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THE WOODBUG
SMALL LOG SAWMILL

The Woodbug turns small leftovers into accurate, sliver free lumber. It's air transportable and almost effortless to operate... just roll the log in and slice it up. Fast, precise cuts require virtually no mechanical skills! Beat the high cost of lumber with a Woodbug one-man sawmill. Cut up to 1000 board feet of 2" lumber in a day with just one operator.

The Woodbug was designed as a personal sawmill for farmers, resort owners, prospectors, rural homeowners and woodworkers. So weather your building a house? Or maybe a workshop? With the high cost of lumber these days you might want to consider the "WOODBUG" portable sawmill technology at it's simplest!

DIMENSION STOPS for Precision stops for accurate width-cutting in half-inch increments.

LOG DOGS Easy to use log dogs secure and lock log in position for the most accurate milling.

SECURED BAR NOSE Bar nose secured in precision track to provide smooth boards of consistent width.

10'Woodbug,  shown above

                                     Milling Economy of The Woodbug Sawmill

The kerf of this mill is between 5/16" and 1/4" wide. This is comparable to the circular sawmill but more than the bandsawmill. This looks like the Woodbug has nothing to add to economy,  band people point out the wider kerf and announce that the Woodbug turns too much wood into sawdust.To put this into perspective we must look a bit closer, things are not as they appear:  The first consideration is that both bands and circular saws wander ( band far worse than circular sawmills) and to cut to a dimension required for a finished product the lumber must be cut thicker and the lumber sized with a thickness planer ( five passes usually) well you may not have made it in sawdust but you sure make up for it in planer chips.

This is far from the end. small logs are given to warping while being cut, this is referred to as " Timber Bind" ( a condition of the warping log binding on the blade of the circular or band ,This can break a band but it can heat a circular saw to the point that it stretches with centrifugal force and starts to wander badly, then it must be dismounted and have the"Dish Hammered back in, no! they are not flat until they spin up to speed)

Timber bind condition on the conventional mill also causes what is called, "Wagon Tongue", Planks and timbers thick in the middle and thin on the ends. They are a Royal pain in the rump to build with so must be planed to the minimum thickness of the piece that is so wagon tongued, more planer chips more loss.Woodbug is able to prevent this loss by holding the log solid and  milling parallel lumber with no blade wander.In fact you can actually saw to a finished size without having to allow for a, "Fudge Factor"' So you can see that the Woodbug is one of the most accurate mills there is and this contributes to its' economy   There are other factors with the Woodbug that work in its' favor, such as you tend to cut the slabs thinner ( band mills cannot stand any dirt so they try to get rid of as much bark as possible as soon as possible sort of like peeling potatoes into cubes.   Take a look at their slab pile when they are finished.)

Then there is the fact that the "Bug" can cut wood that would be unfeasible in another sawmill, this is 100% loss of this wood. Go to where there are small mills working, now dig down in the lumber pile and start measuring, you will notice that the "Wagon Tongue", lumber seems to get buried under the more successful lumber.

Woodbug Small Log Sawmill Ltd.          Phone 250-923-7773 

P.O. Box 138 - 1435 West Rd              Fax   250-923-4413

Heriot Bay, BC Canada                   Toll Free 1 877 WOODBUG       

V0P 1H0

Mail us at: susy@woodbug.comHome  

If Photos fail to load hit "Refresh"( There are a lot of them)

Here are some photos of Susy milling a tough old maple in our yard. It would have only been firewood but the

Woodbug was easily packed in.You will notice no special efforts were made to" set it up".

Below is a photo of the "Trick Filing" that makes this mill work so well. The saw doesn't cut, the chain does. The file guide is set to the correct angles in the photo.

And right beside it is a picture of Susy and friends, about to mill with the, "Baby Bug" (11 Inch Bug  x20').

                               .                                       

We see Susy above, running the"BABY BUG"

You will notice there is no run out or tension warping causing tapered lumber. Which is the biggest problem

in milling small logs. Many of you will have seen timber and boards cut from small logs that are thick in the

middle and thin on the ends. This is common on conventional mills.

The 20' Woodbug

Here is the mill with a log rolled to the inside, ready to mill

This is the first cut and the slab has fallen away. The log will have this surface placed

down on the bunks and the next cut will be square to it. As will be shown in the next pic.

The straight narrow kerf can be seen in this view.

It doesn't matter how narrow the kerf is if it isn't in a straight line, a wandering blade, as in a band or circular saw

wastes far more wood than the kerf. Consider losses in planing, you have to plane the high spots off both sides

this is the five passes clean up of tapers, humps and hollows. This mill with the bar guided top and bottom will

not even pull to the side when cutting large knots at a long angle or when the slab "wanes out".

The log is squared up and could be used like that but...we need lumber. The dimension stops are turned

and placed in the inch and a half position. We will use the lumber unplaned for construction. A pass

through the planer will be in order for flooring.

Susy already has the other end dogged down against the stops and now she is springing the last of the log

against the stop before dogging it. The slab left on the log is providing tension that warps the log away from

the cut surface. Once the board is cut off the slab the tension is gone and the finished board will be straight.

If the cut was made without taking this into consideration the board would have a taper in it, we have all

seen this where small logs have been milled on conventional mills. (just move the lumber on top of the pile

and see what is hidden underneath, yes they hide this stuff)

Susy is on the final cut. Note the one hand feed pressure (note the flying sawdust too)

Flipping off another plank

Here we are!!!

Any number of these frames can be bolted together. These are 17' boards but they could easily have been

27, 37,  47 feet long or more and there is no reason they couldn't be timbers. Long lumber mills are usually

massive machines that are hard to move. These machines are not, they can cut timbers on site of construction

and eliminate handling massive timbers over long distances.

These mills can even be flown into remote sites or carried

as each section of the "Woodbug" weighs only 140#

This is the helicopter I built in the shop that was built with a bug. It is a flying bug

Rotor Head of bird                                                                             Bird under construction in "Bug Built" shop