No, you don't need a ripping chain, although they can help. You need a
saw with power...a Husky 395, Stihl 066...something along those lines.
These typically swing a 36" bar and if you want to mill wood, you'll
want one of those bars.
As for a mill, use a Grandberg Alaskan chain saw mill. Nothing to break,
just a simple tool, that works well. Get the additional oiler with
it...you'll use a lot. And make sure you have some lenghy straight esged
(10') to do the initial cut.
We milled about 1100 bd ft of silver maple in a day with one of these.
Lots of work, lots of waste but a decent way of getting wood.
If you have access to the trees, you'd be better served to try and find
a mill that will cut them and ask the sawyer if he has transportation
contacts and a kinl contact. We've just finished milling 4800 bd ft this
way and the price is averaging approx. $0.80 per bd ft (including drying
and CDN funds). We have another 1400 bd ft if birch that should be ready
in a couple of weeks.
Charley wrote:
To make planks with a chainsaw you need to buy a special chain for ripping.
The standard chains are only for cross cutting. Then there's a special
fixture available that clamps on the bar of the saw that has rollers to
guide the saw so it produces a board of the desired thickness. A former
neighbor of mine had one of these and managed to cut up several trees with
it with mixed success. He then gave up on it and bought a portable sawmill.
He said that the chainsaw method took too long and too much effort to get
what he wanted from it. There was a lot of waste too because it didn't cut
perfectly flat parallel sided boards like a bandsaw mill can.
The US Forest Service publishes information on logging and getting the best
lumber out of the logs. I would suggest that you contact them for this
information. The cut patterns will vary depending on the results that you
want to achieve, widest boards = flat sawn, minimum warpage = quarter sawn,
etc. Quarter sawn red oak makes beautiful cabinets and flooring.
I would suggest that you try to find someone in your area with a portable
sawmill and let them cut it up for you. I've heard that many will work for a
share of the wood and if they've been doing it for a while, they will know
how to cut the logs to get what you want from them.
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http://www.robswoodworking.com