I got a nice treat from a neighbor a few weeks back, the opportunity to use his Harbor Freight Sawmill!
Here's how the machine is used:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m5y3dcrLq54
It's more than just the chainsaw conversion, but a proper carriage-driven engine thing with a great hooping sawblade!
Turning this:
(http://i.imgur.com/cFZTr9n.jpg)
Into this:
(http://i.imgur.com/CpHCZVp.jpg)
I had a roof to build and got stuck in.
(http://i.imgur.com/Ux3Gwhe.jpg)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ifEAX2u6KFg
Nice to be able to take relatively useless logs and turn them into uniform useful lumber shapes easily. The bandsaws with the 1/8 inch kerf waste very little and do a great job.
On most mills you actually load the big end on the head side (opposite of what's shown) and have a jack or roller lift to raise the end. Though it isn't always needed and I only do it on largely tapered logs.
It is nice to make your own lumber though but be careful of the mill you choose as the HF models don't have very good reviews when matched up against mills like the WM's or other 'name' brand mills -- they are less expensive though so perhaps it's a trade off.
Good stuff though
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lGXnUTf--bc
Here's a vid my wife did of us using the WoodMizer SuperManley LT10 (we nicknamed it 'Super' based on the LT40Super Hyd and 'Manley' since that's our company name and we modded the mill a lot)....
An experienced crew (as you see here) can go from milling a cut to reverse without stopping or removing the blade (raising the head after the cut) or even idling down etc etc....you'll see we barely let the teeth exit the log before drawing back, resetting and cutting the next.
Our goal is to always keep the blade int he wood in order to maximize production for our customers! Any time the blade isn't in the wood, it aint milling ;)
Another note is that on these manual raise and lower heads the vibrations of a running motor at full throttle actually help make it easier to raise and lower.
Water is used to clean the blade though it may have some cooling effect also it's primary purpose is too clean.
A wavy cut is normally an indicator of a dull band which will follow the grain of the wood and dive around knots...a loose band can also do that.
At the end of the vid we push the head past the log and get ready to roll the CANT for the next cuts (not shown). We always leave the head at the far end, roll the log/cant, check height at the center of the log (if not a cant yet) to see where the next cut should be and then proceed. When rolling cants we just roll it back to the start spot, crank it up, engage and start milling again.
We were producing up to 250bf/hr when the vid was taken on a mill rated at 100! [cool] :) ;D but it takes good logs and a great crew! Those guys behind the two running the mill (my son and I) were 'off bearers' (also known as customers) and when they get the boards out of the way you can concentrate on production.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2K1xTY1sNus
Here's another at a different angle.
On speed, we go as fast as the motor will allow which is to say we push until it bogs down and then back off 10% lol
Faster is better! :D
[cool]
I never saw one of these working, sure does leave a lot of sawdust behind. You must have to do a thorough cleaning after a day of work on that thing. First time I ran a chainsaw this summer I realized just how much guck can build up (especially with all the oil it sprays).
We make sawdust ;) Lumber is the byproduct
And yes! There is a lot of cleanup but we love it :)
If you really want'a make sawdust big circle saw mill is the only way to go!!! ;)
Do any of the portable mills saw forward and reverse - ie Teeth on both sides of the bandsaw?
My son works in a sawmill that produces 1,000,000 board feet in a shift!!! :o
Can't put teeth on both sides as the band has to ride on tensioners with lips that keep it from being pushed off them...
Quote from: OlJarhead on February 12, 2016, 06:33:34 PM
My son works in a sawmill that produces 1,000,000 board feet in a shift!!! :o
Can't put teeth on both sides as the band has to ride on tensioners with lips that keep it from being pushed off them...
Million BF is butchering a lot of logs a day. I like a lot kids want to be a sawyer when I grew up and wanted to move out of the woods to the mill..... That said never got to work in the woods nor become a sawyer.... Railroad seemed a lot better. But I still rubberneck every sawmill I ever go by. Heck I can even talk sawmill.... :D
??? My buddy that has the big circle saw mill has a bandsaw mill near the out feet on the circle saw side. He can roll the cants off to the bandsaw side. I have helped him but never really paid much attention how the bandsaw rides on the wheels. Guess I should pay more attention to my environment. :D ;)
Some f the larger mills can, or at least historically have, run teeth on both sides and saw both ways... I've never seen one so don't have a clue how they can do it without the thrust bearings.
Quite a few mills go to the headsaw/resaw setup. My circle mill can take some pretty good hits from rocks and still keep sawing but for every 4 cuts or so I lose a board to dust that a bandsaw would get as a board. Those headsaw/resaw setups use a circle mill to break the log down to a clean cant and then use the bandmill to get better recovery. I was sawing with a friend last weekend on mine, he has a bandmill. I sharpened before he got here and then let him drive most of the afternoon, he was used to changing out bands every few hundred feet so was surprised that with kind of dirty logs we never stopped to resharpen. I needed his help turning the white oak branches that were on deck, we recovered 14' 8x8's from those, that tree was a honker. They'll go over to his house under an old corncrib and we'll slide it over with a dozer to its new home. I got to point out a frost check on one log and then we got to see how it looked inside. It was a mixed accumulated pile, we got into some wooly adelgid killed hemlock, black gum (fire blocking), poplar, white pine and a little cherry. The power company was here doing some line clearing and I need to get the trees from that down to the mill... that's where I was a few weeks ago when I blew the truck engine d*.
Don_P the big production head-rigs I was around as a kid you sawed both directions. Huge bandsaws that could handle old growth Pine and Fir. A few mills had mill ponds still - some had converted over to debarkers where a what around here was called a pineapple a hard faced oblonged chunk of metal spun very quickly knocking the bark, rocks and dust helter skelter. This is where a lot of the shredded landscape bark comes from.
A lot of the pine was washed pretty clean by the sprinkler lines set up on top of the huge pine log decks that might hold a billion board feet of logs or more in the big mills. The water sprinkling over the tops kept them moist and prevented them from blueing or staining. 4/4 5/4 6/4 (shop) all in our case was Ponderosia Pine was cut in widths up to 24 inches. Some of those old growth molding planers had 30 inch knives. They were termed a molding planer but they never were used to plane a profile. Termed such because they planed both wide surfaces but never the edges and were used to plane molding stock. Side bar about the time Boise Cascade bought the mill I was around as a kid on up in to collage. Some of the big customers were starting to order shop lumber no wider than 16 inches if I remember right or maybe it was 18 inches. Now days hardly a problem.... ;)
Grabbed some photos off the net I just bought a new lap top and don't have my photos carried over yet.
Double sided band saw, type used on a headrig. They were fixed by huge tensioners on the headrig that pulled the top wheel straight up. Those old rigs are all gone now either over seas or to the scrap yards seems like the wheels were sort of crowned.
(https://i593.photobucket.com/albums/tt15/rick91351/Head%20rig%20band%20saw._zpsnuio7soy.jpg)
On the floor is a couple single sided band saw blades. When I was a kid they were used mostly on resaws in the mills I was around.
(https://i593.photobucket.com/albums/tt15/rick91351/saw%20shop_zpsiurmgfmg.jpg)
Rick, I was a saw filer for several years. The mill that I worked at had a head rig that used a 54''lower dia blade and a 36'' upper blade. We would saw the log to a 20'' cant. then we would send it over to the re-saw building that used a twin band set up. The bands were 10'' wide X 67' long. You are right, the band saw wheels are ground with a crown on them. The bands are benched out using a roller that stretches the center of the band longer then the edges and the back of the band is longer than the front. This would keep the band from coming off the wheels. The lower picture you're showing is an Armstrong automatic bench that takes out the bumps and ridges. The upper picture is a profiling grinder that sharpens the blade.
I found a web site that had an article on the sawmill that I worked at.
https://wunderwoods.wordpress.com/2011/12/11/mueller-brothers-timber-sawmill-this-is-how-to-bust-up-a-log/
Wow, I wonder how you could incorporate that in a portable band saw...would double production.
Quote from: OlJarhead on February 13, 2016, 01:10:13 PM
Wow, I wonder how you could incorporate that in a portable band saw...would double production.
That is what I was trying to infer - I will dump it on the brain trust up here..... We have Pat my logger - welder - maker of anything home made.... Built his big circle saw mill from the ground up with stuff from iron piles around the country. Plus has the little band saw mill.... Then we have a new guy sorts of.... he is a South African and a master machinist as well as a master knife maker.... You ought to see his shop..... [shocked] if it is metal he can mill it!!!
Quote from: garyc on February 13, 2016, 12:22:32 PM
Rick, I was a saw filer for several years. The mill that I worked at had a head rig that used a 54''lower dia blade and a 36'' upper blade. We would saw the log to a 20'' cant. then we would send it over to the re-saw building that used a twin band set up. The bands were 10'' wide X 67' long. You are right, the band saw wheels are ground with a crown on them. The bands are benched out using a roller that stretches the center of the band longer then the edges and the back of the band is longer than the front. This would keep the band from coming off the wheels. The lower picture you're showing is an Armstrong automatic bench that takes out the bumps and ridges. The upper picture is a profiling grinder that sharpens the blade.
WOW you are exactly right in fact I was reading the article on the automatic bench and the computer touch screen when I stole that photo. (I collect a lot of old sawmill photos....) We never had anything like that when I was a kid..... They did a lot of pinging and banging with hammers. ;) 20" cant now days is a big log..... When I was a kid we seen a lot of three log loads going in to Emmet, Horse Bend and Boise Cascades Barber Mill. (Boise)
Could you guys grind or profile both sides at once or have to flip the it? Seems like the Barber mills they had to turn them..... I liked hang out in those filers rooms or shacks..... or over in the planermans shack or room.... The filers and the planer setters where like a step a above.... I still wanted to be the danged sawyer though ...... ;)
Rick, On a double sided band you had to flip it over to sharpen. these bands wold be 12'' or wider with a lot more tension in them. The mill that I worked at the re-saw ran apposed to each other so we could saw two boards at once. (So we had a left hand and a right hand cut) Sometimes when we where getting low on one of the bands (left or right) We would turn the opposite band inside out. That was a very dangerous job! We also had the auto bench. It did save a lot of time but if the band had a lot of damage to it we still had to get out the benching hammer and do a lot of pinging. We would change bands every 4 hr of running so on a good day I only had to bench & sharpen 4 bands a day. On a bad day when you are sawing low grade cants with a lot of knots & cracks in them we would change every 2 hours. It would take me 1- 1/2 to 2 hours to do one band so some days I had to work a lot of over time so the mill would have enough bands for the next day. The worst part of the job you could not take off a week vacation. You only got off a day here & there when you where caught up. When I left the mill the mill owners bough a auto bench & tensioner to make the next saw filer job a lot easier. Boy did I get screwed!
Quote from: OlJarhead on February 13, 2016, 01:10:13 PM
Wow, I wonder how you could incorporate that in a portable band saw...would double production.
I was wondering if you could put a second head on your mill and cut two boards at the same time.
I had a brain fart! What if you put a second head on your portable mill backwards and use it to cut a board off going the other direction.
Too much moving them out of each others way otherwise you'll be dragging one blade off...unless I'm not seeing it ??? I think it'd be simpler and faster to figure out how to gig back faster... although on a circle mill I can gig back fast enough to throw the carriage and the log out into the road, which ends up being not fast atall.
This is a 1 min youtube of a rossing head debarker, there are others in the sidebar.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Q5AQFOpFfk
The bandmills usually run a mudsaw down the sawline just ahead of the blade if they want to do the same thing. I keep a wire brush to knock off the sawline if its really caked or rocky but I run through a lot of stuff that a debarker gets off at a big mill.
Quote from: Don_P on February 13, 2016, 10:24:33 PM
Too much moving them out of each others way otherwise you'll be dragging one blade off...unless I'm not seeing it ??? I think it'd be simpler and faster to figure out how to gig back faster... although on a circle mill I can gig back fast enough to throw the carriage and the log out into the road, which ends up being not fast atall.
snip.................................................................
not a good idea putting the carriage in the middle of the road and having to get it all gathered up...... Boss don't like that ;)
Wonder if using a spring tensioner - idler and a wider double sided bandsaw might work but then I guess you never will butcher 500,000 ft in a day. Plus without something to knock the bark off.... One reason I like the idea of making your cant with a circle saw and turning it over to the bandsaw.....
At that point one way to go is to make the sawhead stationary and the cants pass through the saw. They can then pass through in a line, run out the rear, move horizontally, conveyor back to the front, slide in and go through again, a continuous line of cants. The saw is never out of cut. You can see them at some of the log shows. That can all be fabricated using pretty cheap salvage parts.
The downside of a circle mill, my blade is starting to blister inside that will be a bad day. But it has run an awful lot of feet an awful lot cheaper than band(s).
Quote from: Don_P on February 14, 2016, 12:13:07 AM
At that point one way to go is to make the sawhead stationary and the cants pass through the saw. They can then pass through in a line, run out the rear, move horizontally, conveyor back to the front, slide in and go through again, a continuous line of cants. The saw is never out of cut. You can see them at some of the log shows. That can all be fabricated using pretty cheap salvage parts.
The downside of a circle mill, my blade is starting to blister inside that will be a bad day. But it has run an awful lot of feet an awful lot cheaper than band(s).
Around here in the soft wood mills the old guys use to call that a merry go round. Series of transport chains that moved the cants back into position to go through the resew again.
How big of circle saw do you need? Stuff available down your way? I can keep a eye out up this way......
I've heard it called that or a run around.
My mill is a Timberking running a 46" blade with no drive pins, an oddball, I think an old Foley Belsaw blade would bolt up. Sometimes the entire mill shows up cheaper than a new blade. Doing that I could add to my track and weld the two carriages together. I can have one made in Richmond or Atlanta for about 2500 and get a really nice one. Guys have worked some of these mills over and run a standard 54" blade. One that was on sawmill exchange turned the thing into a 30' long portable mill, it looked like it would be fun to trailer :D. Although the 10' long trailer/main husk less blade with the carriage secured on that and bolt on extensions and it could probably move and setup in a day. a setup with that and the resaw would be more for a moderate sized site you would be working for weeks or longer. Old Meadows and Frick mills go pretty cheap. I've also toyed with the idea of modifying a bandmill to run on the 30' of track... and then think, oh yeah I need another project :D
I thank this blog is going to get into trouble! I,m thinking of buying my own band saw mill It would come in handy I could mill my own siding for my barn and other buildings that I,m planning on putting up. (chicken coop,fire wood shed & garden shed ) All I need is permission from my wife. :)
I do have a question how long should I air dry red oak before using it for barn siding?
You won't go wrong if you can sticker it under tin for a year. A mill is fun but is another task. If the list of projects is relatively short I think its better to bring in a portable mill. If sawdust is in your veins, that's a horse of another color :). I've been working on a complicated mostly wooden mechanical project in a friends woodshop, my mind changes on grabbing a stick when I know he has paid for it where if we were working in my shop, have at it and if it doesn't work, no problem, dimensional firewood.
2nd to Don's post! If sawdust is in your veins.....well it is mine and look what I'm up to! ha!
Thanks you guys for the reply. I do have a lot of saw dust in my veins. The wife and I did a lot of wood working for a living for several years. We built outdoor furniture out of white oak and small tables and nick nacks for inside of the house using red oak. Then after that I worked at a saw mill as a saw filer for several more years. I do have a lot of trees that I will be cutting down some red oak hickory & hack berry.They are in the way where we will be putting a pond. Some of the trees are 3' dia at the base. I would rather cut these log into lumber instead of fire wood.
That's why I got a mill and I haven't regretted it. We had cleaned up after hurricane Hugo and a couple of years later an ice storm after rain layed over a ton of nice trees. I couldn't see turning them into firewood, I can heat off the tops and slabs easily. It's paid for itself many times over. Those 8x8's we laid off the other day cost $135 ea at the building supply.
A friend about 3 miles down the road shares a knuckleboom we went in on this year. He has a 6' bar Alaskan mill and a Lucas swingblade with a 5' slabbing attachment on it. That is a nice setup. A swingblade can handle a massive log where it sits, you set up the mill over the log. With the slabbing bar you can take off tabletops etc. With the swingblade setup on the same powerhead and track you have a small ~2' circle blade and can nibble through the tree right to the ground taking off boards up to about 2x8's at a time. That's another setup if your logs are too big to move or too big for a different mill. If somebody calls me with a big log I give them the other Don's number real quick. Although that slabbing bar is kind of what led to the knuckleboom. After he cut a 5" thick 3'wide x 12' long oak tabletop, the saw was out of cut for a long time.
In one song from a local band "Son, there ain't no money in... sawdust ;D"
Don, how did you dry out the 5'' x 3; table top without it cracking up? that would make one big heavy table to move.
[cool] It's official! And I can't contain myself! We're buying a brand spanking new WoodMizer LT35HD! :D
OH YA! Let the sawdust fly! :D
Quote from: OlJarhead on February 17, 2016, 01:09:29 PM
[cool] It's official! And I can't contain myself! We're buying a brand spanking new WoodMizer LT35HD! :D
OH YA! Let the sawdust fly! :D
That is a beast of a portable saw mill. you are going to love it. I'm Julius :( How did you talked your wife into spending that kinda money? my wife will let me spend around $5,000 on one. This is the one that I'm looking at. http://www.hud-son.com/products/product-detail/oscar-328
OK things are moving fast! WM talked me into upgrading to the LT40HD instead :D They are on sale and they are sweetening the deal for me...about $4k more overall but worth it I think.
Talking my wife into it? I've turned down a lot of jobs in the last 18months or so...jobs that would have paid for the mill. She sees that and I think realizes the potential to earn an income with a highproduction mill :)
Now I'll be selling my LT10 Super for $6k but you have to come get it! lol
That is going to be a lot of saw dust! I thank you are doing the right thing buying the bigger one. The old saying (Go big or go home). You should be able to make a lot more money pr hr with the LT40hd I wouldn't mind buying your LT10 but it's to far of a drive to get it and I don't need one on a trailer If I buy one I'm going to put it on a concrete foundation with a roof over it. Keep it lower to the ground so it would be easier to load.
A friend made a good sideline biz using a Norwood, might be worth looking at theirs too. As I was toting the welder around yesterday, one tool leads to another :D. An email circulated through our little group yesterday morning a shop of tools had come up for sale, had to chuckle when I got home last night, they lasted 16 minutes from when the email was first sent.
(https://scontent-lax3-1.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-xpf1/v/t1.0-9/12592718_1074972035889033_5816482271853691135_n.jpg?oh=834a18c29cb7a474caf1ec5ebc4b6267&oe=57626D90)
Guess I just like Orange ;) and the WMLT40HD is the workhorse of the industry. Probably the industry standard.
I'm stoked...I mean busting at the seams wide out stoked!
I will pick it up next week some time and then drag it into the mountains to mill my own lumber with it before I'm tied up milling for others!
Holy cow! Lots of interest in my mill already (kinda shocked at how fast they came in). 3 emails on it off CL and two cash offers though both below asking price. I think I'll have the little mill sold in a week!!!
So stoked I can't stand it...going to be a LONG weekend! lol
OlJarhead, When you get your new mill in we would like to see pic's of it in action or maybe a short video. [cool]
You bet! I pick it up Wednesday!!! :o [cool]
Mine is now working great since I changed the drive wheels to 16" from 14". Haven't broken any more blades. The Timberwolf blade people know what they are talking about. Also instead of water lube, I use a 50/50 mix of chainsaw bar lube and diesel oil in a spray bottle. Water causes rust and cracking eventually. Also per Timberwolf. Water is not bandsaw blade lubricant. :)
Quote from: glenn kangiser on February 28, 2016, 01:04:10 PM
Mine is now working great since I changed the drive wheels to 16" from 14". Haven't broken any more blades. The Timberwolf blade people know what they are talking about. Also instead of water lube, I use a 50/50 mix of chainsaw bar lube and diesel oil in a spray bottle. Water causes rust and cracking eventually. Also per Timberwolf. Water is not bandsaw blade lubricant. :)
Wow, lots of interest in this thread!
About the lubricant, is using diesel and bar oil not spoiling to the wood by the stink it leaves on it etc?
Woodmizer pretty much swears by using water, water and windshield washer fluid and their lubemizer mix. I've used mostly water for the last 4 or 5 years and it works well for me.
It doesn't leave enough on the wood to be noticeable but it is not a great thing. Log builders used to spray the logs with diesel to slow down bluestain, the owners of those homes don't notice. I've been through a gallon of oil in one spot in a day with a chainsaw mill, I'm more concerned with what that does to the site. Generally use the least toxic blade lube you can get away with, if water works, use that, if it needs a little pine sol, that is probably more friendly than old oil. My circle blade uses no lube, if you're cooling a headsaw you have much deeper problems. The old tractor that drives the mill.. we're back to the oil problem d*.
The reason Timberwolf recommends bar oil and diesel mix is because it does not do damage to the blade. Water can start rusting and pitting the blade then cracking and failure. These blades are thin high strength blades with hardened teeth and possibly back edges as Timberwolf does. Any pit along the edge of the blade or between the teeth can cause failure then there goes $30. The oil mix also works as a bit of a solvent to remove sticky residue from the blade. It relieves sticking immediately and makes the blade run smoothly, lightening the load on the engine. I do not use a continuous flow. I just mix it in a spray bottle and spray it in a stream as I see build up on the blade or pulling down of the engine.
The sawdust removes most of it from the cut and blade. You will see a bit when you first spray it but in a day or two you wont see anything as the oil spreads through the wood. There is nearly no noticeable smell.... you use much less than you would in a chainsaw cutting the trees down. A pint of mix will last me around a thousand board feet. Typically I use a few sprays every few feet of cut... occasionally on the bottom of the blade, but generally on top near the teeth as I move forward cutting. Mine is a hand push saw. :)
You will also have less mold problems if you don't get it stickered right away. Water actually swells the wood more and makes it grab a bit. Its not really slippery... try it in your engine in place of oil... no.. don't. [ouch]
Also, oil is a great wood finish in itself... haven't you heard of a hand rubbed diesel.... ummm Danish oil finish? ???
Actually after I wrote above about not watering a headsaw, Rick and I pm'ed back and forth a couple of times. Western mills do use water on circular saws... I need to pay more attention to those around here. The ones that I know of that were trying it really had alignment issues and were trying to solve the resulting heating problem with cooling water, you ain't gonna get out of the problem that way. I suspect on the mills around Rick they have found it helps with pitch buildup. That might help when I'm sawing something like ash, most of the guys around here will run a poplar or basswood log through after a few ash logs to clean the blade up and then continue. I did run a huge ash through one time without knowing better and ended up at the sawdoc getting the blade rehammered. One of those jobs where I kept going till the money ran out d*. Hmm, that might be a neat pictorial sometime. I loaded that tree onto the trailer solo by parbuckling it up over the side. A handy trick when there isn't lifting equipment around.
I'm using water with pinesol and dish soap now -- as recommended by WM....
Never did post vids did I? Who's interested?
I'm interested.
I rebuilt my saw with 16 inch wheels from the factory 14" wheels. No more blade breakage and may get to sharpen them a couple times before throwing them out. :)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cW_MqjCqSbA
This vid was done when I was still learning on the saw. I'll have to do some new ones as I am MUCH faster and smoother today :D
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tfv3BBApyHA
Customer shot vid of loading a big pine on the mill.
Nice videos. Thanks for taking the time to post them here. Great to see you in action . Nice saw too. :)
I wish I had the features you have on your saw... but I'm cheap and ... I can make boards. [ouch]
That log looks heavy... how much you figure it weighed?
How much can the saw lift? More than the tractor?
Quote from: glenn kangiser on June 03, 2016, 07:56:40 PM
Nice videos. Thanks for taking the time to post them here. Great to see you in action . Nice saw too. :)
I wish I had the features you have on your saw... but I'm cheap and ... I can make boards. [ouch]
:) I would be too but I want to make more boards for less for others :) With this mill I can compete with anyone out there (in fact I found out my rates are much lower than my competitors in the OK County area and around there).
Quote from: Adam Roby on June 03, 2016, 07:58:04 PM
That log looks heavy... how much you figure it weighed?
How much can the saw lift? More than the tractor?
According to the FF log weight calculator it weighed in around 3500lbs :o but the mill can lift 4500lbs ;D
The tractor couldn't lift the log at all but could roll it and he tried helping me lift it but I asked him to back up as it could damage the mill and I just needed him to make sure the log wouldn't roll back off the loader arms at the start which they can do when they are big. I need to order a hook to strap onto the log clamp and then I wouldn't have had that problem ;) Just one of the tricks you learn.
That log scaled at 450bf and I produced over 500 from it :D
Good Job. :)