I bought a Woodmizer LT10 nine years ago. Its bare boned manual but I love it. Much like you become intimate with your trees when you only tap 30 or so trees ( you have a name for each one after a while ) you also become intimate with a manual sawmill. You learn what cuts well and what cuts poorly and why it does that. Many factors involved in this from type of wood, to how dry it is, to how dirty/muddy it is, to how frozen it is.
Over the past 9 years I have cut Spruce, Hemlock, Eastern Juniper/Cedar, Ash, Cherry, Walnut, Black Locust, Hard Maple, Soft Maple, White Oak, Red Oak, Hickory and Ginkgo( non native )
Most of the time after a day of milling, I am OK with the fact that I have a manual sawmill. Besides, I now have two older brothers who no longer dare wish to tussle with me.
Most of my milling is done on hardwoods, but have done some dimensional structural lumber from spruce and hemlock. Over the past several years I have made many home furnishings. Attached are photos of two things made entirely off my sawmill lumber using Ash, Cherry and Walnut. O yea, the drawer decking was made from recycled Pac Basin Cedar from an old swingset. ( ripped it on the tablesaw only )
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If you think it's easy to make good money in maple syrup .... then your obviously good at stealing somebody's Maple Syrup.
Favorite Tree: Sugar Maple
Most Hated Animal: Sap Sucker
Most Loved Animal: Devon Rex Cat
Favorite Kingpin: Bruce Bascom
40 Sugar Maple Taps ... 23 in CT and 17 in NY .... 29 on gravity tubing and 11 on 5G buckets ... 2019 Totals 508 gallons of sap, 7 boils, 11.4 gallons of syrup.
1 Girlfriend that gives away all my syrup to her friends.