Build the Ultimate Sawmill Table for Accuracy: Timber Frame Sawmill Bunk- ELEVATE YOUR CUTTING!

Okay guys this is Dan from Artistic Timber Works and Two Guys Timber Framing and today we need to do a remodel on our saw mill here. Now originally when I got this mill I thought I was going to trailer it around the property and do log cutting in multiple areas but after we built our timber saw shed this has not moved. Yesterday we found some inconsistencies and we decided instead of just readjusting what we have we are going to build you a timber frame saw bunk. Boom! Not this bunk, this bunk. So we're actually going to cut our timber frame joints here this morning. Yesterday Jay and I got a whole bunch of white oak six by sixes ready for this project. So we're going to do our timber frame joints, dismantle, put this whole thing together right here, put it in for you and we'll show you how quick that that can be done. So stick with us. Okay since you know that we build with timber frame we don't use any hardware we don't use any nails so we're actually right now going to cut our tabs on our saw. Now if you actually look at this we're going to be multitasking. We're not cutting one at a time. I got four up here see how quick this can go. Come back to your saw. We're already set at our two inch for our tabs and that's how simple that actually is. So now all our tabs are cut on four individual beams and we're pretty much ready to go here. I need to just clean these up but then we're going to do the next round. We got four more to do and then we're going to get ready to assemble. Okay guys since we're timber framing and not using any metal connections or anything like that we need to cut our tabs. Since we like to multitask we like to do three four at a time because our packages are usually big. It's this simple my friends. You come back to your saw. Now I'm going to cut three of these at once. I'm going to set my tenon depth. It's that simple my friends. Three. Done. Two minutes. Probably one. So now after you got everything squared off you're pretty much ready to go. That's a big chunk of oak. That's a big chunk of oak. We good? We're good. We're ready to roll. We're ready to roll. Are you happy? Two guys. Thumbs up. Two guys ready to roll. Okay sometimes guys when you're timber framing you need to make joints on both ends of your beams. Now yes we could pick these up and manhandle them around instead but we're going to do and since this is three beams we're going to actually put a snatch in this thing. We're going to use our super wind system. You're good? Coming your way. You good? Yep. Good here. Fingers. We're a little short. Okay gotcha. Hold on. There we go. And without breaking your back guys we just flip three beams. Now I know these are a little bit small. Sometimes we're doing 16, 18, 20 footers. Trust me they're heavy. It's still oak. It's still oak Jason. So use the super wind system guys. It does a lot more than just flipping logs. Saves your back. Now what we're going to do is since we've got all of these. Yep. Come this one forward. Leave the discrepancy there. Okay. Short beam in the middle. Okay. We've got a little shorter one here but since we're going to cut with our saw our tabs are going to be consistent. We're not really worried about beauty here in about a month. This whole thing is going to be buried in sawdust anyway. So really our beams are squared off. The depth of my saw is still cut. As you can see with that short beam I didn't cut down the depth of that to get into my tab. I just glided right across the top so everything will be even. So right now we're going to just come back cut the tabs and we're going to be completely done with 10 joints my friends. Setting to our next 10. Fellas that's how easy it is. That one might need a little saw. So sometimes our joints are so tight I know I just wanted to kick it. Can't find my saw. How'd that feel to kick it Dan? It felt really better if I had my saw fellas. Where is the little saw? Right here hiding. I told them we should have painted it orange but it's black so it blends into everything else. So if the tab is just right there you just need to saw them off. Now that might... I hate to tell you fellas I got to go back in. Depth of my thing is just shy. Wish I did that on the first time. Sometimes to get precise you got to go twice but you still see how fast that was. So that's it boys our tenons are done. So we're going to get ready to get our lap joints down here. Get them cut on the saw. Then we're going to assemble this baby for you. Okay guys these are the six by sixes that we're actually going to use for the rails for the top of the bunk. So we've got all four of them up here on our table. We actually need to cut a simple simple lap joint since this is not a house or anything crazy. So I've already what we've done. We scribed out a line. That's where our lap is actually going to be. So I've got my saw set at the depth. This is three inches because we're using a six by six. So there it is. You've made your shoulder cuts. They're all equal. Your tabs will be all equal as well. I've got my saw set three inches on the depth. This is a lot of oak. You got to go slow. There we go boys. Everything cut all at once. All equal. Even though we might have slightly different beams because we're not planing this crazy. This is going to be our work table. There are your joint laps. Perfectly smooth. Easy. Do it on your sawmill if you have it. Check it out. Okay guys so there we go. We finished actually cutting all the timber frame joints that we're going to need for this project. So I've got 10 shoulders that we've already pre-cut. We've got the lap cuts here that we're now going to install everything for you. And honestly fellas even filming this for you guys this has only been an hour and a half and all our joints are cut. So it's just that simple. I'm going to use my sawmill actually as my workbench so I can actually scale where I want to put everything. Then we'll dismantle and then we'll put her in the ground. All right Dan what's up? Okay guys as you see we've got our beams up on our sawmill so I can actually lay out where I want to be with my posts when I do my cross members if I'm going to have any issues affected here. And quite honestly this is the best work table anybody can work on. So right now after we cut our laps we put everything together. So this is how our rails are going to sit. We have everything sized right here. First mortise hole. We're going to join these two laps together with a mortise. So Jay's going to get to cutting all the holes here. I'm going to lay out where the rest of the actual posts are going to be. Then I need to get laying out a couple of cross members. Then I'm going to dovetail in which will hold and support this unit together. So it's as simple as that guys. Just lay it out, cut it on your saw, use your saw and boom you're ready to go. Okay guys, Jason got all of our holes mortised out already. Boom, boom, boom. And while he is working on finishing up the tabs, which is actually just rounding off and sanding them, I am actually in the point of where we are dovetailing our cross members in. So I've actually got started here already. But this is how we're going to join our cross members together with a dovetail joint. There's going to be no screws, no anything but wood in this. So I've already made my pockets. Here we use our homemade jig that we've made to actually guide us to do this. And honestly, this is very simple. And there you have it my friends, a perfect dovetail pocket, which is actually going to join this together tighter than you can do with any screws or anything else. Now you also look how much time you save by not going to the store, buying yourself the hardware, the screws, trying to figure out what's up. We've actually created all of the joinery here in about an hour and a half or two hours. And this thing is going to be strong. Okay guys, it's lunchtime. It's also a million degrees here in Tennessee, but we've got all the joinery finished. We've got our posts put in. We've got our laps finished. I've got all of the dovetailing finished as well. So we're going to cut out of here for today. Tomorrow morning, we're going to come back, dismantle this and put it in the ground. Show you how quickly we can put this thing together. Let everybody know what Dan's got planned for me and him today. Hey guys, how you doing? We're back here next morning. Little cooler. Hey, we are all lined up. All of our posts are in place. I've actually re-rigged the super wind system and you're going to see we're going to lift off our head. So you can actually use this for a lot more than just logs. So what we're going to do is we're going to dismantle this whole thing. I need to mark exactly where the posts need to be and that's it. We're taking it out and we're going to put it in. So stick around. We'll show you what we get done today. All right guys, we've actually taken off the power head. So we're going to be using our super wind system. I just re-rigged it so that we could get this up on a pallet and out of our way. Pray for our souls. Oh, there we go. We're up. One side's up. Okay, there she goes. Oh, it's more centered than I thought. I thought it was going to come around a little bit. Let's go the chain that way. We're going to bring the chain. Oh, okay. All right. Okay, buddy. You got that? I do. Are these okay? Do I need to set these the other way now? You can actually pull them off until I need them if you don't have a problem. Gotcha. Let's toss those right there. We haven't pulled the head off too many times, fellas, but we're giving a full remodel here. A little dip here. What do we got? Let's put the board in the back. Okay. So right under the chain, you're going to come right through here, right through here. I see where you are. I see. Okay. I'm going to start lowering it when we get below that chain. We'll slide it through. So it sits on the right through here. Yeah. Okay. Gotcha. I like that. All right. Yep. We're through there. That wood does not like it. And it's oak hickory. Oh, that's hickory. Sorry. Well, that's even stronger because it's on this wheel here. Oh, that's a bent thing. I got you. There you go, fellas. That's working on the pallet. Actually, we're going to strap this thing down before we move it just for this purpose. That's how simple boys when you use a super which you can remove your power head. Now there's a lot of work that you could do on this table here, but this could help you out. But it's very multifunctional. I could actually break this with snatch blocks anywhere on my building and make it work for you. Super winch. Check it out. We're picking up the whole mill here. It's going to move it out of the way. Don't go too hard. You're going to have to spin out. Hey, now we're going to get the drill and getting our posts in the ground. So there's our wood shed now completely empty. While the automated drill is going, it's almost like a CNC machine. I just set it up and let it go. Okay. It's over here. Getting all of the posts drilling, putting in our pins. We're getting ready to seal this baby, put it in the ground. So there we go. He's putting in the pins. Tractor's doing its thing. I'm cleaning up the holes. Alright boys, we're on the last hole. The automatic digger is still going hard. Our dirt out here is hard, hard to play. Now, Jay's got all of our things pinned in. Even though this is white oak, we are sealing them with oil or whiskey, whatever he's drinking over there. It's not the same. There you go. We're going to seal all these things. White oak is going to stand up. It's never going to get wet in here. There we go. We're about ready to get to install it. Hey guys, how are we doing? We did finish. We got everything assembled. We got everything installed. I noticed no one showed up for the concrete party, but the concrete's all in there. It's about 105 degrees here, so we're going to call it a day. But all we've got to do is drop our joists in, put our mill back on. We're ready to keep going, boys. Later. But morning, fellas. Alright, we took the day off yesterday and let this beast dry up because we were the only ones at the cement party. But it's all over, so you could join us. I didn't even put the center columns in this thing, and this thing is a beast already. I mean, ridiculous. Once I put these beams in here, it's going to be perfect. Now, what we're going to do with Jay is actually taking our entire mill. We're going to put it up onto our work table. I'm going to show you what we're going to do to modify the trailer system to put on your bunk rack. So there we go, fellas. We're going to get ready to move this and get doing what we need to do. Alright, so we've got our whole entire mill package going up to our table for a cleanup and a rebuild for the new bunk system. We still have the trailer hitch hooked onto the front. You're going to see, we're going to peel a bunch of these parts off. But dad, look, it fits right up on our table. We are actually going to flip this thing over because we need to work on the bottom and take all the parts off that we don't need. Okay, guys, just laying out what we're going to do next. Now, as I said, I thought I was going to use my trailer to drag around the property and cut. But after our mill set up and how everything works perfectly for us, this is going to be one stable unit. Now, I actually love, we're actually keeping the whole trailer system together because all this extra steel sturdies up the mill. I mean, I have actually put this thing to the test on those four little jacks that came with it. So we're actually going to modify this so that we can actually get leveling feet on there so that we can keep our mill running straight. But we're actually going to use all of this for support. I'm like almost everybody's bunk that doesn't have the trailer. This is where they're putting the feet. So naturally that isn't going to work for us. We're going to use the strength of this trailer frame and we're going to drill right here, install our feet on every one of these bunks here, which is more than you actually put in on your mill. So that's what we're going to do. We're going to take off the wheel parts that we're not using, the trailer hitch. I'm sure somewhere along the line, we are going to repurpose that for our mill somewhere else or some other project we've got. So that's what's going on here. Jay's going to take care of the drilling. I'm actually going to go down and start the dovetailing, putting in the last joist that we need to the top of our bunk. I'll show you as we go. Okay guys, we're up here right now and I'm going to actually, this is the second half of the jig system that we have. So what you do is we center line our beam right here. I actually slide this jig on. Now I actually had to re-change this because we were using different beam sizes last time. So this we're going to do is a test cut. So I'm going to cut this off, cut a little piece, make sure it fits in the pocket before I have to maybe make some adjustments to it. So I have my center line right there. It's really pretty much this simple. Holds the jig in place, locks you in the center line where you want to be. I have to steal one of these. I really just clamp this down. Usually the clamp's sitting right there, but here we go. That should, at this point, give me a nice flush plate to run. Okay, so we need to just make a small adjustment here. What you're looking to do is just make sure the plate is square coming across. Bring it out. Oh, usually I don't drop that. And there we go. Right there. So you make sure everything's perfectly flush. Your router will, boom, tighten it up. Now this pocket is actually going to be slightly not as deep as the other one. And that's what the dovetail is going to make this extremely strong. It's going to make it a tighter joint. So really all we do, I'm just peeling away material to get to my jig. I'm just going to run all the way around and make one I'm not even looking at it. I'm just doing this by feel. And there we go. Perfect. So what I need to do right now is actually just cut this off, make sure that the joints are actually together perfectly. Or if I need to make a slight adjustment here on this panel here, which is very simple. Pop it off. Use my new workbench over here. Okay, so I'm already set with my line. I knew I wanted to cut this off. And I'm really cutting it square. So my next one, I could just go right back on to routering. Now we don't have no power. No power. Two cords would be helpful. Two guys, two cords. It'd be better to do it from this side. Okay, I know you thought we wasted a joint, but here we go. We're going to check it out. Oh, perfect. If you actually, it's hard to see from where you're at. We're sitting up just a bit here. We should just had a hammer. Perfect. You tap it down till it bottoms out. I am perfectly flush. I'm actually going to pop you guys off over here. So as you see, this is how we're going to join this thing together with no screws. And it's supposed to have this slight gap. We changed the bit on our Makita because it's slightly shallower. I only, only use this router for dovetailing. So I have mine set up with the difference that it needs to be. So once my first one's set, I could just click my gauge over and move exactly where I want to be. So, I mean, you see, this thing is ridiculous. Okay, guys, I'm going to cut them up. I'm going to show you when I put them in. This thing will be snug. Okay, boys, I got all the tie beams cut. All the dovetails are in place. So it's time for the dovetail timber tie beam test. Perfect. That, my friends, is how you make a timber frame joint. No screws, no hardware. This thing is ridiculous now. I really want to hit it with my sledgehammer. Brand new and I'm hitting it with my hammer. There is nothing stronger for you. This thing's ready. Believe it or not, we're going to run our planer across it just for the heck of it. We've got the mill all ready to go. Feeder on. We're going to drop it on and see how she does. Okay, guys, here we are with our stripped down trailer model. And Jay, while I was down there doing all the dovetailing, did all the drilling, getting our feet hardware in place of where we're going to put it on to our bunk system here. So we're really going to flip this over, drive it down, get her on the bunk, see how she sits. And this is actually what came off of the trailer model that we're not going to use right now, which I guess I could put back on. But I guarantee you, something will be made out of all of that. I promise. All right, so Jay's coming on in. I'm going to try to guide him just a little bit. You're going to have to. Yep. Yep. A little bit right there. Down. Hey, to me. Nope. Okay, guys, after the second day, we've got the mill back on, bolted up. I'm extremely, extremely happy. I mean, this thing is rock solid. So tomorrow we're going to go over the whole thing, check on all the bolts. We're going to laser level everything. We're going to get the head back on. We're going to do a bunch of replacement parts, dusters and things like that. But we are going to put this back together like it's brand new and get back to milling. So, guys, have a good one. All right, guys and gals, I keep saying, guys, feel bad about that. We're going to go with gang. Hey, we spent the better part of the morning squaring this thing up, laser leveling everything. Jason and I actually removed every bolt here and reset every one of the rails like you're doing this for the first time. You can actually see some of the discrepancies in where I had to readjust where the rail was. So now this thing is going to run again for us brand, brand new. So this thing is perfect. Now, the last check after everything is square, and you guys could do this every week. We do. We check our mill. This is an easy, easy way. All I do is tie a string from end to end to the back bunks, and this is a 30 max. So the back puzzle does not have our stainless steel. So what I do is I just take one of our small leads here. We've got a tight, tight string. Same on the other side. We're tied down. I have my bunks. I can come back now very simply and check each individual one and adjust my mill. You see right to the string that is going to give you safe boards there. I mean, it's just I keep saying it's just that simple, but it really is that simple. Don't run one right down the middle. Check this side. Bring it over. Check that side. You'll be better off. Now we're going to get the head put back onto this thing. I think we're going to give her one more bath, and then we'll show you what we got finished up here for this. But this project is done, fellas. You ready? Now that side stays to you. Okay, there we go. Just need another inch. Another inch. I would let you. I would say go get that. Let's get you out of the way to talk me. Okay. This is when the cables like. No, I don't say that. I love you guys, but I'm not sure you see. You ready? Yeah, I can't see my. Oh, there we go. You go to your wheel. All right, coming down. I think I'm on it. Okay, hang on. Let me get to the front here. Hang on. Yeah, I'm going to have to try to get mine down. I got this. You move the mill back. Check the roll, man. Feels good. Boys, we've got this thing rolling perfectly. Flip the handle around for Jay so that he doesn't have to reach way up in the air. But we actually got this whole thing finished. The timber frame bunk, not one male, nothing from the hardware store. Everything was from our forest. Now we made our bunk a little higher because as you guys may have seen before, we do a lot of work on this handwork. So we're using it as a workbench. And the last one was down so low. We're so old. Our backs were hurting. So we ended up donating a little bit of the I forgot what beach club we had going on here. But we donated a little bit of our sawdust here out the back. And we've actually leveled us out a perfect working area. And it's actually easy on your feet, you're not hanging out on concrete, everything's nice and level. But we're ready to fill that hole, run our saw. And this is just in time because we've got some 25 and 30 footers that need to be cut. And this bunk is ready to handle. So there you go. Cheap and easy. Four days work remodeled the whole mill like cheese mill. We're ready to go at it. Okay, gang, I didn't want to show you this bunk thing without Jason and I actually giving it a little test. And what we did yesterday is we cut a stack of hickory. Now of all you know how heavy hickory is, and it's one of the hardest woods to get perfect on a saw mill. And I got to tell you, this saw mill ran better than when I first put it brand new. Now that it's mounted on here, and this rack is so stable using the trailer system, we had zero shake, zero anything, our blades lasted longer, we cut a little faster, and we definitely cut more accurate. So I'm only a little upset with myself that we didn't do this a long time ago. But I know that we have a monster project coming up. And we needed this and this is going to be perfect for us. So check it out, guys. Check it out. That's my favorite part.