Australia’s Lucas Mill celebrated its 25th year in the business of making portable sawmills. More than 18,500 Lucas Mill portable sawmills have been sold into more than 100 different countries, and the company says its first portable swing blade sawmill is still operating.
Lucas mills can be transported to almost any location and set up to select harvest timber, which has a lower impact than removing logs for milling offsite.
The company was started in a small farm shed on a sheep property among stringy bark and red box trees in Wooragee, Victoria, Australia. They were surprised to receive orders for more than 50 machines in the first month of manufacturing, which was what they originally thought would be a year’s production. The Model 6 sawmill, which can make a 160mm cut, was joined after two years with the Model 8, which has a 215mm cut, powered by a 20hp engine. Lucas Mill also built the first dedicated slabber, for cutting timber slabs, in 1996. The swing-blade sawmill came next in 1998, powered by a three-phase electric motor.
Lucas Mill now offers five different circular swing-blade machines, from the 160mm model up to the versatile 254mm model. Attachments are available for each model for slabbing, planing, sanding, and making weatherboards.
For more information call 0800 445 396, email [email protected], or see lucasmill.com.
South Island sawmiller
30 September 2024
The smell of marcocarpa and scream of saws greets visitors to a family-run sawmill up a valley behind Motueka where Lloyd Knowles specialises in making one-off timber products, often with intricate profiles, for do-it-yourself builders, renovators and furniture-makers.
“We make a whole range of stuff from weatherboards to architraves, as well as replica mouldings using different profiles. We just make a pattern to fit whatever they want. Negative detail is the flash term,” says Lloyd, who runs the business with his wife, Diane. Most requests for bespoke work come from Golden Bay and Motueka.