Portable Sawmill

[gmason]

Well, sorry for the absence from this thread, bad weather and sick family has kept me from getting going, as well as a few "upgrades" to the saw. I added some fenders to the wheel as a little more protection and in order to add a mud flap to keep the saw dust from going everywhere. I also added a windshield reservoir and pump to it so that I can oil the blade automatically.

I went into a production mode over the weekend with some nice weather and a little help. We sawed 4 pine logs from 14' to 17'. I roughed them out to a lot of 2 by..

Here's some pics. Sorry no action pics this time.. maybe this coming weekend I'll remember the camera.

gary

[gmason]

here's the milled pieces in there temparary location. I've got to sort and move them to my MIL place to air dry. We just don't have any place here that gets good sun and air movement to stack them.
The boards on the right side here are the 17'.

[gmason]

here's the next log, 21' with a little curve to it. I'm going to try to get a nice 6x8-10 out of it.
g

[SPIKER]

Hi Gmason et all:

Nice looking contraption!

the boss and I have looked into building our own. as we have excellent shop and build all kinds of stuff.

the basic principal behind the blade staying on the tires is a principal that I forget the name of but the tires have a CROWN when inflated to pressure. which is a shape that the blade will try to roll UP onto and stay on the highest spot. that means the blade will roll to the center of the tire, unless the tire wears off the peak then you will have to over inflate it some to maintain the donut shape. others use large sheels with a rubber band vulconized on them which has a built in crown rather than inflating the tires over pressure.

anyhow all in all a good job.

p.s. you should lay you're wood FLAT as soon as possable even if it is stacked on top of each other with out the air spaces. letting it set for a few hrs like the one photo shos is enough to put a twist that may never come out when it is dry.

use some spacers cut down so they are all the same thickness. and space each pile appart with air gaps so the log planks will dry evenly. there is also a lot of products that will help prevent checking and splitting and is only applyed to the ends of the freash cut boards. from what I'm told if you are prepping them for later use as finished lumber (planed to dim.) then the end coating is almost required to keep the good board feet up.

Mark M [img]/forums/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

[slowzuki]

www.forestryforum.com has an excellent sawmilling forum. There are hundreds of person years of experience hanging around over there!

Ken