Lost a tooth!!

[Corley5]

  While sawing a frozen cherry I threw my first insert tooth.  Luckily it didn't hurt anything.  Another tooth and shank and we were sawing again in a few minutes.  Apparently the saw hit an extra hard frozen knot and knocked it loose.  I guess.  I finished my slab cut and noticed that the last quarter of the face was scored pretty deep.  The saw just more than touched the log on next cut and there were some sparks and a different noise.  Whoa  Time to stop.  That cherry log sawed hard!!  The other logs were also frozen but sawed really nice.  There were four eastern hemlock from 8 to 16', one 16' big tooth aspen that was 22" on the small end and 4 red pines from 6' to 12' long.  The aspen sawed extra nice.  No fuzzing nice clean cut.  I didn't get purple stains on me from the water that would have come out of the hemlock in warm weather and the pine borers were frozen solid.  Just a good day in the sawmill ;D and the weather was nice too.  It got close to forty with some sun around noon 8) 8) 8)

[Jeff]

Greg sometimes you get lucky, and then sometimes when you pull a shank in frozen timber it doesn't throw clear and you hit it with the rest of your teeth. Can result in one nasty chain reaction.

We have been dealing with a bunch of half frozen timber with this fool weather. Everything should be froze by now and it just isn't. Last I heard they are calling for 40 and rain Monday.

[WV_hillbilly]

  Jeff would you consider that to be like a train wreck. By the time you figure out what happened it's way to late.  If it isn,t stuck in the wood where do the teeth usually end up at in the sawdust pile or stuck into one of your walls?

Hillbilly

[Jeff]

Very often they go straight up.

Here is a picture of the roof over the headsaw. It is cropped from a picture taken by whitepe. Click on the picture to see the detailed full version. It REALLY shows how tore up the roof has gotten from shrapnel.

[Gordon]

Jeff good reason you sit behind bullet proof glass. Guess Greg just has to have quicker reflexes with no protection. Any of you circle saw guys ever had the tar scared out of ya from flying debris?


Gordon

[Bro. Noble]

One of our feed haulers showed me his arm where a tooth went through it.  He used to run a head saw but now prefers hauling feed.

A friend of mine was shot in the leg (point blank) with a 30-06.  The scars looked about the same.

Noble

[Jeff]

In 1982 I was taken to the hospital from flying debri. I worked for O'neal and Co at that time in Clare Michigan.  I was always told that the glass in that booth was bullet proof.

The sawbooth's exit at this mill went directly outside. It was just a box built on the side of the sawbuilding. It had about s steps into it. It was not uncommon for me to step out now and again to stretch or take a p break. This day the guy stacking looked up and noticed I was gone. Not uncommon. After 15 minutes he looked up again. 15 minutes was NOT common. Thats when he noticed the basketball sized hole punched in the sawbooth glass.

Turns out I was laying in the corner of the booth. I got put to sleep by a large chunk of beech. It was a sheared log that had shattered. As I started into the saw it came unglued. Thats the last I remember till they had me sitting in the break room. I went to the hospital got x-rayed and was diagnosed with a concusion. I went back that day and finished the load. By the time I got back they had REAL safety glass installed. I missed the next 2 days because both eyes swelled completely shut from being hit between them with that chunk of beech.

Since then I have been hurt 3 other occasions for the same thing. Never from being hit but by flinching so bad that I put my neck out of joint. The stuff just bounces off the glass we have at this mill.

[J Beyer]

Jeff B,

Tell us what type of material that your safety "glass" is made of.  Would be nice to know what it is for other types of machinery.

JB

[Jeff]

I am not sure of the name of what we have now. It will crack but can be penetrated. It was there befoe me at this mill. It is in its second booth. When we put this mill in in 84 we tore the old booth out and built this one using the same glass.

I do know its layers of plastics and glass compressed together.

[WV_hillbilly]

 I would say that with your initial experience Jeff anything hitting the glass would cause you to flinch.  That roof looks like it has taken a bunch of direct hits from flying debris.  How much downtime is there when you lose the teeth out of the blade ?

While  we are on blade breakage . What happens when a bandmill blade breaks ? Does it usually just stop in the cut or what ?I have had chains come off a chainsaw and hit me in the hand . I is curious about the reaction of bandmill blades when they break.

 Hillbilly

[J_T]

Type bullet proof glass in the search bar it is very intresting.I have a few peices some one tosed out at my junkyard Nise stuff a local Co lined sone walls of a trayler for a carnavil where they counted their money. That problum I don't got.

[Jeff]

We used to have a bandsaw resaw at the mill. Only once a band broke. It broke while the guys were away from it. it just sat there for quite a bit with the wheels spinning, By that time I had gotten to the main which was closest to me, and killed it. This was a 6 inch band. it did ok tell the one end that started flopping slid over, turned back, and caught a top wheel spoke. Holy crap. Dont ever want to me near one of those! a ribbon of stell about 20 feet long slashing in the air. It only lasted a moment and let go but it looked wicked.

I will have to take a pic of the old girl. We still have it but dont run it. It was a center splitter. Would split anything down the center, or you couyld tilt the feed and cut diagonal for lap siding. I think its for sale. Big ole girl.

Down time for lost teeth? Not long to change. I can change 52 teeth and be running agin in 15 minutes. Long as the saw is not damaged.

[Tom]

Hillbilly,

Those mills with "smooth" band wheels and Drive pulleys on the outside of the Sheet Metal housings will generally stop in place when they break. Most of the blade is in the cut and the rest is contained in the shroud, sometimes a little will be exposed from the sawdust shoot.  That's why nobody, NOBODY should hold their hand in the sawdust stream.

Mills that have nuts or bolts or other fixtures sticking out of the side of the blade wheels and have drive pulleys and belts inside of the shroud will send blades flying and actually tear them into little bits that are sent out the sawdust shoot.  When the blade breaks, the loose blade contacts these things which catch it and wad it up.  I've had spinning blades protruding out the front of my blue saw by 4 or 5 feet.

If the drive pulleys of your mill are inside of the shroud and/or the band wheels have nuts or bolts protruding from their sides, be very careful with where your off-bearers and spectators stand.

[WV_hillbilly]

 Thats not much downtime to change 52 teeth.
That would be a scary thing to be involved with all  of that broken blade flopping around out of control.  Are you saying you where at the controls of the resaw when things let go or am I reading too much into the story ? It seems that thing like that happen to me once in a while when no one is around . Just my luck ,  someone pulled the pin on the thing and said go ahead its  ready for you to run. OOPS it  broke and then you see if anyone actually saw it happen and if you have all your body parts still in the right places. And once in a while you have to check your drawers to see  if you need to change them also :-[

Hillbilly

[Tom]

Yes, I was at the controls and the saw was in the log or just coming out of the log when it would break.  I run bands for as much life as I can get from them (yes I resharpen).  When their time is up they usually don't give much warning they just break. Sometimes I notice one not tracking properly or hear a click from a crack but not always.

It's the design of the mill that allows the blade to break without being thrown outside of the shroud.  If there is nothing inside of the shroud to catch the blade then it won't go anywhere.  It loses tension, backs off of the drive pulley and just sits there.

[Ron Wenrich]

I've never had anything come throught the window at me.  But, I've had my share of cracked windows.  The quickest way to break a window is to put in a new one.   :D  

It seems every time I replace one, it gets hit with a chunk and cracks.  I won't change the window until it gets pretty bad.

I never thought I was throwing my teeth and shanks up in the air until I started to notice holes in the roof.  Most times, they get spit into the sawdust trough and get sucked out through the blower.  

I don't have too many problems if I keep good shanks in the saw.  Sometimes you have to go to an oversized shank as the shoulders start to seperate from use or from hitting too much trash.

[ARKANSAWYER]

  Back in "95" I was running a big saw and hit some wire and threw a tooth.  It went through the tin roof and sounded like a .22 mag.  I looked out my side glass and was all alone in the building.  The blade exited the log and I shut down to change and sharpen teeth.  It was not untill the blade stopped did I see any one.  The oldest hand that ran the edger showed me several scars and is pretty fast about unassing the AO.  Our roof looked like Jeff B's and I bounced several off of the glass.  It is the cracked chuncks of wood on butt cuts that would really wake you up.
  On my band mill it will just pop and stop but the idle wheel will run for several mins.  Rodney had a blade break on him the other day and he was going to try to back the head up while the idle wheel was still spinning.  I yelled but was to late.  The blade caught the belt on the idle wheel and cut it up.  Best thing to do is stop and wait for th wheel to die on it's own.  But on my WM it is not dangerous when the blade brakes as it is incased pretty good.   I do wear a face shield while sawing and the de-barker has dents in it.
ARKANSAWYER

[Don P]

I've had some stuff thrown out of shattered ends, it sure reminds you to go ahead and firewood a ragged butt cut. Dropped one shank but it went down. Had a knot attached to a piece of dangling bark catch the back of the blade and come by to break the handle on a dog.  I threw the log and carriage on a rocking chair log I had not dogged properly early on in my learning curve...course I had an audience, my sister, her husband and my nephew. The next family gathering Mom made certain I understood that her grandbabies were to be kept well clear of the mill .
Scariest thing I think ever happened was on a moulder. A three wing carbide crown molding cutterhead had what we found out later was a bad braze on one wing. It came detatched and then was hit by the others as they came around at 6000rpm. It looked like a bomb went off. Luckily my tail man had just stepped back to stack. It took out the cast dust cover and sent carbide through a tar and gravel over steel deck roof, the back wall got sprayed pretty good too. I hit the panic button on the way to grabbing a good hunk of floor. After a good long lunch we were doing repair and I cut my hand, a chunk of carbide was embedded in a wrench I kept right by my thigh.
After that I checked every braze for defects before running, making sure there were no cracks in the carbide and the seam was neat smooth and uniform with no pinholes...we sent a chair rail cutterhead back. I do this check even to router bits now but have never caught a bad one.

[Larry]

Don P
When I took the Gol 1-4 training 3 years ago one of the things they covered was the ragged butt and how that little chunk can go through the wall.  I never thought a thing about it until I got the training but if you see a butt log from me it will me a smoothie.
Larry

[Ron Wenrich]

I've only had one log thrown off the carriage.  It was a big white oak with a ring of shake.  A piece got wedged between the offbearer and the saw.  That pushed the saw into the log on the gig back.  Too much pressure and whipped the log off the carriage.  Glad I run an automatic.

The vertical edger will whip edging strips to the back of the mill.  I've put them right through the wall when I miss the metal backboard.

The worst thing I've heard of is a guy who hit his dogs on the gig back.  It shattered the saw.

[Jeff]

Yep, those vertical edgers will produce some missles. We have some 10 quarter cottonwood nailed across the barn 6X6 poles for a backstop. I have imbedded edges in them several times.

[Corley5]

We had our old four sided planer fly apart once.  We were planning 2X6 popple studs for my house when it happened.  A knot pulled in one which caused the one following to ride up on it.  It threw knives, bearing parts, bolts and chunks of the 1/2" thick cast iron top shield everywhere.  Everybody ran for cover fast.  We had to replace the top head's shaft and pillow blocks, weld up the shield and add another one just in case and were running the next day.