Having belonged to a family that’s been in the sawmill business for 60 years, the owners of D&M Steel started building their own sawmill equipment to make their mill run smoother and to make the physically demanding work of the mill easier. In fact the first sawmill that they built 40 years ago is still in operation.
One piece of equipment they’ve perfected for their own mill is the DM105 crane mat drill for building crane mats. Crane mats are used in a number of work environments ranging from oil fields to rough logging terrain.
The DM105 drills, which the company now offers to other sawmills, is ideal for any mill that currently builds crane mats, for crane mat startups, or for sawmills looking to diversify their product lines with new items.
“It takes the hard physical labor out of building crane mats,” says Bill Kniffen, who works with his sons Daniel and Michael Kniffen, owners of D&M. “We’ve never had a sawmill job that was as good as sawing and building crane mats,” he said, comparing it to jobs like making coal mine timbers and railway ties. The family started building crane mats in 1999.
“If you’ve got the material and one of our drills, you can do really well,” said Kniffen. “There is very little work involved. The operator just sits on this drill and rides it all day and pulls levers.”
“We’ve used this powered drill ourselves for several years at our own sawmill. We can get this drill to where it will build a mat in about six minutes. It actually takes longer to move the mat in and out than it does to build the mat,” he said. Two employees can build as many as 30 crane mats per day because they can bore through multiple timbers all at once.
It’s much easier than drilling one timber at the time the old way, and then having to manually line up the timbers, and drive the bolts in with a sledge hammer, he said. “This machine can drill the whole mat at the same time. It makes it easy to slide the bolts in pretty much as it’s being drilled.”
The drill includes a frame for laying the timbers that requires 27’x20' of space and the drill head itself.
D&M Steel offers either an electric or diesel powered drill head to fit each customer’s specific needs. The drill is also easily expandable, with the option to add another drill head to produce more mats per day. It comes with safety guards and is tough enough to stand up to everyday use. “We haven’t worn one out yet,” Kniffen said.
D&M’s crane mat drills are affordable, he said, starting out at $35,000. The company builds each machine and sets it up at their plant to make certain everything is working properly before shipping it. The installation time is fast and only takes 2-3 hours.
D&M Steel has been in business for about six years and builds its crane mat drills in Ina, Illinois. The company also has a retail store for steel, and specializes in distribution and fabrication. In addition to crane mat drills, it manufactures an array of sawmill equipment including firewood wrappers, conveyors and barn sweeps.
For more information, visit www.dm-steel.com or call 618/231-1595.
