Greeneville Resident Uses Motorcycle Sawmill to Create Wooden Works of Art

Dennis Winckler, a Greeneville resident, and assistant manager of the Lowe’s home improvement store in Newport, spends lots of his spare time working with wood. He built his log cabin, including the logs and sawed hardwood flooring, with the use of a band saw powered with a motorcycle.

He moved to Tennessee 25 years ago from Wyoming, and has been playing with wood for the last 10 years. During his younger years, Winckler learned basic building skills from his father, then spent years working for contractors building homes and learning about everything from plumbing to electrical wiring.

He harvested logs from 75 acres on a neighbor’s property but then had to mill the wood into logs and lumber.

Winckler says he didn’t want to take the logs to a conventional sawmill, so he devised his own mill: a one-of-a-kind band sawmill powered by a motorcycle. The band around both tires makes for a smooth cut log or piece of lumber.

“It is geared down because the blade has to run at a certain feet per second in order to be at the optimum speed for cutting,” he explained.

“It was a neat ordeal. I used to rebuild motorcycles and after studying pictures on the Internet, I realized I had everything I needed right here. So, I started fabricating, cutting, hacking, and it really worked out well. I’ve milled thousands of board feet with it.”

This post, “Winckler uses motorcycle sawmill to create wooden works of art,” was originally published on December 23, 2017 by Ray Snader on Citizen Tribune.

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