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07 Nov Sawyer Sawmill Review by Eric Hughes

Sawyer and Hunter Sawmills

I’d like to take a minute to tell you about my Hud-Son Sawyer sawmill. I picked it up, probably been about six months now. I’ve used it quite a bit. I felt like I’d give it a little justice and tell a little about it. I picked it up at a local co-op, they are a Hud-Son dealer. I talked to them about different mills they offer. I kind of had a price point in mind about 2,000 dollars. This one was a little bit more than that so that worked out pretty well as far as price. So far I’ve been pretty satisfied with it. I really enjoy using it. It’s an experience because when you get it it’s in a big crate and fit in the back of my truck. I had to take it out piece by piece and you have to do all of them assembly. In doing that you get to know every part of the mill because you have to put it all together. This thing is constructed very heavy duty for what it is. The bearings and the shaft are very, very heavy duty. I think it’s an inch and a half shaft, bearings are huge and do a very good job. There is a six year warranty on that so their pretty confident in it. As far as the power it has a 7HP motor in it. It’s done a great job. We’ve had a 17 inch oak cant. One of my buddies cut up with a chainsaw mill and got it square, brought it over, and it cut thru it no problem. Blades are pretty reasonably priced. I buy mine from Timbery. I get a five pack, $12 a blade. They last a pretty good while.

I really enjoy using this mill. It’s productive, it’s been good. The only negatives I’ve had is the track is a little funny. With the aluminum and in three sections. I’ve had a little trouble with the joints, it likes to flex. With a little bit of modification I’ve got it nice and steady so that is good. Also with the loop system I’ve noticed that if you tighten the cap down really, really hard it creates a vaccum kind of like new gas cans that don’t have anyway to release the air so it doesn’t want to let water out. I fixed that by making a little hole and put a little rubber stopper in it. It seems to work fine. The log dogs do a pretty good job. At first you think, man these things are terrible because there coated pretty good with the yellow paint there but once you use them and get a little wear on them they start to slide easier. There actually pretty good to work with. They definately clamp down on the log and if you get in there good it’s not going to go anywhere. I added instead of the sticker they sent with it an aluminum ruler I got at Harbour Freight for 2 dollars. I put it on with zip ties and it seems to do the trick.

I would recommend this to anyone who likes to be outside. Who likes to do anything with wood at all because it’s something to do. There’s 60 acres out where I’m at and I’ve never run out of wood to cut either here or if other people have trees down.There’s always stacks of logs that I never seem to get to.

I’ve also included a video of cutting up a pine log I did earlier today making a pen for the horses. There’s always a project or two that you can get done. So hope you enjoy the video of milling. It’s a lot of work not necessarily something that is easy but it is rewarding. It gets you out, get’s you moving, and I do like that. You will want to have some sort of tractor or skid steer. Something to pick logs up because you would not want to be doing it by hang. That would not be fun. I’ve got a tractor so that helps out a lot. Overall I really enjoy it and hope this helps you if your thinking about buying one. It’s not something you’ll regret. If you use it, you’ll really enjoy it so, Thank you!

05 Nov Nick Klaich, Hud-Son Forest Equipment Warrior Sawmill

Nick Klaich “Successful loading and slabbing a 3,000 pound Elm tree-Urban Logging/Hud-Son sawmill”

Good morning, my name is Nick. Some of you might have watched my prior videos where I attempted to place a large Elm tree on my Hud-Son Warrior mill. I was unsuccessful but today we are going to get another tree and I have a new plan. Stay tuned.

Elm tree estimated at 3,000 pounds.

So in the clip here you’ll see me cutting what’s referred to as cookies in the wood working world. These are crosscut sections that can be used for tables or something like that. The maximum distance between the guides on my mill is 31 inches. This piece here that I’m cutting is 35 inches and this tree on my trailer is 12 feet in length. The max I can get on my mill is ten feet long so this is the way I can basically keep cutting these things off and than I get it the maxmium yield on the cookie pieces as well as keeping the long as long as I can for slabbing it out which we will see here in just a second.

I also wanted to take the time to give a shout out to my buddy, Mike, from Battle Born Tree Service in Carson City, Nevada. If your located in the Reno, Carson, or Lake Tahoe area, you should definatly check him out. He does great work and he’s a huge help to me giving me these large logs.

Okay without further audo, the big surprise on this video is how I’m going to get this tree on the mill. It’s actually removing the mill head. With all the ideas I had this seemed the easiest. I really didn’t do a great job prepping the palletjack here. You can see I put two little clamps but it got it off safely. In the future I have a better idea of how to get it attached. Overall I’m going to call it a success getting it safely out of the way so we can get the trailer back up here which you will see in the next video.

So here I’m just showing you the tree the strap goes to, it actually goes under the log deck and than comes out where it is chained around the tree. You’ll see me when I start to pull this off. I’m not too concerned at this flat end were looking at because those seem to land softly. It’s the other end I’m concerned about. If a  3,000 pound log just lands directly on the mill its basically going to bend it and completely throw it out of caliberation. What your going to see me do here is straighten it and then on the other end I’m going to set up some crimping which successfully catches that other half of that load. I know some people have suggested using pipe to get it on and off but here’s the problem. Once the tree is on the trailer I can’t lift it due to the design of the log arch. I really don’t want to put pipe under it while I’m traveling on the freeway because I don’t want to risk any of it coming off.

I think you’ll see here the successful catch of the load with crimping.

“Starts sawmill and start’s cutting with the Hud-Son Forest Equipment Warrior portable sawmill.

So you can see on the side of the log to the right that I shaved off some of the face of it with a carbide grinding disk. I didn’t do enough that’s why the mill is kind of catching here. If you don’t give enough space to have the sawdust inject out than it kind of bogs it down a little bit. So I pushed it thru which is probably not the right thing to do for the guides or the mill but the substant cuts that are not in this video I ended up taking that carbide grinding disk and giving it about three quarters of an inch on either side of the guide so that it preforms much better.

So some of you have not seen my last video. The product that I use to keep my slabs tied tight and straight is called Kubinec strapping. It’s a nelon basked material that has these buckles here that you thread thru and than you rachtet like this. You can get this really tight. Almost like a piano string. Some people were upset that it’s plastic product and that I will ruin the planet. The good thing is that it’s reusuable. You can tighten it with a side rachet or if you stack this up but if you were to break it or pull a slab out of here, you can easily re-loop this and use it again. So it has a lot of life left in it. You can see here how to tight it is and keeping everything in a line.

So on this other stack here you can see I did not use that Kubinec strapping on because I didn’t have it yet. Don’t look at these top three pieces, they don’t really count because they we’re cut with a chainsaw and the ladder moved on the deck. These ones down here you can see that if you don’t put the stickers in the right place where I didn’t and you don’t keep them tight, you get a lot of movement and vibrations on the end so I’m really happy with the new product and the new strapping. It’s definately keeping things tighter and cleaner.

So in the next clip here your going to see me successfully stack two of my log stacks and put them on top of each other. This is something that I’ve been thinking about in my mind on how I would do it and it would obviously expand the limited space I have in my driveway where I could store more material. Having a forklift would be ideal in this situation but I don’t have the money to buy one or to maintain one I’d buy(an older one) on Craigslist or Ebay. I’m pretty pleased here with a little injunity and a little bit of planning I was actually successful in getting them on there. I thought it was relavitly safe looking at the operation afterwards. So happy that this worked and I’m going to keep it going to decrease the footprint around my property.

Well we have arrived at the end of this video and I hope you’re enjoying watching it as much as I’ve enjoyed making it. Hopefully I have inspired one of you to possibly go out there and mill your own lumber or their woodworking projects because it is definately a blast. I enjoy doing it and these video’s allow me to share that journey with you. So please subscribe if you haven’t already done so and I hope you have a great day!

05 Sep Mesquite Log Story

We would be remiss if we did not mention this full circle tear to your eye mesquite log story. This coming from our good friend and customer of Hud-Son sawmills in Cocoa, Florida CW Bailey:

Quote:  “His story was enough to make even a crusty old sawmiller much more than a little misty.”

Hey CW,

My wife and I were in your place last month.  We bought a slab of mesquite so I could make a box.  This is no ordinary box.  You see, my father was a fighter pilot during the Vietnam war.  In 1967 he was shot down and was listed as MIA.  Well, earlier this year some very dedicated people were excavating the crash site and his remains were finally recovered and identified. The box I made from your wood will hold MIA bracelets with his name on them and other things people want to include.

Another great part of this story is that I flew in the Air Force too and ended up in the airlines. I will be flying my father home from Oakland CA to Dallas Love Field where I last saw him at age 5.

Great closing of the loop.

Just thought that you would find it interesting what happened to a piece of your wood…

Bryan Knight

A story on my dad

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22 Feb One of a kind bar tops created with a sawmill

Kingdom of Comics had an idea to put a Knights of the Round Table style bar into their comic store.

Being a comic store they would have to think of something different and exciting. What better than a lava flow through the bar top? This could be done with some Red Cedar cookie cuts and some colorful epoxy. This is when they found CW Bailey from Double Eagle Sawmill. With the Hud-Son H360 CW was able to cut 2″ x 24-28″ cedar round 22 in total.

The round where then placed on the bar mold to be filled with epoxy.

The end result was beautiful. Keep in mind these picture don’t do the final result justice but enjoy!