cirle sawmill sawiing?

[Dave_]

I guess another question I have besides lack of circle sawmill guys on the Forum is where is the LARGE and MEGA mill guys?

Who on the Forum represents the largest mill operation?

Most of the big 'uns in my neck of the woods are licking their wounds wondering where the housing market went  :'(

[bandmiller2]

WPLips,There are quit a few of us circular guys just seems we don't have all the questions the bandies do.I can't say much as I have a bandmill and a circular mill.I like boath but given my druthers I'll run the big wheel.An older handset circular mill is the best mill buy, but you end up with a mini industrial site.The foundation and set up are what discourage most hobby sawyers.Theirs nothing like watching a log going through the saw the smell the sound and the diesel up agenst the governor.Frank C.

[captain_crunch]

Good thing camera batterys were dead or I would be up fer belsaw abuse again ;D 29" small end  by 14 ft log got chewed up today. will have pics of lumber tomorrow. once you get it beavered down to 18 in so blade cuts thru is fun to cut biger ones. 8) 8) 8)
Brian

[bandmiller2]

Cap Crunch,now I know where you got your handle thats a bigun.What size headsaw are you turning?My first mill had a 44" and I never found a log I couldn't cut,at least back east trees.Frank C.

[captain_crunch]

Bandmiller2
I am runninga 46" with 36 teeth does make the 40 hp 3000 grunt a might Actually the 2910 Ford had more trouble packing it than mill had sawing it : :

[jimparamedic]

Everything has its place and everything in its place. Band mills work good for grade sawing resawing small logs and so on circle sawmills cut ties  timbers  and high production I have a circular mill but would like to have a band mill to resaw cants with after cutting off the dirty bark

[Don_Papenburg]

Over the years i have gotten lumber from band mills and circle mills .  I have noticed that most of the band mills lumber has dips waves and birdbaths on the surfaces . so all the socalled savings of lumber by the thin curf ends up on the floor of my shop as planer shavings.  Today I had a 1.25" board that had to be planed down to 3/4" to remove all the dips .  most of my circle cut wood will dress out with less than a quarter inch.

[captain_crunch]

Don
I suspect sawyer error bandmills are suspost to be quite accurate never run one myself but there are too many of them not to work well

[captain_crunch]

I give up Help Jeff

[tyb525]

Don, you must have gotten your bandsawn lumber from someone with a poorly setup mill. I can saw 7/8" boards and they will usually plane out to 3/4" after drying. Not that I usually do that, but I did it on accident a few times before I learned to add in kerf thickness. I now saw to 1" in case of bad cupping or warping during drying.

Captain, You have a great looking setup, keep the pics coming!

[beenthere]

c_c
You are doing well. You have good pics in your gallery. Just copy them into your post.

You can use the modify button to fix your post. You will notice there is an ending bracket missing after the IMG of the first pic
Then to test it, click on the preview button. If the preview isn't what you want, look for anything else that is missing. Easy to erase a bracket or two here and there.    

[beenthere]

Don does have a good point.
When the band blade goes dull, the waves happen. Can't go back and redo the piece.

On a circular sawmill, such waves don't happen as easily nor as often. Something serious (beyond just sharpening saw teeth) has gone wrong if a wavy board comes off the circular saw. Still need a lot of attention to saw hammering, alignment, guides, lead, and accurate carriage set.  But Don makes a good point that thin kerf saws have had to deal with for many years.

[captain_crunch]

Beenthere
Guess with any mill it depends on how much quality you want in your product. Don't see why a band won't cut good lumber. Comercial mills here in Oregon all use BIG band saws fer head rig

[Dave_]

Yeah, and they cut coming and going ;D

[Meadows Miller]

Gday

Dave they do cut coming and going on some of them and they are good machines as i have run both a slant with chipping reducer head and standard carriages with wheels upto 84" dia  running 12" wide  bands  ;)   ill tell a funny story once when arvo shift was operating at the mill i worked at i was in the grinding shop sharpening 3 sets of knifes for the three chippers we ran there (one of one too many jobs I was asked to do ontop of my usual hours and a boring job with an auto grinder  ??? :) and i heard the band making a tap,tap tap tap tap getting worse with every pass as it was in the cut so I was walking over to the sawyers cab about 30 feet from me to let Jason know that i though the band was about to go when it did with a Bang and about 30+ foot of band came out from where it had snapped off near the bottom of the cut and rolled it out over the pantograph and up against the mill shed  it scared the crap outa both off us  ;) :D :D :D the sawyers cabs at that mill where at the end of the track so we where till about 30" away from the action  ;)

When a wide band costs more than a circular saw Ill stick with the circ  ;) and plus I dont have a million dollars plus to spend on a setting up a production band mill any way  ;) :D  :D ;D

Give Me A Circular Mill Any Day I LOVE EM  ;) ;D ;D 8) 8)

Regards Chris

[captain_crunch]

new day so will try again other end of cant

Boards all ready cut waiting to be resawn

I cut 28-1X6 4=1X4 and 2-2X6 boards out of the log

[woodpeckerlips]

My old frick 00 was made between 1924-1934. 80 + years old.   The blade is stamped 1967 from Shreveport, La. That's 44 years old. Still cutting quality lumber! I want to hear about a bandmill that can even come close!  Where's the bandmill that's still cutting with a 44 year old blade.   If there was such a thing I'd have to drag out one of my old disston blades that's older and start running it just for spite!  Ha ha!
   Oh and I still got all my fingers!!!!   So far!   

[Bibbyman]

It sure don't take much to get you circle guys cranked up!  I was just kidding! Didn't you see the Smiley?

[Don_Papenburg]

Beenthere, it wasn't just waves in this one  , it also had some bowls that would have made bowlcrafter very happy. I know that that was operator error .  No one with any sence would keep cutting with that many defects. at least five boards before this one would have shown a small wave . He kept sawing because both sides were bad.

[Chico]

I worked the megamills I was a supervisor for the largest privately owned Hardwood operation in America also in one of the largest family owned pine operation and worked in So America at one of the larger production mill for mahog. Banak anderobia cedar etc and loved them all but my fav mill of all time was a little pine circle mill all HMC with a schurman gang and a cambio debarker I loved that little mill and sawing on it  I feel your pain on the shoulders Jeff  I feel it every time I move them snap crackle pop  ;)

[Jeff]

Yea, had a new blow out. Got an MRI scheduled for next Wednesday morning.  I didn't do anything other then maybe outlive the 1989 repair on this one. :-\

[mad murdock]

Jeff, on your shoulders, what was the cause of the injury? Was it the from running the controls in the Sawyers Cab?  I have done a fair amount of work in the woods in my day, granted I haven't spent years and years doing a job that entailed sitting in a fairly constant position, i.e. an equipment operator or such, but I have had stints doing that kind of work for say months at a time.  Just wondering how the damage is done, so I could maybe learn from your experiences.  The biggest recurring injury I have to be careful of is not lifting too much, I can really blow out my lower back in a hurry, if I don't lift properly or try and lift too much.  That could be from my years on the ground running a saw and cutting and bunching pulpwood.  I hope you get some good help on the shoulder thing soon.  I had a co-worker several years back who had to have rotator cuff surgery, from the looks of what he went through, I hope I never have to go through one of those. :-\

[Jeff]

Do different causes.  The first one in 1989  was an accident.  We had a pin fall out on the hydralic cylinder that activates the big iron log kickers on our Debarker outfeed trough. The kickers push up through the trough, push the log up on the live deck, then return out of the trough. when they come back out of the trough and down, they just clear the wall. If you look at the video link, you will see how they work and the wall that is there.

Well, the way we should have fixed it, was locked out the machine, go find some wrenches, took the hoses off the cylinder, pulled the ram out on the cylinder so it would line up and then put the pin back in.  In the real world when we were trying to make production, You have two guys back there, have the debarker operator push the lever until the clevis lines up then put the pin back in. That's what we did. I an another guy put the pin in, then motioned for the debarker operator to put the kickers in the up position so we could walk out past them.  He did that, then lifted his hands up and to each side to show he was clear of the controls. At that point, Bob and I turned around to walk out. I took one step, and for what ever reason that possessed the guy running the debarker, we guess he was grabbing a lever to do something else, he put the kickers back down. I was now between the kicker, and a 2 by 6 T&G wall, about a foot from one of the 6 by 6 barn poles.  The kicker pushed me into the wall and I tried to resist. My arm was torn from its socket and most of the muscles torn lose with it. Bob was behind me and at the same time grabbed my belt and pulled me backwards as the kicker went on down, probably saving my life.   

Bob told me he had heard about peoples eyes turning red in anger, but never saw it until that day. I instantly spin and was going after the old fart that activated the machine, as Bob held me back.  I still didnt know how bad I was hurt. 

I had a fairly major reconstruction of the shoulder with my arm pinned to my side for 6 weeks after the operation. My wrist got to be about as big around as a kids.  It took me about a year to recover completely, but I went back to the mill after 4 months.

Thats the shoulder that is bothering me now. I went almost 20 years with it trouble free, as the fix was quite successful.

The other shoulder was diagnozed as a repetitive stress injury. I've had 3 operations on it, and after about 4 years now, it give me very little trouble. It took a longtime for the pain to go away on it, and I lost about 15% of my range of motion.

The video below shows the debarker that got me.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p-oCi8SCs7o

[mad murdock]

Man! my shoulder hurts just reading what you described of the accident!  I guess it could have easily turned out much worse.  I you are able to get things squared away with your shoulder this time.  I know how it feels to have deep seated pain lingering for long periods of time.  I got bucked off the loader chair on our log truck several years back.  I was lowering the stabilizers, and there was a small log half in the way of the pad on one side as the stabilizer was coming down, I thought that the log would just kick over as the pad could rotate on the pin and kind of "squeeze" the log as it went down.  Wrong! The stabilizer went down on top of the log, and instead of the log moving, it stayed put, the whole loader began to lift up, probably 6 inches, then the log spits out from under the stablizer kind of like a wet bar of soap and the loader quickly comes back to make contact with the ground as the log is suddenly not there, and you can imagine the movement from the operators chair, no seatbelt, it threw me off like I was bucked off a horse.  I landed on the small of my back (wintertime, frozen ground), and just laid there in pain for several minutes.   When I went to get up, there was a powerful pain.  I had cracked the coxyx bone (tail bone), and I could not sit down or move very fast for a couple months after that.  I probably fell from about 12 feet or 13 feet to the ground.  It wasn't near as bad as what happened to you, and I am sure not as painful either.  I can relate to the pain though maybe just a little bit.

[Ron Wenrich]

Repetitive motion is what usually gets us old farts.  I had problems with carpal tunnel starting to develop in my left arm.  We fixed that by going over to joystick controls and a trigger control to handle the headblocks.  But, my neck has no pads in between the vertebrae.  And you have to turn your head only a couple thousand times a day.  That gives me some major problems.

Now I'm getting tendinitis in the right arm from using the log turner, and the buttons on the right handle.  This time, I'm going to just hang it up.  I think I'm worn out.