Hi, I've been reading this forum for a while and joined recently, but I'd been biding my time until I had some questions worth asking. But before that, I guess I should start with an introduction.
My brother and I have a '08 Wood-Mizer LT40HDG28 that we bought new and a '98 LT40HDD40 we got last year, although the latter one doesn't get run as much. My brother is the full-time operator and I'm everything from the pilot to mechanic and janitor, although I just keep it short and say I'm the mechanitor. Add to that a blade sharpener we also got last year and my mill hasn't even needed an oil change. However, it has needed a new hydraulic motor, guide rollers, head alignment, and some light grinding to square up the dogs.
So I don't have a ton of mill operating experience, considering I haven't even cut the dog or clamp. But I have had a lot of fun with our BMS250 sharpener, having run about 200 blades through it. Still, I often wonder if I'm sharpening the blades correctly. My brother says they cut and stay sharp the same as Resharps, but then again, he couldn't tell when his idle side bearing needed grease, despite the constant whine. Oh, by the way, my brother and I are twins, but I'm older, so I'm not above criticizing him constantly.
My blade sharpening procedure is to sharpen and THEN set, contrary to many I've seen. I do this because I set the blade every time and it gives me a chance to inspect every tooth without taking any extra time. My brother has hit both the dog and clamp, although lately it has just been nails, lags, screws, cables, staples, and the mounting screw to a pulley just for fun. He saw the pulley (and an extension cord, I should really take some pics), but didn't know how long the screw was sticking out the bottom. So I get a lot of blades with rounded corners or missing tips, although not all of them even need the second pass. And then some need a 3rd or 4th. Setting last makes sure I don't miss any, although we recently started marking the blades with flagging so I wouldn't waste as much time setting a blade only to find a few messed up teeth half way through.
As for grinding, I run plenty of oil on the CBN wheel, but don't like fiddling with adjustments, so I take what I'd call a light-medium grind at 10-15 thousandths (I think it measured to about 13), and when additional passes are needed, I put less pressure on the face to get more depth. I honestly don't know what a light grind is, but by the time I get the lid open, the wheel is at 120°F at most. Considering the motor gets up to 150-ish, I'm not worried about wheel temps. The tips of the blade do blue slightly, but my brother hasn't noticed a difference, blue or not. I even put a second Little Giant pump in and a 200W heater pad so I could sharpen in the winter, and running both pumps in the summer doesn't prevent bluing. Thinking about it just now though, I'm probably going a little heavy on the face grind.
So while the sharpener runs, I set a sharpened blade with our BMT200. Originally, I wanted the automatic one, but I'm happier turning the crank myself given how I calibrate the set. I know you're supposed to set the gullet depth off the anvil and adjust the pushers to get the right set, but again with the fiddling, I find it easier to just crank the blade height up until I get the set I want. I made a master set gauge (add it to my pic list) so I set a few teeth, check, and get it dialed in quick enough to be all set before the sharpener is done, even at the 4.5 speed setting. However, I went a little ridiculous with the set once and was bending pretty much the whole tooth when I needed .031 set to cut some seasoned black oak. But my mill cut fine, especially compared to all the diving I had before. Even at almost no speed, full water, fresh blade, it would dive a few feet into the cut from the blade heating up, with .020-ish set. The quick and accidental way I fixed that was with a lot of set, but I since then also pushed the outer guide roller down another 1/8". No idea what it's at relative to the blade wheel, but I haven't in the few hours since then had it dive. The setter really saved me though, since my fresh box of 9° blades were all set .015.
If any of that rubbed you guys the wrong way, definitely let me know what I'm doing wrong and how I can do better. For one thing, does anyone know of a table of recommended blade set values? Ever since I cranked the set for my blades up, I've been setting for my brother at around .025-.028, and he hasn't complained about much more than the extra sawdust he has to..well, he has a 5 gallon bucket on the chute and bags it all, so I guess that's a moot point. Still, I'm not sure if I'm really sharpening the blades properly, since I have the bad habit of learning stuff all on my own and wondering why something doesn't work quite right later.
Sorry if that got a little long winded, but then again, I'll easily read 20 pages at a time whenever I'm on here. If anyone has any advice for a sawmill operator, mechanic, or blade sharpener, I can certainly use it and have been whenever I've found it here.
Thank you.
-Jay Clarke
Welcome. The experts will follow soon. bg
Howdy Jay, it sounds like you and your "lil" brother are off and running, I know nothing about the wmz cbn sharpeners, but .015 depth sounds a little heavy, but not sure what they take, I say if the results are good for you, then keep your current procedure. Keep us posted,
Hello Bluejay27, and Welcome to the Forestry Forum. I do not know "sharpening" but I was curious about the;
Quoteand some light grinding to square up the dogs.
?? What is that about?
Welcome to the Fourm we like pictures
Welcome Bluejay27. I am no help on the finer points of band sharpening, but it sounds like you are getting good results.
BlueJay, Welcome to the FF.
Where to begin.... Ok, .015 sounds a little heavy to take off in one pass when grinding bands. I've never actually put a micrometer on my bands while sharpening, but I'd estimate that .005-.007 removed is my routine. If the band is turning blue from the heat of grinding, then you are grinding too heavily. Better to make two passes if you need to remove that much metal.
What I do is keep a bright light shining on the teeth after they have come past the grinding stone. I keep a "sharp" ;) eye on the teeth to see if there is a shiny spot at the tip of the tooth. If there is, then it's not sharp. The point of a properly sharpened tooth will not be visible.
As far as damaged or missing teeth go, so long as there are not more than two consecutive missing teeth I'll keep using the band.
Once again, Welcome to the FF. Ask away. That's how we all learn!
JC
Thanks for the warm welcome even this late at night.
Quote from: Magicman on July 13, 2014, 09:20:22 PM
Hello Bluejay27, and Welcome to the Forestry Forum. I do not know "sharpening" but I was curious about the; Quoteand some light grinding to square up the dogs.
?? What is that about?
I'm not sure if it's unusual for 2500 hours on the mill, but my dogs were worn at the top enough that a straight edge running along the bottom half had at least a 1/16" gap at the top. I fixed it with the straight edge and a depressed center grinding wheel. My mill is the '98 super hydraulic, so I imagine a lot of logs have been turned against the dogs. And a lot of blades must have hit them too since the roller on the closest dog won't even turn, it's that chewed up.
I got the mill with just over 2500 hours on it and I've only just got it to 2600, so I've yet to fix all the kinks, but I made sure to align everything early on. Actually, it was the seasoned black oak that made me align it, since the blade started diving really hard. The funny thing was I wasn't diving in a log. It was 1" boards I was cutting down ten at a time to make grade stakes. And the boards, many well over 12" wide, were ones I'd cut a couple months earlier with similar blades, less experience, and the mill aligned how I'd got it, without any issues. Increasing the set completely fixed my problems, although I found this out only after doing an alignment I probably needed anyways.
And I know that black oak is a kind of red oak (and not much more than that, because my brother is the wood guy), but the same mill and blades cut a few thousand bdft of red oak boards into stakes without any diving. And those boards had dried even longer. I was using some Razortip .045" x 1.5" 10° blades that we bought because there pretty much couldn't be metal hidden in a 1" board (especially oak) and was able to cut with what I call "the finger" pointing straight up. Ya, cause it just feels wrong to cut that fast, at least to me. But the instant I got to the black oak, on the same blades, the blade guide rollers would stop squeaking and the blade would be a 1/4" down in a few seconds. I've actually gotten to the point now that I like it when the rollers growl a little bit, because at least that means they're holding the blade in place.
I don't know what speed is actually fast for cutting, but whenever I have the feed dial pointing straight up, I hesitate to go any further. Especially because as soon as I get used to it, the blade starts to dive while I'm not paying attention. To make things worse, tt has the stationary controls connected with the wiring tank track, so I don't get any feedback from leaning into the mill head, like on my brother's mill. And it's kind of hard to sight down the cut and man the controls, so it gets away with a little waviness if I'm not careful.
Sorry to ramble so much, but I do that a lot when I know I should be sleeping. Just one more question before I go. The blade guide rollers can be adjusted so they push down on the blade harder. I'm not sure I looked really well in the manual, but I don't know how low they should be relative to the blade wheels. I actually think I need to adjust the drive-side guide because I got some waviness there recently without any motion on the idle-side. And unfortunately I was sighting down that side thinking the cut was perfectly straight. Luckily, it was just some wide knotty pine for barn boards. So if anyone knows, how far down should the blade guide rollers be set?
And Jack, I'm not ignoring your post, it just wasn't there when I started this one. I'll keep what you said about the light in mind and see if I can get away with a lighter grind on the blades that are only dull. And I don't get two missing teeth. My brother takes them all off and still puts it into the pile to sharpen. The only one I've rejected so far had all the teeth bent sideways.
Welcome Blue Jay! My mill is another brand but guide wheel blade deflection varies from a 1\8"- 1/4" depends on Sawyer preference. I prefer least amount of deflection that I can get away with. I will be following your sharpening question's I just ordered a Cooks sharpener and a single tooth setter.
Welcome to the Forestry Forum, Bluejay27
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Happy Birthday Lynn!
Welcome Jay, theirs nothing set in stone if you have good luck doing what your doing have at it. You may try taking a little less off when you grind. Most of us set before sharpening due to the burr raised by grinding that can affect the set. What are your bands mode of failure, and how many sharpenings do you get per band, that will tell volumes. Where are you folks located. Frank C.
Bluejay27,welcome to the forum. What's the plan for the lumber? You selling it???
I think the measurement on the rollers is 1/4 in check your manual it's in there.I also use a good light while sharpening it helps to see if your catching the back side of the tip like Jack mentioned .As for a guide on set check out suffolk machinery ,it was on their website.If I remember it's a little hard to find but it's on there.I set most everything at 30 but I have enough power and I saw a good bit of wide pine.
Quote from: Bluejay27 on July 14, 2014, 12:03:00 AM
Quote from: Magicman on July 13, 2014, 09:20:22 PM
Hello Bluejay27, and Welcome to the Forestry Forum. I do not know "sharpening" but I was curious about the; Quoteand some light grinding to square up the dogs.
?? What is that about?
but my dogs were worn at the top enough that a straight edge running along the bottom half had at least a 1/16" gap at the top.
I will respectfully disagree that the side supports were worn, but logs slamming against them will actually bend them outward at the tops. A rosebud acetylene torch and a cheater pipe will bend the tops back. I am sure that they will then need aligning back to 90°.
Welcome to the forum, Bluejay.
Welcome.
Happy Birthday Magicman! One more time around the racetrack. ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D
Now its Magickman's turn to get older Happy Birthday young fella 8) 8)
No time to think "elder", but thanks for the kind wishes. I sawed this morning until noon when the customer needed to quit. We will start back tomorrow AM.
welcome bluejay,
I am considering purchasing a sawmill so these are really great posts for me to read,,,,,,,,keep the questions coming.
Quote from: bandmiller2 on July 14, 2014, 07:11:35 AM
Most of us set before sharpening due to the burr raised by grinding that can affect the set. What are your bands mode of failure, and how many sharpenings do you get per band, that will tell volumes. Where are you folks located. Frank C.
We're located in South Deerfield, MA. I'll have to keep a close eye on the burr, or maybe try to measure it to see how bad it is. So far, the thinnest blade I've sharpened was around .830 wide in the gullet, so around 6-10 sharpenings if I've been fairly consistent and not hit too much metal. We've only had two blades break since I've been sharpening them, breaking in the .850 to .900 range. But that's out of about 90 blades in rotation. And the only new blades of those that I'd sharpened were some 4°'s that are mostly now accidentally 9°.
We plan to run the blades until they start cracking, unless we see a big hit in productivity or they get too thin to use. I don't know what is a good cutting rate, and I know it varies heavily with log quality, but my brothers gets around 110 bdft hardwood and 150 bdft softwood per hour on his own. With me offloading, it's about 200h/220s bdft/hour.
Quote from: slider on July 14, 2014, 07:35:28 AM
I think the measurement on the rollers is 1/4 in check your manual it's in there.I also use a good light while sharpening it helps to see if your catching the back side of the tip like Jack mentioned .As for a guide on set check out suffolk machinery ,it was on their website.If I remember it's a little hard to find but it's on there.I set most everything at 30 but I have enough power and I saw a good bit of wide pine.
Thanks for the info. You can easily find the guide by searching "suffolk set and hook". I'm not 100% sure on the rules regarding link posting. The recommended values are a little lower than I've been doing, but I hadn't ever thought of putting less set when cutting smaller logs. I'll try to keep my brother's blades back in the .023-.025 range and keep mine a little high.
Quote from: Magicman on July 14, 2014, 07:44:03 AM
I will respectfully disagree that the side supports were worn, but logs slamming against them will actually bend them outward at the tops. A rosebud acetylene torch and a cheater pipe will bend the tops back. I am sure that they will then need aligning back to 90°.
My one concern with using a torch is that the steel will be annealed and easier to bend the next time a big log hits it. You might be right that it is bent. Too bad it has a step on the back so I can't put a straight edge against it. I should check my brother's mill for any bending since I know at one point he messed up the adjustment at least a degree by letting a big maple log hit the dogs hard. Although it might have been my fault if the adjustment bolt wasn't tightened enough or didn't have the "backlash" removed properly.
Quote from: thecfarm on July 14, 2014, 07:30:26 AM
Bluejay27,welcome to the forum. What's the plan for the lumber? You selling it???
We kind of have a lumber yard going, although it's mostly the pine boards we've cut over the past few years along with some random hardwood and spruce lumber. I would have added hemlock, but the few logs we had got turned into 2"x2"x12' stakes. Almost all of our oak goes toward 1"x1" stakes, although we finally smartened up and started cutting the knottier stuff for planks and flooring. I know not everyone likes knots in their flooring, but no one likes knots in their stakes, so we'll see if we can sell it as flooring or at least as light-duty trailer planks. We have an assortment of logs from the local tree services, so we also get a lot of small custom orders that we handle as we cut the logs down.
I was wondering, how many of you produce grade/tomato stakes? We've been doing it ever since we got the mill, but that's because my step-dad works in construction and Hud-Son happened to be at the expo in Essex Junction, VT where we picked up the mill. Our mill is actually the demo mill Wood-Mizer was using, so it had a few hours, but we got a free debarker.
Welcome Bluejay!
Magic Man happy birthday! Glad you added another growth ring!
Quote from: Bluejay27 on July 14, 2014, 06:17:09 PMQuote from: Magicman on July 14, 2014, 07:44:03 AM
I will respectfully disagree that the side supports were worn, but logs slamming against them will actually bend them outward at the tops. A rosebud acetylene torch and a cheater pipe will bend the tops back. I am sure that they will then need aligning back to 90°.
My one concern with using a torch is that the steel will be annealed and easier to bend the next time a big log hits it. You might be right that it is bent. Too bad it has a step on the back so I can't put a straight edge against it. I should check my brother's mill for any bending since I know at one point he messed up the adjustment at least a degree by letting a big maple log hit the dogs hard. Although it might have been my fault if the adjustment bolt wasn't tightened enough or didn't have the "backlash" removed properly.
I bought my sawmill "used" and both side supports were bent outwards as well as badly out of adjustment. I had to heat and straighten with no ill consequences and that was over 12 years and over a Million bf ago.
I would be more concerned about removing metal thus thinning the support which might encourage easier bending in the future.