VEVOR Alaskan chainsaw mill and Stihl MS462! #412

So welcome back everybody my name is Andrew and you're watching the Kelly's Country Life. So today's episode something I have been waiting to show y'all for quite a while. I had to wait on the part to come in for my chainsaw as well as get past this tropical storm that we just have but I'd already kind of given y'all little hints and fillers about a chainsaw episode that was coming up. So I had a company named Vivor reach out to me and they're a company that's been in business about 10 years. They do a lot of import export. They carry everything from kitchen goods, household goods, industrial stuff, business stuff, tractor stuff, chainsaw stuff, literally endless. A lot of y'all have heard about their ice makers. I know that's been kind of common and popular especially us doing the ice maker series here lately but they have everything on their website absolutely everything. So check them out links down in the description. There's also some discount codes for this stuff today too if you're interested in it but let me show you what we have. So what I have right here is basically an Alaskan style chainsaw mill. You clamp your chainsaw in here. It's got adjustments up and down to cut different thickness slabs and you kind of grab a hold of it and push it across and do some basic chainsaw milling. Something I've been interested in for a while especially with lumbers being as high as it is a lot of y'all have asked me hey you need to really look into something like this. So I was on their website the other day seeing this and was like hey I would really be interested in trying that out. Now also in this kit I got the one that comes with a 106 inch aluminum rail. So you actually bolt this rail to the top of your log to get you a first initial good clean cut and I thought that was a really good idea. I know a lot of people use lumber two befores things like that but I really wanted to get something I knew was straight easy to bolt down ready to go out of the package. So it took me roughly about 45 minutes to put all of this together and we're going to try it out today. We're not going to sit here and talk about all kinds of specs and stuff. I'll give you a few here in just a second but we really want to try this out and run it across a piece of wood that I've been saving for a while to do some practicing on. So this chainsaw mill claims it'll hold from a 14 up to a 36 inch barge saw. Today we're going to be using my Stihl MS-462. Now I know that that's not really a milling saw. You really need something like in the 660 series or even bigger than that. So for a lightweight milling allowing the saw to cool off between cuts I think it'll be okay. We've actually got a 32 inch bar that we're going to put on that chainsaw today and clamping here so this shouldn't have a problem fitting that because we're going to be cutting about a 24 to 25 inch log down there so I needed to upgrade my bar size. I'm also running a ripping chain one that's made just for milling. So it's a skip tooth ripping chain should be easy on the saw. All right so let's go ahead and see this thing in action. There's not a whole lot to talk about. Everything is fully adjustable with a wrench that it comes with to move in and out to accommodate saw sizes. It's adjustable up and down for the different size slab thicknesses all the way from about one inch up to just under 16 inches. That should cover any kind of milling that I should ever do and some of y'all may be wondering why I need or want something like this. Y'all've heard me talk time and time again about building custom furniture on this channel for our house. I really have some ideas in mind that I want to make some benches, bar tops, things like that and this would be perfect for it. Hard to justify a big expensive mill for no more than I'm going to use but a little Alaskan mill I think will be perfect. So let's get set up let's get to cutting. All right so I went with a Sumara and I hope I'm saying that name correctly 32 inch guide bar. I wanted to go with the light bar but I went with the thicker guide bar. I figured that probably better for a situation like this where things are somewhat of a bind. I want a nice thick bar on there and again skip tooth ripping chain. Now also I can see this being very hard on these chains so I'm going to turn my factory oiler wide open to get as much oil on this chain as I can while I'm doing this milling as well. So the nice thing about having this 32 inch bar too is now anytime I need to fill a really big tree I can move over to this. Otherwise most likely I'm always going to run my 25 on here. That looks mean. Well that new bar and chain cuts pretty good. Saw doesn't have a problem pulling it through. It's about a 25 inch log on there and 24-25 inches. I can see I've already got a little bit of rot around the outside edge. I'm perfectly honest with you I did not store this log as well as I should have but I've been saving it just for this right here in case I ever did get a chainsaw mill. It's a good test piece to play with. We'll open it up and see how it looks. Now I trimmed off both ends because they had you know just a little bit of damage from being out in the weather and I wanted to shorten it up perfectly for that full rail length so we can get over an eight foot cut. I'll do a little bit of trimming later with a saw if we find some slabs that we want to save. So the kit also provided some short lag bolts. Short is key depending on if you're going to do a shallow depth of cut. You don't want to bolt straight down into the wood that you're going to hit with your saw chain. So again first time ever milling. I would think I want the rail as perfectly level as I can. I brought some scrap pieces of lumber down here because obviously the log does this going throughout and I'm going to try to throw the level up here get this rail straight as I can because first cut seems critical in my mind. Once I make the first cut I don't need the rail anymore. Now I've got a flat spot on top of the and then I'll come back and let the sawmill itself ride on that. So I'm gonna take just a minute to set this up and get it how I think it needs to be. All right as I feared I'm seeing some bolts loosen up. There is no lock washers provided with the kit so I'm going to have to make a trip to the hardware store one of these days and pick up a bunch of lock washers for these. So it's looking like to finish this cut out I'm going to have to keep tightening these nuts down. I kind of already figured that was a problem that's why I mentioned it a minute ago. Overall it's okay I'm finding pushing the saw straight doesn't seem to work as good as kind of rocking it back and forth seems to be easier on it. So let me tighten these nuts up and we'll get back to cutting. You may or may not have seen right there at the end I wound up getting a little off somehow. I think I was lifting up on the saw so I noticed I rode flat the entire section of rails until I got to the end like I was about a quarter inch high. I have no idea what that means for the slab that I cut right here but let me unscrew this rail let's take a first look at the inside of this log see what we did. All right so there is definitely a learning curve here no doubt about that. I can already tell this wood is not good a shape as I would like for it to be to make it slab so we'll just use this for some practice and turn into firewood and that's my fault for just the way I stored this. But you can see where I've kind of made some cuts and grooves in there apparently I was lifting up on the saw and moving it too much like I kind of already figured that I was. So I think I'll fault that on me looks like the rocking back and forth is probably a really bad idea it's allowing me to kind of back cut into this piece of wood. I need to try to just push straight forward with minimal rocking but that's okay there's a learning curve to everything I've got to figure this out. All right so I let the saw cool down for a little while I think that's critical in between long cuts like this. Now I'm just going to run the rail on top of here even though it's a bit uneven which again is my fault and I'm going to try more of just a steady push with minimal rock and I want to see the next cut how it looks. So this is a good practice piece right here for me to learn so whenever I finally do get a really good solid piece of wood I've got my technique down. Let's see if we did a little better I still wound up doing some rocking but a lot less. So definitely better but I still see some room for improvement. I did wind up doing a little bit of rocking and I can see every time I rock forward and come back it kind of undercuts or cuts the top or cuts the bottom. However this is almost good enough that I could take a sander to it and get it back looking good. Now again the problem is there's a little bit of rot on the outside edge of this piece of wood so this is just a practice but rocking is critical. That's the key. You can't do that. I've also got this end a little off and that was my fault when I attached the top rail. I didn't level it perfectly this direction and I can see that I got a little off there. So like I said there is a little bit of a learning curve but at the end of the day it works. It absolutely works. This would be probably as big of a piece as I would ever in my life cut and the saw handled it just fine but I can definitely tell I need to let the saw take a break in between cuts this massive. The other reason I wouldn't want to save this piece of wood looks like it's had some bug damage or rot. It's got holes everywhere all in the center and I guess those type of things you just don't know until you cut it open. It looks like it would have some beautiful color to it though but between the rotten edge and holes all in it we need to turn this into some firewood. So first initial thoughts of an Alaskan style saw mill. There's definitely a little more technique to it than I realized. It's critical you get your first cut perfect and that's something I need to practice a little more with but overall just go slow let your saw cool down and it'll work. For what these things cost you can do a lot of stuff. So I'm going to be looking for some good wood here coming up something about this size that I can make some outside benches or bar tops with. No doubt this saw can handle doing that just fine. I'm not going to go milling every single day again. I would like a much bigger saw to do that but for $155 for the aluminum rail and this mill it's kind of hard to beat. The only change I can see that I would like to make and that I will make is a very cheap and easy one. I'm going to remove all these nuts and I'm going to put some lock washers in. Believe it or not this uh once I tighten it down the second and full third cut I don't see anything else that came loose but I believe that potential is always there so a couple cheap lock washers should lock this down just fine. So we really do appreciate Vivor sending this out for us to test. You're going to see it get used a lot on the channel. I'm actually about to call my tree guy up and tell him I'm looking for some more logs this size so we can get to uh milling some stuff up here in the future. I'll practice this a little more you know kind of critique my technique and get it to where I'm cutting smooth or to really see what I need to do. It's quite straightforward just uh level up that first cut and you're ready to go on the next cut. So thank y'all so much for watching hopefully you enjoyed this little review and we'll catch you on the next one.