Heard a Plink

[Rhodemont]

I mostly saw red oak which is much harder than the small amounts of maple and pine that I have milled.  Have a little bit of hickory from a blow down this winter and have been anxious to open one up and see what comes out.  Man, I thought the oak was hard...the hickory was way harder to get through.  Had just run a couple oaks and blade was moving right through but it was working to go through the hickory and producing very fine dust.  The wood is beautiful.  Right in the middle of a pass I heard a plink thinking something broke.  Mill continued to run.  I looked it over for any problems and did not see anything but did find half of a plastic gasket/washer/or spacer on top of the hydraulic control box about 1 inch ID and 1.5 OD.  Looks about the size to fit on the slide bar for the blade guide or maybe a bearing seal.  Looked at the parts diagrams, there are a lot of could it be that?

[moodnacreek]

Of the hard hardwoods, red oak is easy to saw especially if fresh cut. H. maple and hickory are much harder and if frozen they can test your ability. And then there is dead locust.

[scully]

Check the tension pullie on the drive . I would pull all the covers and check real close before I milled any further .

[4x4American]

He could be talking about black oak, that stuff is a bit hard to saw.  Soft maple and red oak saw like butter.  Hard maple is real tough and hickory is dependable, meaning it depends...frozen smooth bark hickory saws excellent with frost notch blades.  Shag bark hickory is not much fun.  Dead dried out locust..yea I know a guy who specializes in that he's just down the road call him at 1-800-leavemyyardrightnowanddontcomebackyahear lol

[Rhodemont]

Replaced the tension pulley recently so that was the first thing I looked at, seems ok. Will give a real once over before I run again. 
Shagbark is what I have, is it all that different?
Do have some black oak, likely some has been mixed in but do not specifically recall how it milled. 

[CCCLLC]

Shagbark is one of the toughest. Even the bark is very disagreeable.

[Dave Shepard]

Resawing an old locust cant was the only thing that ever really made the CAT grunt.