Unconventional Sawmill Build

Well that’s creepy… are you spying on me?
I just dug it out of the ice today and worked out some bugs. I’ll post an update in the morning.

 

Toe Tapping.........................

 

My daughter started basketball -with my wife as their coach- so the basketball hoop that is directly over the sawmill needed to get cleared of snow and ice a few weeks ago. The sawmill became the snow pile. This thawed and froze enough times to become a giant block of ice. An hour spent with a shovel, breaker bar and weed burner, and I was back in business.

One problem I’ve been having from day one; there’s just not enough rigidity in the bar to keep it from walking. Especially when making a first cut, there’s notably more material on one side of the chain, and it wants to gravitate towards the easier cut. The bar bends progressively through the cut, and it eventually tries pushing the chain sideways off the bar.

I figured out a solution for this yesterday. I ran a bolt through the trolley to act as a stop against the bar.



This worked amazingly well. If I ever have an issue with it walking the other way, I can modify this piece to act as a C-clamp on the bar. But for now, it’s working great.

The other issue was the trolly hitting the stock. I set the log up on 2” spacers, and now it clears. I’ll eventually make some permanent spacers and weld them on.

This thing is almost dialed in. The speed at which I can push the saw through the log is impressive.



One more thing I want to do is make some cuts in the legs where the clamp assemblies slide in to allow them to move in about 2” further. Slight miscalculation on my part.

 

Your 10mm socket is under your left foot...

 

Ha! Jokes on you… All of mine are accounted for in their drawers. Maybe I should go buy a lottery ticket.




One more thing…. I’m adding heavy washers to the clamps. The tips were boring endlessly into the logs.

 

endlessly boring.?......

HAHAH

 

I had some time yesterday morning…

I sliced up the rest of the off-fall into 2” x 24” strips.



And welded them onto the tops of the bed legs. This gives me the clearance I need for the log to clear the trolley, and also gives a little extra grip to keep the log from sliding horizontally under force.



But… I had about 6 welds left to do and…

 

Nice, Man.......... & ain't it always the way? BTW, This poor 'Ol guy always worries about the rust Futures ? Especially on all that 'Virgin' steel . Any ideas ?

 

..and wire coat hangers are getting hard to find these days.

 

Can’t say I didn’t think about it, but there’s no plug end on my stick welder at the moment.

I’m not concerned. The parts that matter are getting a coating of bar oil spritzed on them constantly, and I painted the parts that won’t. The rest is heavy iron… it can rust. We’re not in a rust belt, so it won’t get out of control.

 

I made these simple spacer blocks to slide the log up against. I’ll make different blocks for different thicknesses, but these are for a rough 1 7/8+” cut for dimensional lumber.



Here’s a 2 x 12 x 13’ board



I’m extremely pleased with this thing. It cuts like butter, and it’s nice to finally have a use for this otherwise useless ponderosa pine.

 

Is there any way you can shoot a short video in action?

 

I’ll work on that. I have to bring another log over first.

 

How cool is that !!

 

Here’s the last of that big log. Getting one final 2x6 out if it.

The feed speed is interesting. Any faster than this, regardless of cutting depth, it wants to veer off to the left. I think my chain is dull. But it was cutting the 13” stuff earlier at this same speed, just a whole lot more sawdust.

 

I mean, it'd be nifty, if you had an autofeed of some sort, but that seems to work pretty well.

 

I like to feel the resistance. If I hit a knotty area and don’t know to adjust my feed rate, I’m afraid I’d break a chain. This has more power than I think the chain could handle.

I would like to add some sort of handlebars or something.

 

Holy crud thats AWESOME!!!!

Thanks!

 

I got some bent Beta Xtrainer ones you can have.....