Frequently Asked Questions

If you love working with quality timber, the answer is yes!

Aside from saving yourself from the high prices at big box stores and independent timber yards, you’ll eliminate the frustration of picking through the boards to find the straight ones—a Herculean task on its own.

Quite simply, owning your own sawmill gives you something extremely valuable…FREEDOM!

With your own sawmill, you’ll have the freedom to:

• Selectively harvest your own trees and unlock the value inside.
• Work with species of wood you can’t get at timber yards.
• Work with virtually any dimension of wood - from veneer to super-wide planks to beams.
• Finally, build projects you have been dreaming about but could not afford due to the high cost of wood.

For over a quarter century, Norwood has been helping landowners, craftsmen, woodworkers, and enterprising businesspeople unlock the tremendous value in their trees. But quite frankly, not everyone can afford an original Norwood.

This was a dilemma for us because we also know this absolute fact:

No one should be denied access to the life-changing possibilities of owning a Norwood portable sawmill.

We’ve seen the positive impacts over and over again.

So, we went to work to solve this issue! We designed a line of rugged little sawmills that are financially within reach for more people who demand quality but also need a more affordable price point for their portable sawmill.

This is good news for you because ALL of our sawmills are built using Norwood’s renowned meticulous attention to detail. We simply will not settle for less and neither should you.

Here are a few checkpoints for your consideration. A Frontier sawmill may be the perfect choice for you if…

• You’re shopping for the best price because you need to save money.
• You’re a “hands-on” kind of person but not necessarily a professional.
• You’re a beginner sawyer who appreciates a trusted company that has specialized in portable sawmilling for a quarter century and has a reputation for delivering innovation and reliability.
• You're planning to use your sawmill for personal projects.
• This is your first portable sawmill.
• You’re looking for a basic mill that's easy to use.
• You’re excited to start with rough-sawn projects like cabins, shelters, and sheds.
• You’re independent, smart, and want the most mill for your dollar.

And don’t forget, you can always speak with one of our sawmill experts to help you work through your decision!

We engineered Frontier Sawmills to mill accurately to 1/16th of an inch. And, just like any sawmill bearing the Norwood name, the cut can be so smooth that often a light sanding is all you need to finish your boards.

Very easy! We’ve already pre-assembled your sawhead for you!

For the rest, you need just a few basic tools (combination and Allen wrenches, ratchet with sockets, adjustable wrench, Phillips screwdriver, drill, lubricating and engine oils, and grease gun).

We give you a fully illustrated manual that leads you, step by step, through the whole process. It’s packed with exploded illustrations, diagrams, and photographs – all written in plain English. And we back it up with unlimited toll-free support – from the moment your Frontier Sawmill arrives, through your first cuts and beyond.

Definitely! As with all Norwood portable sawmills, we’ve built reliability into the Frontier, so there really isn’t much to go wrong. A bit of simple routine maintenance will keep your investment humming, and your sawdust flying, for years.

Plus, to help you service it properly; we keep an inventory of bearings, belts, guides, and blades in stock.

You sure can. In fact, Frontier is the only sawmill in its class where you can add a trailer system to every model. Norwood custom-designed an optional trailer system specifically for the Frontier that you can add anytime – right away or down the line.

We’ve got you covered. We back up the Frontier sawmill with a one-year warranty. Briggs and Kohler back up their engines with two-year and three-year warranties respectively.

Properly managed, personal band sawmills are a very “green” way to produce timber for shelter, furniture, and other needs.

With your own sawmill, you can…

• Improve forest health by selectively harvesting your trees.
• Recycle logs that would otherwise go to waste (they are the ultimate recycling machines).
• Appreciate that their thin sawmill band blades produce very little sawdust which quickly breaks down into soil.
• As the sawyer, you will maximize the yield from each one of your logs.

By milling your own timber, you’ll virtually eliminate your reliance on lumber harvested by the massive wood-processing corporations who:

• Often practice clear-cutting.
• Discard logs, which are not perfectly straight.
• Use much thicker blades, which reduce a big percentage of the logs into sawdust.
• Transport logs and sawn timber for hundreds, if not thousands, of miles.

10. Will Frontier cut Australian hardwood?

We hope you do have questions! We love talking sawmills.

Please pick up the phone and give us a call. We’re here for you!