Garden tractor/Bandsaw mill
 

I’ve been kicking around the idea of building my own bandsaw mill for a few years now.

I’ve drew up plans for a basic all manual mill. I got to thinking that maybe one of the larger cubs with a hydro unit (1812, 2072, 3000 series, etc.) that has all the hydraulic accessories would have enough power to successfully build and operate a bandsaw mill. Using the drive to pull the saw through, front PTO for bandsaw power, hydraulic deck lift to raise and lower the the blade height and auxiliaries to either turn or load the logs.

In your guy's opinions, would one of these tractors be strong enough to do this?

Still thinking about doing this project?? I see that some of the smaller woodmizer saws are only about 10hp just to run the band saw. How you are planing to distribute the power is not clear to me. Are you talking about disassembling the tractor to access the components? Direct power the saw with the engine. Use the hydro trans to run the shuttle back and forth with a cable on a pulley at each end? Use the deck and aux hydraulics to run the log positioning extras? It's probably strong enough assuming your not making too large of a saw mill.

Why not power the band saw with a say 2hp electric motor and use a cable winch for the shuttle. Other aux could be either hydraulic or electric actuator.

Take a look in the for sale section. That 4000 watt pincor should be sufficient to power the electric motor for the band with power to spare and it may mount on your current Cub Cadet. Or just buy an off the shelf generator. This way when you are home you can just plug everything in and have it run nice and quite. When your out remote bring your generator with you and you can run an extension cord to keep the noise away from your work area. Also you can have power for other things, phone chargers TV ect...

Just some thoughts.

There are basic band saw mills for $3-$4k (Northwood? Harbor Freight and a new, small Woodmizer). I think you'd spend that much or more just trying to put something together. Plus all your time that could otherwise be used to saw lumber...which you could sell...