Hello from beautiful Carlsbad Springs

[Junkpile]

Gidday all! Stumbled on this forum while researching chainsaw mills. I made a guide for my ms361 28" bar to slab up some 120yr old red and white pines up at the Familly cottage. Looking for good guide rail ideas and tips for sharpening blade. Great site, lotsa great info here.
Cheers lads!

[crowie]

G'Day & Welcome to the Great Southern Land and to a top forum "Junkpile".
There are quite a few "Canuck" members plus the other North American country and the rest of the world.....
You'll find a heap of helpful & knowledgeable blokes & ladies on the forum and for most very willing to assist.
Make sure you show off your handiwork as everyone loves a photo, especially WIP [Work In Progress] photos with build notes.
Enjoy the forum.
Enjoy your woodwork.....
Cheers from On Top DownUnder, crowie

PS - My I suggest you add a new thread with your saw milling question in that sub-section, you'll gain a larger audience and thus more answers...

[Nanigai]

Welcome to the forum Junkpile, enjoy it all, as Crowie says, "it's a top forum".
Cheers, Ian

[BobL]

Welcome to the forums. I know your area well spending 2.5 years at La Jolla back in the late eighties. The small timber milling forum has some chainsaw millers but if you want lots of detail try this site.
Milling & Saw Mills | Arboristsite.com
the site is US based so will contain info relevant to your timbers and a lot more info on sharpening
I've posted there since 2007 under the same username as I use on this forum. A few years ago that site got hacked and they lost all their images. However if you stumble across a Post by me with the images missing you will most likely find the same info with images on this site.

[BobL]

Whoops I though you wrote Carlsbad but it's Carlsbad Springs - in a different country altogether. I have been to Ottawa but did not manage to get out of the city

[Christos]

Welcome to the forum.

[Junkpile]

Thanks BobL I'll definitely go snoop around that site you suggested. As far as pictures go I've only had one chance to try it out so far. I had 30mins last Thursday evening so I dropped an ugly poplar in the front yard and used a short wonky board as a guide! Lol! But it did work and I'm happy. Here's a snap shot of my home grown guide and virgin 28" slicing through some petite wet poplar,

[BobL]

Hint - cut downslope - Its a lot easier.

[old1955]

Welcome to the forum.

[Junkpile]

Now that lad has it all sorted! That is something to aspire to.

[Junkpile]

After a bit of poking around... I think that might be a shot of you BobL?
Cheers

[Rachelmiller]

That looks like fun. I have never seen that done before! Do you have to have a special type of saw. What chainsaw am I seeing in the photo?

[Junkpile]

I think it's a Stihl ms880 but that's just a guess.

[BobL]

That looks like fun. I have never seen that done before! Do you have to have a special type of saw. What chainsaw am I seeing in the photo?

It is a lot of fun and very addictive. I started out in 2007 milling small logs I picked up from the side of the road during council pick up days.
Now I have 4 chainsaw mills and have milled close to 150 logs.

It's called Alaskan Milling, because amongst the first to do this sort of thing were north american woodsmen who made simple jigs like this to cut boards from logs.
It's basically a giant peeler.
simple.jpg

The Principle remains the same in all more recent variants.

This can be done with quite small chainsaws and small bars provided they are not pushed too hard - saw needs to be detuned and let cool down between cuts.
I wouldn't recommend doing this with a really cheap saw from the web or bunnings but it does not have to be a big saw.
Here I'm using a plastic bodied Homelite 50 cc chainsaw on a rig I constructed from an old Xray machine.
The wood is a Desert Eucalypts I cut up for a Luthier mate of mine
DesertGum.jpg

Here is a Branch from an 6 ft diameter Jarrah being slabbed down on a farm at Walpole South West WA.
The other bloke is Hud the property owner and its his mill and saw I'm using.
The Snake is a fake - we took the photo to post on a US website to show how tough the conditions are in which we have to mill timber.
It raised such a ruckus and we had such a laugh over it.
JoBlake.jpg

Head over to the small timber milling section for more info

[BobL]

I think it's a Stihl ms880 but that's just a guess.

That's correct.
Close up for you.
The mill is all aluminium designed and built by me and my Al boat building BIL.
And that's why I call it the BIL mill.
Yes that is a MC throttle on the CS handle.
It can mount bars up to 1.5m long.
It's one the few machines I have made that works better than I expected it to.
wholemill.jpg