When we moved to our off grid property, we knew that we wanted to build our future home with trees from our property. It seemed that the most cost-effective way to do that would be with a portable chainsaw mill, so we decided to start practicing. We ended up making our own homemade chainsaw mill. Once the chainsaw mill was in action, it was time to fall some trees and get them ready for milling! Here’s our tips, tricks and homestead tools we use to get trees ready to cut some slabs out of!
Tree Felling: Fall The Tree in The Best Location Possible
First off, you need to decide on which trees would be best for lumber. Check out this video on how to find trees to cut down for lumber. Not only do you want to find trees with good lumber, but you want to practice good forest management as well. Here are some things to keep in mind when picking which trees to fall:
- Try to fall on a flat location: The best place to fall a tree is on the flat where it’s easy to mill. IF you do that, then you really don’t need to skid the trees that far, nor do you have to deal with the tree rolling down the hill.
- Fall on a hillside that you can skid the trees down from: One of our biggest mistakes was falling a tree on a hillside where we had to winch the trees UP the hill to a flat spot, rather than down. This caused a lot of problems with our ATV/winch combo, so the tree remains on the hillside until we have a long, sunny day to tackle the tree!
- Pick trees that are crowded: Don’t look for a perfectly good tree to cut down, but maybe find a crowded patch of trees. By cutting a tree down, you allow the other trees to thrive.
- Long, straight trees: Since you don’t want your lumber to be warped, try picking a tree that is long and straight. You will want to mill in 8′ sections so at least every 8′ needs to be straight!
Watch this video of us cutting down trees for lumber.
Limbing The Tree & Cutting It Into Sections
After you tree is down, you will need to limb it. Be mindful when limbing the tree… limbs keep the tree from rolling, so once you cut them off, be prepared for the tree to roll down the hill!
We usually only limb the parts of the tree that we will be immediately using, especially if it’s on a hillside.
We then cut our trees into 8′ sections to make 8′ lumber, and also this is a great size to winch from our ATV.
Skidding The Trees to a Stable Location
Now the fun part… if your 8′ sections aren’t already in a great location for using your homemade chainsaw mill, you get to skid them where you need!
For this we use our 4×4 Yamaha ATV and a 2,500lb KFI ATV winch. This is a really great combo. We simply use a 1,000lb ratchet strap to attach our ATV to a tree which really helps to balance the weight of the tree. We hook up this towing chain to the tree, attach the towing chain to the winch, and winch away!
Be sure to wear sturdy gloves when winching as you may need to control the cable a bit so that it wraps up nice and even.
Hoisting Trees Up Onto Bucking Stands
Now if you have a couple of people, hoisting the 8′ sections onto bucking stands, that’s a great start, and that works for some top sections of trees as they can be fairly lightweight. However, towards the bottom of the tree, there’s no way two people can lift the 8′ sections onto bucking stands.
The only way we’ve found to do this peacefully is to hook up a towing chain to both ends of the logs, winch the section to a couple of trees, attach a 1,000lb ratchet strap to the ends of the 8′ section and then trees, and lift the log into the air.
Once the log is in the air, we position a couple of bucking stands, and try to use a combination of swinging and loosening of the ratchet straps (one at a time) to position the log where it needs to go. It’s not perfect, but it’s the best way we’ve found so far to not break our backs.
Chainsaw Mill Away!
Once you have the tree in a safe, secure location, feel free to go crazy with your homemade Alaskan chainsaw mill! Hope this article is of help to someone (and someone’s back)!
