PTO circle mill Good or Bad ?

Don P · January 05, 2004, 04:01:32 PM

UncleBuck,
Well, I squeezed out 5 more gallons of chink today by 3:30 and was about tired of paying work so came home and put on a pot of coffee, threw on the deer stew that the ladies left me and was catching up on the forum when I saw your post. (This thread seemed sadly lacking in food ;D). I grabbed the camera and went down to the mill to get the pics before the light failed. Clicked and the DanG thing beeped and said disc error, same disc I used yesterday, go figure. I'll try tomorrow if I'm there in the light.

What I did was take some worn out teeth and ground them on the bench grinder taking the sides down flush with the body of the tooth (removing the flare) and then sharpened them till I was about as short as they could go without nicking into the body. I just made it up, don't have a clue if thats right. I was figuring this would make it a low raker instead of a cutter. I still hit them with the file now and again. We were talking yesterday and next time I change teeth I'll swap the rakers to where the cutters were but keep the shanks in their original location.

I don't think it halves the HP requirement but it does help. The same thing holds true in a tablesaw. I've seen guys with power problems go get a blade with more teeth thinking that would help. Burying fewer teeth in the cut and slowing down helps, not more.

Your hydraulic feed sounds nice, is it a hydraulic motor with adjustable flow control driving the cable drum?

On sawing shorts, remember we were discussing that some mills also had shingle making attachments...real short. The key is safe dogging in my mind. I've sawn a fair amount of 4' stuff making crate boards or just slabs on the way to a 4x4 or 6x6. At that size if it says firewood I don't put it on the mill. I've never thrown a small log but sure don't want to encourage anyone into something unsafe. Usually if something doesn't feel right its not, time to walk away till you figure it out.

A few years ago I dropped an old cherry yard tree for my Brother in law with his boys in attendance. It was by their tree house and they wanted the stump left tall for a play table. It yielded short logs, I sawed it up anyway and it had some nice wood. I wrote his name on the ends and put it up in the barn to dry. The boys will get some furniture out of it when they're a little older.

UNCLEBUCK · January 05, 2004, 04:40:01 PM

Don P thanks for tryin for the tooth picture , I just put the check in the mail for a brand new Simonds 48 inch 36 tooth ,style B, 6/7 gauge sawblade hammered for 475 r.p.m. so my 100 horse pto drive will not snort so hard anymore . I been saving forever for it so today I finally did it ! I thought I could really save by going every other tooth but I finally just gave in . My hydraulic carriage is just as you described and I just hook into the tractor hydraulic and then go through a flow control first then to the spool that operates the carriage . I almost ordered a Payne saw but the old saw shop here in central minnesota is a Simonds Dealer so I went that route, $1,680 with teeth and shanks ready to go, now I wait 3 weeks to go pick it up , I dont know why I had a hard time buying a new blade but I think I did the right thing, thanks again for your time and would still love to see how you ground the teeth every other .

shopteacher · January 05, 2004, 05:16:57 PM

Hey WV Hillbilly,
Just a headsup on a mill now listed on ebay. Foley Belsaw
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=2584295357&category=57124

Ianab · January 05, 2004, 05:29:55 PM

QuoteI don't think it halves the HP requirement but it does help. The same thing holds true in a tablesaw. I've seen guys with power problems go get a blade with more teeth thinking that would help. Burying fewer teeth in the cut and slowing down helps, not more.

Taking that to it's logical conclusion you could run a pretty big blade with very little power if it's only got a few teeth :P
With my old Peterson blades there are only 4 teeth, but it's only got 8 hp pushing it, so the HP per tooth is still good. I believe the new ones are 8 teeth?, but have 18 or 24 hp. By having fewer teeth each one can still remove decent sized chips and be working efficiently, all be it at a slower feed rate. With more teeth and less power you just end up scraping out dust instead of decent chips. :-/ not very efficient.
But of course 50 teeth with 100 hp is gonna be 10 times faster than my little toy :

Ian

UNCLEBUCK · January 06, 2004, 04:19:33 PM

lanab , that is a solid answer and thanks . I dont know what the big deal is for me about finally ordering my first new saw blade , I have wasted money through my younger days on a junky car or something but at age 39 I am actually nervous waiting for the saw shop to call me when it arrives .Maybe I should buy a box of cigars that say "its a boy" and pass them out to everyone in the saw shop when I get there ! :D Just excited I guess , first time for everything they say ! I think it was a good lesson maybe to start out learning how to saw on a old disston blade and having to not worry about money . Santa got me a heavy duty "bounty hunter" metal detector for Christmas so I am set for life now ! :

Don P · January 06, 2004, 07:41:41 PM

This is the teeth, duh I should have just pulled a couple last nite. Actually I just pulled the ground down one and grabbed a fresh one from the box. The short tooth was a blue tip I think. The fresh one is a standall. After Ian's post I might try running even fewer in real dense wood ???.

That hydraulic feed gets better sounding all the time, what size hydraulic motor are you using?

UNCLEBUCK · January 06, 2004, 08:21:42 PM

thanks Don P , I held up a tooth from my old 48 inch disston and your ground off tooth looks better :D , it sure seems like a good idea to try out this every other just to make things work . I will take a picture tomorrow for sure of how I got the hydraulic motor mounted and write down all the numbers of it off the little I.D. tag thats on it so I can be exact . It was real easy to make the switch to hydraulic and I just took off all the old drive belts and left all the pulleys hangin so someday it could always be switched back to belt in a matter of minutes. thanks for the pic of the ground off tooth

UNCLEBUCK · January 06, 2004, 09:14:51 PM

Getting back to WV_Hillbilly"s question about p.t.o. circle mills good or bad I will say that the old mill I got now had the long flat belt coming off the tractor pulley and it scared me to death but I didnt know what I was doing even back 20 years ago , the switch to p.t.o. drive was great and also the switch to hydraulic carriage was great , so with the help of this forum in less than one year I am happy as can be with a p.t.o circle mill , but I can only saw about 18 foot long logs but the wet oak boards at 18 feet is about more than one man can stack , I love bandmills too if I had one but they seem to be very handy , this mill cost 500$ with 2 blades and ready to go to work but I added about 3,500$ to it replacing wood to steel beam track and other parts of the husk . check the auctions and get the whole package so youre ready to rock and roll.

Ron Wenrich · January 07, 2004, 02:59:44 AM

When you get that new saw, you might want to try it with all its teeth. If your teeth are real short, they won' t stay sharp as long. Sharp teeth don't take as much power to run as dull teeth.

UNCLEBUCK · January 07, 2004, 11:53:53 AM

small hydraulic motor , says Nicholas Grey / Parker Hannifin corp. Grey,ME. 050-1-FP-05 B8 963 lGR , thats what the tag says , bought it in www.grainger.com many years ago but cant find it there today ! Big gear is off a Minneapolis Moline junked out cornpicker ,

Corley5 · January 07, 2004, 11:59:59 AM

That's pretty slick 8). Sure does away with a bunch of belts. I

UNCLEBUCK · January 07, 2004, 12:04:03 PM

O.K. RON , I never tried the every tooth thing but to save money a few days ago I was going to grind a bunch of old teeth and do it and was suprised to hear Don P was actually doing it , 50inch 50 tooth 2-1/2 style is what was making the tractor bogg down because it was the only blade I had for white oak and from what I know now I guess 2-1/2 style is for softwood so 48inch 36 tooth B style should be fun , I even get a new speed wrench , glad all my pics made it through !

Don P · January 07, 2004, 12:31:32 PM

Thanks for the pics and description UncleBuck. I had been thinking about jackshafts and pulleys, that setup is much simpler and infinitely variable, waaaay better. If I drive the pump on electric it should give the tractor a few HP back too 8) 8).

UNCLEBUCK · January 07, 2004, 01:21:12 PM

speaking of power loss , the 3rd picture shows the flow control valve and it is set on wide open ,if I turn it counter clockwise to slow the carriage speed way down I can hear the tractor start to grunt so I just leave it wide open and then doesnt put a load on the tractor, I must have it plumbed wrong somehow because after a few hours of sawing that flow control valve gets hot so it must not be returning back to the tractor like its suppose to , I also have one hydraulic lever in the tractor pulled back and bungee cord on it , if I lay my hand on a hose and dont move the carriage lever and turn the flow control counterclockwise I can feel the hoses get stiff and then the tractor really starts blowin smoke so I turn back clockwise to about half and then everything is fine , I know I must have one little thing plumbed wrong ???

Ron Wenrich · January 07, 2004, 02:54:19 PM

We converted our first handmill over to a hydraulic feed. Its been a long time and we had someone with some hydraulic learning put it in.

If memory serves me, we run our pump off of the saw arbor. Our power was a Cummings 6 cyl diesel, so it had more power than your tractor.

We run our feed with a larger motor than what you have pictured, and with heavier chain. But, if your's works fine, I can't argue with it.

I don't remember any flow control. We use them on motors that run all the time or on cylinders where we want to control speed.

We also had excess capacity, so we ran a sawdust drag and the edger with hydraulic.

D._Frederick · January 07, 2004, 03:16:47 PM

Unclebuck,
Yes, your flow control valve is the wrong kind, you should have one with 3 ports. The third one would go back to your your tractor hydraulic reservoir/transmmision.

Paul_H · January 07, 2004, 03:45:35 PM

Uncle Buck,
I've never seen an older circle mill up close,so I have a question.Were the flat belts that you replaced with hydraulics,used only for the carriage?Is the shaft and drums in the bottom of the last picture used anymore?

Carl_B · January 07, 2004, 04:01:36 PM

Uncle Buck dose you control valve have a plug in the upper right hand corner. then what brand of control valve are you using. I can post a picture of the way they are hooked up on the ones that we are using if you would be like.Carl B.

Carl_B · January 07, 2004, 05:29:58 PM

Just a drawing of the lines on the hdy. contrl valves that we ues. Carl B.

The cf is the control flow The ef or ex is the exhaust flow and the in is the inlet port.

UNCLEBUCK · January 07, 2004, 06:04:46 PM

Thank you Carl_B , yes it does have a plug in right corner like you say , its a Prince brand from northern hyrdraulics, I must have lost the little diagram that must have been somewhere in the box . Your diagram makes sense cant wait to make the changes . Paul_H, here is pictures of the big drive pulley where the big long belt would run behind the boardman and back to the tractor pulley and I flipped the big long belt to make the blade turn the proper direction so it looked like a big figure 8 from the side view , and then the little pulleys you see all ran the carriage , one belt for forward and one for reverse but always they seemed to grab and make the carriage kind of jumpy , but I did not like the big long drive belt touching the boardmans back pocket so I made the switch. thanks Ron and D._Frederick for the input , the more the better.

UNCLEBUCK · January 07, 2004, 06:25:24 PM

I guess I dont know if I would have ever come this far without the forestry forum for answers and wow I had a whole bunch of questions , here is a picture of me this fall and there would be no room for me and then that long flat belt running behind me , wish I could find a picture of the way it was set up 20 years ago, but as you can all see that I have that long deep foggy look on my face like hey is it lunch yet ! :D

UNCLEBUCK · January 07, 2004, 06:30:33 PM

OOPS forgot to upload , here is the grand champion winner of the 2004 forestry forum pig eatin contest "UNCLEBUCK"

Paul_H · January 07, 2004, 07:43:21 PM

Thanks UB that helps.I hope the re-plumb on the valves, works out better for you.
And you're right on about the great help here on the forum.I learned near everything about the old planer from the members here.The oldtimer that owned it before me was impressed with the help&information I was given from members all over North America.

Corley5 · January 07, 2004, 09:24:33 PM

Uncle Buck,
What brand is your mill? Looks pretty 8) What make/model of tractor are you running it with? You've probably mentioned it and I missed it ;D

UNCLEBUCK · January 07, 2004, 11:25:52 PM

Corley5, its a Fahrquhar Mill , the cheap red car paint from napa store , tractor is a souped up 806 farmall ! would like to take the old 671 out of the bottom of my old crane but I think I better stop while I am ahead, besides I am getting tired of tinkering on this and now I am gonna let my forestry forum learning sink in ! My dad and I watched a movie of your mill this last spring , everything looked perfect on it and it really got me turned on to finish this pile ! I sure like the picture of DonP"s sawmill shed and I have it as a screensaver for awhile ,it looks like a movie set from the waltons or something , really a beautiful picture,wouldnt mind seeing more of that saw shed.Wish I had a big planer like Paul_H too but am happy to get this far , well I am going to change some hoses on the hydraulics tomorrow but darn glad I asked, I just knew I wasnt quite right on my plumbing job!