Greenwood - modifying my chainsaw mill

I started planking with a chainsaw using the Logosol Timberjig, a simple carriage that attaches to the chainsaw bar bolts and allows you to make straight ripping cuts in conjunction with a guide rail which you can make up yourself. For around £100 it allows you to find out whether a chainsaw mill is right for you and to make simple planks from timber that otherwise would be firewood.

You can upgrade the timberjig with a lightweight guide rail and two adjustable log clamps into the big mill system which allows more accurate cutting and simple raising and lowering of the rail.



I still have and use the big mill system, particularly for the odd log or small job which is too large to manhandle onto my M7.

I bought the top of the range M7 chainsaw mill because I was impressed with the logosol design combining lightweight, ease of assembly and use with really good quality results. Faced with a couple of large jobs I looked hard at buying a mobile bandsaw. Parking and security for the bandsaw would be a problem for me. The chainsaw mill is a fraction of the price enabling me to buy a top of the range mill and saw rather than a bottom of the range bandsaw mill.

The mill uses two handcranked log rests to move the bed up and down in 1/4 or 1/8inch steps to enable accurate cutting. The saw carriage incorporates a magnetic clamp which allows the accuracy to be maintained across the cut. Particuarly when using the Logosol single piece milled bar which reduces the kerf (width of cut by 1/3) improving cutting and reducing waste.

I use the mill with a Stihl MS660 which is easily powerful enough for most jobs and I don't recommend using a relatively small saw for planking as it will be driven very hard.

This oak tabletop planked from a log using the bigmill shows how useful it can be to have a chainsaw mill. The oak was lying over a boundary bank in position where fences made it hard to extract. It might not even have been used for firewood otherwise and I like the ability to cut the wood as I choose, leaving waney edges where possible. I can later resaw to remove the edges if necessary.


The M7 comes configured with a log bed of 7ft and guiderail lenght of 18ft for processing logs of 8-17 in length. It can be extended if you need to plank monster logs,

But for some time I've been toying with reducing the logbed with to allow me to plank shorter logs which effectively turns it into the woodworkers mill.







In the usual Logosol manner the woodworkers mill is based upon the M7 concept but with some parts left out and reconfigured.

By drilling 4 more holes, 3 on the support beam and one on the guiderail I can use it as a woodworkers mill and process logs in the range 4 to 8 feet in length.

Having tried it out once like this it seems likely that I will normally use it like this and only use it in the full configuration for larger jobs.