Lucas Mill - Fuelwood Case Study & Video
There’s Money in Them There Mills!
Imagine the situation – a large tree has been felled in a location with no vehicular access. Maybe it’s in the back garden of a house, within a park or large gardens or perhaps in remote woodland. Either way there is a lot of valuable beautiful wood lying there.
Sadly more often than not due to limited access for lifting equipment, that tree will end being chain sawed into firewood.
Watch the video.
Imagine again, only this time you have a light portable saw mill that can be easily taken to the tree site. Where it can quickly be erected around the tree in situ and can then turn that tree into valuable beams, planks, cladding, boards, blocks and slabs. Right there and then, in no more time that it would take to turn it into firewood! Turning that tree into £000’s worth of valuable timber and retaining its beauty for many years to come.
Introducing the Lucas Mill range. Lucas Mill have been manufacturing portable sawmills in Australia since 1994. From small beginnings the company has now sold 13,500 machines into over 100 countries worldwide and holds a raft of awards for business excellence and product innovation. These light, easily portable and affordable sawmills are immensely versatile. They are easy and inexpensive to use and are remarkably versatile. Indeed the perfect investment for tree surgeons, landowners and small to medium forestry operators. With a range of sizes and optional extras to suit different needs and budgets, Lucas Mills are the portable sawmill of choice.
Watch the video.
Choosing Your Lucas Mill. There are two main Lucas Mill model ranges; the Circular Swing Blade Mills and the Slabbing Mills. The ultra-popular Circular Swing Blade Mill is the most versatile giving the widest range of cut timber options and can include a slabbing attachment.
The swing blade mills are mostly powered by small petrol engines, but 3-phase electric versions are also available. Cut lengths and cut timber sizes range by model.
The smallest mill cuts up to 3.6 metres in length and up to 4” x 8” width/height, whilst the largest machine with cut up to 6.1 metres in length and up to 10”x20” maximum width/height. Track extensions can be added to provide cut lengths up to 8 metres. The optional slabbing attachment for the Circular Swing Blade Mills allows for full tree width cuts. The dedicated Slabbing Mills are specifically for cutting large timber slabs such as for seating, table tops, counter tops or large boards. The slabbing mills can saw up to 1.9 metre (6’4”) widths and the same lengths as the circular saw mills. Slabbing either with a dedicated machine or as an option to a circular saw mill has the added advantage of giving the very sought after natural bark edged timber slabs.
The Case Study
Tim Worship owns and runs A.T Technical Tree Specialists, a typical two man tree surgery business. Tim loves wood, and for many years felt it was a great waste to see such beautiful and valuable wood being felled and then chopped into firewood. This was typically either due its inaccessible location, the huge cost of hiring cranes to remove the tree to a sawmill or simply because firewood was seen as the quickest way of the tree owner gaining some value from the wood. Either way a great deal of valuable structural quality timber was being wasted. Watch the video.
Tim set about seeking a solution and started to investigate the idea of buying a portable saw mill. Looking at the various manufacturers options, Tim was drawn to the Lucas Mill due to its small size and portability. Following a visit to a Fuelwood open day to see the machine in action, Tim was sold on simplicity of the Lucas Mill machine and its relative low cost. The deal was done.
Two years later Tim has been enjoying the benefits of being able to offer the Lucas Mill option to customers. Purely on recommendation and referral alone Tim has been averaging one day a week using the Mill alongside his normal work. He has found it has created up many new business opportunities for him. He is now regularly working on large estates which had previously not been open to him. Tim has also been busy milling wood for his own house building and furniture projects. Tim says the added value of the Lucas Mill means that his customers with large felled trees can now see a huge financial saving if they use the wood themselves for building work, or even selling the timber on.
Watch the video.
Tree felling now becomes an investment rather than a cost.
Tim’s greatest pleasure is seeing the timber from a felled tree being used to build in the same or near the location of where the tree itself had stood often for hundreds of years. This was going to be the case at the location we interviewed him and where we took the images and video used in this article.
To hear the full interview and to see Tim and his Lucas Mill on site in action please watch the video