Turbo Saw Mill in action in the woods

Over the past few weeks I've given my friend Rich a hand a couple of times using his Turbo Saw Mill to produce useful timber from some wood he's coppiced. Here's a timelapse of us using the swing-arm circular saw, driven by a chainsaw engine, to produce batons from a sweet chestnut log:

And here's a video demonstrating the slabbing attachment, which is basically a big chainsaw with a 5' bar and a system to suspend it from the mill beam:

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Turbo Saw Mill - Sweet Chestnut into waney edge boards

Last weekend, Rich and I, along with my friend Alex, used the Turbo Saw Mill to convert a couple of Sweet Chestnut logs into 'waney edged' boards:

Here's a timelapse video (made using a GoPro camera) of one of them being milled up:

We've still got some room for improvement in terms of speed, but it produced some nice boards!

Mike

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Turbo Saw Mill - Making an oak gate post

A couple of days ago I joined my friend Rich to help out with his new Turbo Saw Mill, and make a video of it in operation. It's a serious piece of kit to be working with!

Here's the video, showing several of the stages in the production of a gate post measuring 8'x8"x8" from an oak log:

As you can see from this picture, it can actually handle much longer pieces of wood than this though - the back end is behind where Rod is stood in the picture below:

The saw is mounted on a carriage which rolls along this aluminium beam:

There's an electric version, but Rich has one powered by a chainsaw engine, so it can be used in the woods. It's a Husqvarna 3120xp, with this small modification to the throttle so it can be operated remotely:

Rather than driving a chain, the saw engine drives a belt, a bit like a car fanbelt:

In turn this drives the circular saw mounted at the other end of the axle:

The saw Rich has is about 20" across, allowing it to make cuts up to 8" deep. The teeth are tungsten carbide.

When in action, a water tank uses a gravity feed to cool the saw, which can run vertically or horizontally, with the weight of the saw blade and the chainsaw engine counter-balancing each other:

By being able to swing through 90 degrees (hence the other name, 'swing arm' saw mill), it means the mill can take chunks out of a log without having to cut all the way across:

This was only the second use of this saw mill - there should be lots more coming up, and I'll be posting some more videos...

Mike

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