Simple little singulator/stop and load

[longtime lurker]

You can tell you're addicted to sawdust when after a 14 hour day in a sawmill you eventually find yourself watching sawmill videos on Youtube :D

ummm... yeah. Anyhow, spotted this little singulator and thought of a couple you guys who mill fixed or pretty much so. Wouldn't be hard to build, would work well with an inclined log deck, and looks like it'd be a natural to feed an existing bandmill loader setup. Around the 3.40 mark you get a half decent look at it. (Ignore the sawmill... they're a nice enough mill but she sounds underpowered and maybe a bit of new driver learning the ropes as well)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ekgjf-XQh8Q&t=26s

John

[millwright]

I like the deck, but the mill looks a little tedious : a lot of moves for what's being done

[longtime lurker]

It's not the mill. She sounds a little underpowered but its mostly a sawyer doing the job the long way methinks.

Kara/Laimet is like a Ford/Chevy thing. Try this one for size...

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

[Percy]

It's not the mill. She sounds a little underpowered but its mostly a sawyer doing the job the long way methinks.

Kara/Laimet is like a Ford/Chevy thing. Try this one for size...

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

We have this exact model(master) circa 1999 at our mill site. They work great on anything under 20 inches. Most accurate mill. Line bar fence/pineapple trumps my LT70 single clamp in stressed wood

[longtime lurker]

Mine is the F2000. Not a lot of difference in them except the master is designed to integrate with a full system with all the automatic edgers etc which I hope I'm never big enough to need. I've got custome hydraulic sizing rather then the digital though.

I kinda thought from something you mentioned a while back that you were looking at one. Replacement for that other "coulda been if they had of built it right" thing? They're a good little bench the Kara, as you say 20" as a log... and it only needs 3 cuts on something else to turn a 60" log into manageable pieces and if you can feed them sized flitches they zip along pretty good all day.

All of which distracts from that nice little singulator which would look pretty handy in front of a 70 I'd imagine. ;D

[Percy]

Mine is the F2000. Not a lot of difference in them except the master is designed to integrate with a full system with all the automatic edgers etc which I hope I'm never big enough to need. I've got custome hydraulic sizing rather then the digital though.

I kinda thought from something you mentioned a while back that you were looking at one. Replacement for that other "coulda been if they had of built it right" thing? They're a good little bench the Kara, as you say 20" as a log... and it only needs 3 cuts on something else to turn a 60" log into manageable pieces and if you can feed them sized flitches they zip along pretty good all day.

All of which distracts from that nice little singulator which would look pretty handy in front of a 70 I'd imagine. ;D

Ya. I cut the big ones on the 70(20-36). The Kara slide tech lamiet mills are money makers imo. Ours is equipped with a live deck and feeding mechanism which is necessary imo. It easily out produces my 70 which is a tad old. It be a good race between the Kara and 4x4s monster 70🤓🤓🤓

[starmac]

I like the deck or singulator, but I have a question on its use. I am no professional sawyer by any means, but I generally do just build a deck out of a couple of logs, or what ever is handy. Before I roll a log off the deck I raise my loader arms so that there is no shock to the mill when a log rolls off the deck, I noticed with his setup he is slamming the mill pretty hard, is this normal?

[Southside]

Lumber would have to pay a lot more than it does today just to cover the Workmans Comp premium to run one of those mills around these parts. 

[longtime lurker]

I like the deck or singulator, but I have a question on its use. I am no professional sawyer by any means, but I generally do just build a deck out of a couple of logs, or what ever is handy. Before I roll a log off the deck I raise my loader arms so that there is no shock to the mill when a log rolls off the deck, I noticed with his setup he is slamming the mill pretty hard, is this normal?

I think we all try and gentle it along a bit unless we're on a production bonus :D :D :D

Seriously, I think it depends on the mill. Generally mills that are designed to be fixed installations tend to be built a lot heavier to handle the bash bang and clatter of logs all day. When a couple of ton of irregularly shaped log hits the mill deck/carriage and then gets tossed around by a turner some slamming is unavoidable no matter how gentle you try and be.
Circles like these little guys here are quite a bit lighter because the logs they are designed to handle aren't that big. Having said that a full capacity log (20" x 24') on a Kara in my species would still weigh about  1¾ ton, but its still nothing like the weights a big canadian twin or a 12" band headrig is designed to handle. You also need to think about the duty cycle... they're built to be run shift on/shift off day in day out for years.

Portable mills being lighter need more care obviously. And you also have to factor in that if the log comes in too hard and does bash things about the mill will probably shift sideways before it breaks things, unlike a fixed installation where the whole thing is bolted onto footings of some sort.

I dont think any of us like to abuse the gear, and perhaps more accurately if you abuse your own gear you go broke and if you abuse mine you go home early with a nosebleed.
My dads way is to assess them like steers: All other things being equal the one with the greatest weight will win. There is little substitute for sheer mass of steel to impart strength and longevity to a mill.

[longtime lurker]

Ya. I cut the big ones on the 70(20-36). The Kara slide tech lamiet mills are money makers imo. Ours is equipped with a live deck and feeding mechanism which is necessary imo. It easily out produces my 70 which is a tad old. It be a good race between the Kara and 4x4s monster 70

If the logs are pretty clean I'll get around him while he's changing bands. And mine can still cut straight when its blunt 8)

Y'know I've always thought that a kara/laimet/slidetec in behind that other thing your son had would be a pretty good combination (if you could keep the other thing going). From there if you were doing a lot of 4/4 in higher value species a band resaw or little sash gang would be good. I like circles at the front of the mill where kerf doesnt mean so much and the cuts are deep and often dirty... but I bleed sometimes when we're in the high value stuff at the sheer $ going out the sawdust chute with the 1/4" kerf on the resaws