“The sawmill is a very well designed saw mill, bought the os18 and its really only designed for smaller wood and smaller projects. The saw mill you could build a building or a cabin with, it is rather heavy weighing in at just under 800lbs but add fuel and water and your probably at 800lbs a trailer is really recommend and the after sales service (Rosanne) literally best customer service I have ever received. There warehouse staffing for loading and unloading very professional and very friendly not to mention I've been in a few warehouses and this is spotless no mess and great organization from my short time in the warehouse it all looks professional.
(I'm NOT paid or sponsored from frontier or Norwood just 100% honest review)”
“After saving up enough money from building furniture, I bought the OS23 model as I already had quite a bit of logs on hand and I wasn't capable of hauling logs bigger then 23" diameter so this model fit perfect along with the price.
CS was awesome from the beginning, before I placed the order I had a million questions and the same lady always answered them. She even called me when I needed help with something. The only issue I encountered was due to where i live they weren't able to deliver it curbside. I was able to track it down at a local UPS hub and drive a hour to pick it up. From there I found a good spot and leveled out the ground because I didn't want it too far off the ground. Installation was a little tricky at times because of the pictures weren't an exact match. Once I got everything assembled, mounted and fluids topped off. Fired right up.
They had a sale so i opted for the 10 HP motor, Wish I could upload photos here because i had some black walnut logs that were small and possibly just burned but i tested a new blade on it and out came some stunning pieces. So far its been about 3 months and I've probably made half my money back.”
“OS23 ive had mine 2 years now, i estimate ive cut easily 1500 L/F of boards , 100+ 4x4 posts and countless 2x4s , for a mill of this price its a no brainer . now having said this it isnt without its faults all be them small they are there, the water system is poor, simply pushed into the tank with a plastic valve, it will snap off instantly with little pressure and tough to adjust your flow., $150 ish ? frontier you can do better. i ordered mine in the 7HP briggs & stratton motor and it is bullet proof but hard starting, cant start without the choke even when hot. This should come with an electric start option, Briggs doesn't offer one, even on the 10HP model. the pull start is hard to reach and without gloves on you will be scraping your knuckles every time., im re installing new longer pull start rope to relocate mine on the front of the mill with a metal pulley . but electric start would be the better option., having said that this is a great mill for the $$$ if it were stolen id buy another, . PS frontier will sell you a t shirt, for spending this money we should get a freakin shirt....”
“I spent six month researching small band mill and choose the Frontier OS23. It is a great and rugged little mill. I did get the ten horse power motor, I made right choice buying this mill.”
“My review of my month old OS23. The OS 23 is a great mill for the price but it could be better. I looked at everything in its price range it is seems a lot heavier than the competition at its price point. It does what its supposed to do quite well. Would I'd buy it again, Yes. Now the little things that made my purchase not as smooth as I would have liked. The manual is not current to the saw so you will have to think things through. Read the whole thing. One section tells you that the items pre-assembled will all have to be checked and you will have to disassemble some things and do this and that? Then why pre-assembled? It is an imported\outsourced sawmill and the assembly was not bad BUT the packaging of the nuts and bolts (all metric) was a nightmare. All the hardware comes in separate plastic bags. They were labeled with a marker with the size and qty. Except most of the writing was illegible because it wore off the bag. The manual lists a Norwood Item # which would make it easy to locate what you need except not one bag of hardware had the item # on them. The real frustration when milling is the water manual tank valve. It is a screw type valve, where to let the water flow you have to unscrew the valve to increase or decrease the flow. Its knurled and it actually has a slot for a screwdriver? The head is about 3/8" est. in diameter. There is a knurled locking nut/ring that locks the screw at what you set it at. The locking ring is about 2 mm larger than the screw valve so that makes it very hard to just turn the ring and not the valve. You have to adjust the valve so there is not too much water or to little. Too much water and the dust clogs the extraction port. So after every cut you can let the water run or unlock the valve shut it off and repeat the resetting of the flow on the next cut. A royal pain, a simple ball valve would have made much more sense without all the readjusting the flow every time you make a cut. Norwoods email customer service is mediocre at best. I contacted them a couple of times and had to get my salesman to contact someone because I never got a response from the info e-mail address. I'm sure the 1-800 responses are faster but I find e-mail with pictures makes it easier explaining what your problems are. Ill repeat its a great saw BUT the experience could be a lot better.”
