The Forestry Forum

Wanted to share my latest learning experience with my LT35 Hyd. My sawmill has around 165 hours on it to date. I have had it for almost one year.  I wish I had more time to mill but my job only permites me to have free time usually on the weekends, which is also hard to find time while taking care of my farm.  Anyways, for the past month or so I have noticed that my blades were way under production. I would saw one log (150bf average poplar 8ft log) and I would notice when I loaded another log the blades performance was just awful. I was only getting about 150bf per blade. It got so slow that sometimes the blades would just boggle down and stop turning and I would have to back out of my cut to get the blade turning again. I thought maybe it was the fact I had some dirty logs and that it was dulling the blades badly.  So after about three weeks of this happening I got out my book last night and read about the drive belt tension. So today I went up to the sawmill after I got home from work and inspected my drive belt. I checked the tension with the blade enganged and it was very loose. On the top of the belt (the longest part between to pulleys) with the clutch engaged I could pull the belt down around 3 inches easily. I had no idea that the belt was that loose. Looking back I cant see how there was even enough tension to have sawed up what I got. Needless to say I adjusted the belt back to proper tension.

I am assuming and correct me if I am wrong but I am thinking with the lack of belt tension that the reason that would explain my lack of production for each blade. I think that the only reason I got sawed up what I did was that I was using a new blade everytime that was sharp enough to saw up before it lost it's razor edge. Anyways just wanted to share this in hopes it might help another operator in the future.

QuoteI am assuming and correct me if I am wrong but I am thinking with the lack of belt tension that the reason that would explain my lack of production for each blade. I think that the only reason I got sawed up what I did was that I was using a new blade everytime that was sharp enough to saw up before it lost it's razor edge

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absolutely true!  exact same thing happened to me when i first started sawing with my homemade mill.  drive belt tension is a critical part of band performance.  loss of power transfer causes the band to slow down and will give ya all sorts of trouble. 

so is your mill back up to peak performance?

I am going to get it going Friday, I have 1000bf of poplar to saw up for a barn. I will update this post when I get going, thanks for the response.

I believe that you are good to go now.