Looking for opinions on swingblade mills

plantman · June 30, 2017, 10:00:23 PM

How's that Peterson working for you ? They seemed quite pricey . What's your take on the price ?

Quote from: MbfVA on June 13, 2017, 12:00:14 AM
Well, Plantman, I just voted for your views. I bought a Peterson WPF from an OH seller along with accessories, just arrived back with it today. I posted about it under another thread I started, about D&L mills, so I won't duplicate here. I'll start a new thread when I get it set up and going since there seems to be interest & questions about swing blade mills on this list.

Ditto on your above comments, based on what I have seen & learned.

The Peterson folks have a rep for good workmanship and materials, and for good support for their owner community, borne out by my experience--again, so far. Ezra Newick just sent me a nice emailed response and some information including an owners manual download within a couple of hours of my email telling him of my purchase.

I'll try to upload a few photos to my "gallery" but there may be a learning curve based on prior comments on it.

MbfVA · July 04, 2017, 02:51:15 AM

I had a really hard time posting and then editing this. Not sure if it's Apple iOS or the forum software, or maybe both. I wish the text entry window was larger and more stable, but maybe that is my iPad software, too.

Just got back to this thread. I didn't pay retail for my Peterson WPF since it is three years old, but it would be hard now to settle for less than the stainless steel & aluminum quality and practicality that I see in this machine so far. The metal alone costs a lot of money. If I were buying new, the Lucas would be mighty tempting, and if I were set on an automatic machine, the Turbosaw automated versions would be very interesting as well.

The D & L owners I spoke with had issues with theirs, though they lauded the technology involved. I didn't speak with any Turbosaw owners, but I was impressed with some of their new ideeas. From what I've been told and learned on my own, Lucas Mills are closer in operating characteristics to the Peterson ATS than to the WPF or to the ASM (automated feed and blade swing). I've seen some complaints about plastic materials, but that probably contributes to making the Lucas mills easier to move. I love the video of the smaller Lucas coming off a truck & being set up. It's one of the better videos of any swing blade sawmill manufacturer.

One thing I'm seriously considering to improve the portability of our mill is welding top crank Bulldog or Reese jacks to each ground base support member on one side (or maybe both) for ease in leveling. Take note that the mill will function when the rails aren't perfectly level front to back (although either pulling or pushing will be more difficult), but they must be level side to side.

To make mine level where it is, I had to use a lot of "landscape ceramics", couple of stacks of 1" thick 1x1 ft squares under the supports. It was a chore, the result a little more rickety that I would like, and if I had to do this every time I moved it I'd go nuts. It also led to 2 gashes in my head as I walked uphill (with my head down) into the high rail, but that was primarily the fault of the uneven ground itself. We won't go into the inattentive operator factor.

I have not used an automated swing blade mill & have only used bandmills a few times while demo-ing, so this opinion is fairly uninformed, but so far I really enjoy feeling my way through the cuts. I felt the same way about the Norwood HD 36 manual mill that I tried out. The big difference there was that we cut cedar instead of hardwood like I'm cutting now. We also cut cedar on the wood-mizer demonstration, but that mill had power feed.

One thing I did not like, and I noted a separate thread discussing this, was the one speed return on that power feed. It came close to knocking me down at one point when I wasn't paying proper attention. In my opinion, not making that return variable speed is akin to Apple ignoring some of the things that they just seem not to want to fix, like the absolutely ridiculously wild inaccuracy of their digital assistant Siri when she "attempts" to take my dictation. My particular "favorite" is when she substitutes off-the-wall proper names for common words that she misunderstands--maybe it's the dumb idiot AI's cry for help? But I rant, so I will stop.

The Peterson ASM would no doubt saw some serious production numbers, but no one should 'start' with something like that. The same may be said of the other automated swing mills, but your mileage may vary.

I've only cut up a couple of logs so far, in fact only one completely, so it's probably premature to give you an informed & thoughtful opinion. But I like what I've experienced so far, and I did do a great deal of research on the way in.

I think the blade I'm working with at the moment is a little dull, so I'll be learning sharpening technique before too long. Also, I've got the mill set up on very uneven ground, something I will avoid in the future since it makes some things very difficult. It's also a tiny bit uphill, making the "push" part a real exercise routine. Certainly correctable, just haven't bothered so far. Watch out for the high rail on the Peterson Hi-Lo, split my head twice on that thing now, and finally put survey tape streamers on it in key places.

I have a friend who has a very large fallen red oak in his yard, so I may be getting experience with portability soon as well. I love the fact that he asked "how much do you charge", instead of just saying come and get it and it's yours. He may surprise me by asking for the wood, making it a whole nother calculation, but we will see.

You can check the other thread that I started regarding making my own log dogs. I should be getting those on Wednesday from the fabricator.

The roughest part of acquiring this mill was the length of the trip, which was too darn long the second day, when I did the last 1/3 of the way to the mill in OH, and ALL the way back to VA. SuperDuty is nice but it does not equal Bentley, though it does ride better with a full load.

One thing we did wrong loading it was the put it in backwards. Hey I'm new, so I didn't know any better, but it was really hard to put in and really hard to get out, just because of that simple mistake. I should've watch the video 4 times instead of three. We had heavy equipment & five good strong guys to help load it in OH, so we didn't realize the mistake. I paid for that on the other end. The rails weigh around 100 pounds each x 4, which will work you by itself. And I suspect that the company video showing the sawhead carriage being moved around like a very light wheelbarrow is not utilizing the largest and heaviest engine on a 10 inch machine.

JP & smaller Lucas Mill owners are probably laughing at me.

I am dealing with a rather warm Kill switch (possibly pulling down the battery, which has gone dead once on me) right now, waiting for suggestions from the company as to what might be causing it, or if it's normal. The setworks dial (helps make repeated vertical cuts consistent) is also acting a bit odd, but remember I'm inexperienced. I wish Peterson didn't use Facebook as a general support platform. Do like Facebook for what it does getting the word out for our business when we need to, but don't like it myself. It is truly amazing that 2 billion people have signed up for it.

More to come.jh

plantman · July 04, 2017, 06:34:05 PM

I just got off the phone with the gentleman who owns a D&L and was nice enough to show it to me some months back. He emphasized that he liked the mill but the Subaru engine gave him some minor trouble. It seems that the carb would get dirty easily and need cleaning. This might have something to do with the air filter not being up to snuff. I think the company is moving away from Subaru and going with Kohler.
He and I talked about milling and he brought up some good points. The wood we most commonly come across here in northern New Jersey is oak and while it's good for furniture, flooring , and cabinets it's not great to build homes with . After it's dry you can't really nail it. Anyway, I like the idea of using hardwoods for projects , I'm just not sure I'm going to do enough of them to make it worthwhile so I have some thinking to do. Perhaps I'll do a little more searching on the internet to see what I might use the wood for .