Last Christmas, I collected quite a few Amazon.com gift cards from friends and family. In years past, this would cause a dilemma due to having so many options. Not this year! I knew exactly what I wanted.
I had become quite a fan of the Wranglerstar channel on YouTube and really enjoyed his videos on timber framing. One of the coolest tools he uses is the Granberg Alaskan Chainsaw Mill. It is a brace that attaches to the bar of your chainsaw and allows you to cut dimensional lumber with a standard chainsaw.
In my opinion, the Granberg Alaskan Chainsaw Mill may in fact be the ultimate mill for a homestead.
With this in mind, I gathered my gift cards and purchased the Chainsaw Mill. That was almost a full year ago and until this past weekend I had never used it. Sunday afternoon I decided to take the mill on its maiden voyage and boy was it fun!
I found a good pine log that was about 16 feet long and 14 inches in diameter. After screwing a 2×4 to the top of the log, I clamped the chainsaw mill to a Stihl MS 290 with a 20″ bar. The rails of the Granberg Alaskan Chainsaw Mill glided across the 2″ x 6″ giving me a clean and flat first cut. The 2″ x 6″ was removed and each cut after that was made by gliding the mill directly on the previous cut.
After it was all said and done, I ended up with a really nice timber beam at 8″ x 8″ x 12′. I’m not sure what it will be used for at this point because it was really just an experiment to get used to the chainsaw mill.
I’d like to create some videos of this thing in action. For now, take a look at the pictures I took and watch some of the Wranglerstar videos. I’ve posted one of them below.
