their mill stationary. 

[Woodenskye]

I would be interested in the journal.  If you haven't seen it, Matt Cremona is building a bandsaw mill, might want to check it out on YouTube. 

[Brendon_t]

$800 seems super low for materials costs.  If you can do that, and get a machine that is reliable; I will be very impressed. 

[BonPacific]

I'd love to see a journal. If you can put together a band-mill for $800, I'll be impressed. I'd love to do something similar myself. I've been given full leave to mill up a whole stack of logs at my father's, but everyone around charges $75 or more per hour.

[Brian Endres]

@Brendon_t,  Just to clarify,  "All of the parts I need to purchase"....that I don't already have... I already have a few hundred dollars worth of steel that was left over from my Horse trailer rebuild project.

[Coop]

Brian, Will your intended mill ride on rails that will straddle the logs and rest on the ground,  as opposed to you having to lift them onto a frame, hopefully! Oh, and you have a very understanding wife!

[Brian Endres]

3 minutes ago, K Cooper said:

Brian, Will your intended mill ride on rails that will straddle the logs and rest on the ground,  as opposed to you having to lift them onto a frame, hopefully! Oh, and you have a very understanding wife!

my plan is to have the saw head running on a track that the log will sit on.  the plan is to only need to lift the logs up a couple inches (roll them) onto the log bed.  

She is more concerned will how long the logs are going to have to sit in the grass have have weeds grow up around them.  When I asked her how long I could have for the build ...She told me a month was too long  

[pkinneb]

Absolutely journal it! I look forward to following along.

[Brian Endres]

Trying to finish up a project (captains bed for my 3 year old nephew). And then I will be getting started on the Mill build.  I already have most of the parts, steel, pulleys, motor etc...  that I will need.  Now I just need to get started.

I will start a thread for the build here in the next couple weeks.

[Econdron]

I'm not jumping to any conclusions on you, but many DIY'ers tend to have the attitude that they're 100% competent at everything they do, and that all the companies that offer that service professionally are just full of BS with inflated prices trying to overcharge for everything they do. But please understand that you're not exactly making a piece of furniture here. These are what I would consider "critical welds", where if something breaks, you have a loose band saw and possibly a broken tensioned band saw blade that could easily kill or seriously injure anyone around. I'm not so concerned with the design of the frame, because you can base your design on previously engineered designs, and most DIY'ers tend to overbuild things anyway. It just scares me how so many people who think they can weld try to take on a large, critical project with a Harbor Freight $90 flux core welder, or a small 110v stick welder. 

 

Back to the topic, have you searched Craigslist? There's quite a few people who have mills that they put on trailers. I did some trailer work for a customer who had a trailer mounted mill with hydraulic feeds and height adjustments. He also had a crane mounted on his truck he used to place the logs on the mill after he dropped the trailer. Funny thing is milling the wood was just a hobby for him, he was actually in the construction industry. Pretty substantial equipment for a hobby if you ask me. He was located in the Chicago land area, so probably a little too far to give you a reasonable rate. 

[Brendon_t]

11 minutes ago, Econdron said:

 It just scares me how so many people who think they can weld try to take on a large, critical project with a Harbor Freight $90 flux core welder, or a small 110v stick welder. 

This made a chuckle. . when I was 16, I welded a cracked frame on my grandpa's old farm truck rather than tell him I cracked it trying to jump a square bale.  I had no training and had only seen someone weld. ..

Wouldn't you know that sob truck went another 10 years of hard work before the motor quit.

[mat60]

3 hours ago, Brendon_t said:

This made a chuckle. . when I was 16, I welded a cracked frame on my grandpa's old farm truck rather than tell him I cracked it trying to jump a square bale.  I had no training and had only seen someone weld. ..

Wouldn't you know that sob truck went another 10 years of hard work before the motor quit.

You didnt saw what it looked like.   My first welding job wasnt to pretty.