buying the saw/bar/mill and First Cuts
When you get into saw milling by acquiring logs that are bigger than your car, and if you want to slab them whole, without breaking down the log, the only real option is a chainsaw mill.
Unless, of course, you literally have a scrooge mcduck vault and can afford the 100k Woodmizer WM1000 Industrial Sawmill, or can buy an already existing milling operation…
We don’t have that, so, chainsaw mill it is.
After much searching we settled on a Stihl MS880 chainsaw, a Granberg Mark 4 Mill, Granberg Ripping Chain, and a Cannon Bar Works 60” Super Bar. While there are several companies making chainsaw mills, and you could make your own, they are all just copies of what Granberg has been making since the 70’s, so trust the people who have been doing it the longest to make the best product. The Cannon Bar has been awesome, and Cannon is a great company to work with, my only hindsight regret is not getting the dedicated “sawmilling” double ended bar and helper handle. We ordered our bar through Magard Ventures in British Columbia because none of the stateside dealers had a 60” in stock.
Our first day milling, I didn’t tighten one of the bar clamps down enough and ended up chewing through half of a bolt… that cut the day short, but we still milled three logs, which I’m just starting to prep for tables now.
