How to Use a Sawmill (H. Freight). Manifesting my Logs into Beams and Dreams...

Watch Ryder · February 08, 2016, 08:37:28 PM

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:

Into this:

I had a roof to build and got stuck in.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ifEAX2u6KFg

glenn kangiser · February 12, 2016, 01:44:35 PM

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.

February 12, 2016, 03:48:53 PM

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

OlJarhead · February 12, 2016, 04:03:31 PM

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!

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.

OlJarhead · February 12, 2016, 04:06:29 PM

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!

February 12, 2016, 05:13:47 PM

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).

OlJarhead · February 12, 2016, 05:55:06 PM

We make sawdust

Lumber is the byproduct

And yes! There is a lot of cleanup but we love it

rick91351 · February 12, 2016, 06:14:05 PM

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?

OlJarhead · February 12, 2016, 06:33:34 PM

My son works in a sawmill that produces 1,000,000 board feet in a shift!!!

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...

February 12, 2016, 10:48:06 PM

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!!!

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....

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.

Don_P · February 13, 2016, 08:16:31 AM

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

.

rick91351 · February 13, 2016, 09:20:21 AM

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....

rick91351 · February 13, 2016, 10:14:25 AM

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.

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.

garyc · 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.

February 13, 2016, 12:33:21 PM

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/

OlJarhead · February 13, 2016, 01:10:13 PM

Wow, I wonder how you could incorporate that in a portable band saw...would double production.

rick91351 · February 13, 2016, 02:31:25 PM

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.....

if it is metal he can mill it!!!

rick91351 · February 13, 2016, 02:54:38 PM

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 ......

garyc · February 13, 2016, 04:57:46 PM

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!

garyc · February 13, 2016, 05:38:40 PM

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.

February 13, 2016, 06:30:05 PM

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.

Don_P · 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.

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.

rick91351 · February 13, 2016, 11:36:06 PM

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.....

Don_P · 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).

rick91351 · February 14, 2016, 12:48:14 AM

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......