Milling addiction?

[flying pig]

Hi, I'm Brandon and I have a milling addiction! Ha ha. Would anyone be opposed to me doing a thread in milling on our saw mill build? I haven't ever really seen anyone post about sawmills on OPE, just CS milling, and am wondering if you guys would enjoy a build something from nothing thread?

 

[paragonbuilder]

Hi, I'm Brandon and I have a milling addiction! Ha ha. Would anyone be opposed to me doing a thread in milling on our saw mill build? I haven't ever really seen anyone post about sawmills on OPE, just CS milling, and am wondering if you guys would enjoy a build something from nothing thread?

Opposed? Are you kidding? I would love to see it!

 

[Rob Stafari]

Yeah man, bring it on!

 

[Rob Stafari]

I need to soak up as much as I can before I order mine later this month...

 

[flying pig]

Alright well it's going to be a slow go and a lot of work, this may be a year or a few build.

I picked up a sears roebuck belsaw for $50 a couple months ago after missing another mill at auction. It has a wood frame and is fairly light duty but has a 44" 26 tooth blade on it and a modified 3 dog carriage, which is far too light for what we want to do. So we have that...

My buddy and I partnered up in this little adventure, so he lined up a house trailer frame to build off of. The frame is fairly sturdy as sits, and is 57' long. We are going to narrow it up, beef it up big time, and away we go . He also lined up another blade, this one is 42" with 40 teeth, so a little more to our liking. Next he lined up a pile of tin, steel, gears, pulleys, chains, a transmission and a 125hp Perkins 6 cyl Diesel engine, also known as a combine. Ha ha. So that's going to be our power plant as well as gear train, log turner parts, hydraulic pump for the carriage drive, in feed ramp etc. Really, a combine was about the best source of free parts we could find to make a sawmill out of!

We started on the combine yesterday. It wasn't been ran in ten years, and was stuck solid from moisture build up in the liners and head. A few hours work and we had it freed up and running like a brand new engine. So at this point we have $250 dollars invested in this mill and we have most of our major cost parts covered.

More to come soon...

 

[czar800]

I love these kind of threads! Can't wait to see the progress!

 

[Mastermind]

Very cool.

 

[flying pig]

Here's the old mill we are robbing for parts. We need a heavier carriage for our plan though so the search is on.

 

[Mastermind]

When Glenda and I first got married I worked at a local sawmill. Built on the ground with a wooden frame, wooden carriage, and a Detroit for power. No telling how old it was. It was a fast mill though.....we sawed mostly hardwood ties and pine squares for timber frame homes. We didn't have a loader, everything was moved by hand. Needless to say, I was in good shape in those days.

 

[flying pig]

Well, things have taken a few weird turns the last few weeks. Not sure what direction things are going to take, guess we will see. But, we will be cutting wood very soon, just with the old wood sawmill. We are starting to patch it up this weekend, and we just hauled home our mobile power unit for it tonight:

 

[czar800]

Nice crawler, 420?

 

[flying pig]

Nice crawler, 420?

40, he figures it was built in 1953. It's a really neat little cat. Can't believe how light it is.

 

[flying pig]

More progress today. Got the mill blocked up and levelled, and disassembled the front section of track for rebuild. The timbers all need replacement, but the plan for now is to get the mill running and make it cut its own timbers. We want to fix this mill up and make it pay for our build on the new one or possibly purchasing one we looked at a few weeks ago if we decide to go professional and find a way to feed it.

Also did some levelling of the site today.

 

[flying pig]

Gave up on the old mill after two days of levelling and fighting. We kept the search for something better up, and found a Belsaw M14. For the price of it we couldn't be bothered to chase down building our own. The mill came with a Datsun L20B and manual transmission mounted on it.

We moved it yesterday just in the nic of time too. Any longer and we wouldn't have been able to drive our infeed posts, it hit -20 last night. Three hours to tear down, hour to move it home and 6 hours to weld it back together, level it and re attach the engine. The wood footings will have to do for the winter. We need to anchor it, build some guards, fix a couple worn parts, get the engine running and serviced and install teeth and it's time to start dialling it in.

 

[Wolverine]

Nice. You should see some production with that!

 

[TPA1]

My hat's off to you guys that can work in those temperatures. If it's below 40F, I see nothing but the inside of my house.

 

[customcutter]

Looking forward to more pics!

 

[flying pig]

Yup she's getting cold up here. It was about -4*F last night while we were trying to get the engine fired. We fought with that until 11:00 last night. We got pretty well everything else ready to run yesterday. The engine really fought us, we had ignition issues, then found out we had major fuel problems. We are going back out today to pull off the carb and fuel pump and bring them home for service.

Our 40" blade that was mounted on it has issues too. It's been abused pretty hard. The shank guides are all worn and some are bent. Also it has type B shanks and teeth but simalock type and they are discontinued. We have a 42" blade as well that we are going to try. Problem is it has 40 teeth, our 40" blade has 24 teeth. Not sure how our little Datsun powrplant is going to like that. Guess we'll see.

Has anyone seen a circular blade that doesn't use drive pins? The 40" blade has no drive pins and the collars have not been drilled for them.

If we can find someone to hammer our smaller blade we might send it out to get doctored. If the bigger blade seems good but we are underpowered we might get rid of the Datsun and put our 125hp Perkins on it. That engine would have no issue at all with that 42" blade.

 

[flying pig]

Well, it lives!

Had quite the sawmill day today. Went up and visited a fellow who has a mill near Valleyview, learned a bunch and watched him run a few down the track. Was awesome to see what can be built with some enginuity and effort.

Then we came back and worked on our engine again, and we got it up and running finally. Took a good carburetor, a new used distributor and a new used fuel pump. Away she goes!

Tomorrow we are going to mount a blade and file it up, then tip a few trees and send them down the tracks to work the engine a bit, then service it. We have a bunch of minor repairs to do on the mill to fix some things that are worn out and then we should be ready to rock.

We also bought an old IH 400 tractor to move material around and load the infeed once it is set up.

Time to line up some wood!

 

[Wolverine]

Sweet. Eager to see some pics!