I'm building a circular sawmill from scratch. The function of the mill is in its name "Swingblade" - the blade swings 90 degrees making it possible to cut both ways while moving the carriage up and down the log resulting in dimensional lumber in one pass. I built a chainsaw mill ten years ago and milled lumber that I used for my cabin / sauna house project. Then I built a bandsaw mill five years ago and used the cut lumber to build a partition in my barn I currently call my workshop. Both of them worked great, bandsaw mill was faster than chainsaw mill for sure. But I think I can make an even faster mill and swingblade sawmill in my opinion is just what I'm looking for. There are different types of swingblade sawmills, one type utilizes a railway system where the saw carriage rides on rails so both rails are in the way when loading the logs. I want to build a beam-type mill where the saw carriage is suspended on a beam over the log that sits on a couple of wedges so it doesn't roll off while cutting. There will be no need to clamp the log down. Cut depth and width adjustments are all going to be made on the sawmill beam end frames. And to top it off - it will basically be a portable sawmill due to its build properties but I think it's only going to sit in my yard regardless of the portability.

In this video I'm fabricating both vertical and horizontal blade guards. Not to guard the blade but to protect myself and others from the circular saw blade. The blade has to have two guards since it pivots 90 degrees. I'm also cutting up an old steel bed frame again to get nice bent sections of tubing to make a nice and smooth handle out of it. This handle has to be functional at every height the carriage is on when the sawmill is in use. I have to take into account that the vertical stroke of this saw is 900mm/3ft. To accommodate the vertical and horizontal blade adjustment crosswise I'm welding on adjustment bolts and fabricating an additional section of frame on the carriage. It supports the swinging frame when lowered into the vertical cutting position (the frame itself is horizontal at that moment).

I'm gonna try and use basic tools like angle grinder as much as possible (except lathe) so I'm gonna enjoy this project even more. I hope you will too!

This sawmill build is based on www.turbosawmill.com "Manual Mill" design and it is patent pending.

Swingblade sawmill build series:    • Swingblade Sawmill Build  
My other videos: https://www.youtube.com/DonnDIY/videos
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Welding equipment borrowed from Spetselektroodi AS, Estonia:
Fronius TransSteel 2700 welder
Optrel Crystal 2.0 Welding Helmet
Hypertherm Powermax 45 XP plasma cutter