First practice logs, new miller

[alecs]

So this weekend I made sawdust for the first time as a mill operator.  Got a Woodland HM130 in part due to the fact that it actually shipped in 4 weeks from order and not months.

Yesterday I cut a junky ash log I was going to turn into firewood, and today a shortish (7'+) but otherwise nice piece of pine.  The ash log was split internally so most of those boards are going to be kindling.  The pine yielded 8 1x14"s and 6 2x4"s.  Mostly they came out pretty nice for a newbie.  (total of my prior sawmilling experience was as an offbearer a few times.)

One silly question is what might be causing an intermittent blade chatter with my mill.  It makes a set of stripes in the cut, but not for the entire length and not for every cut.  Some cuts are full of it and some have none.  

Thanks for any ideas.  Tomorrow I am going to check on things like blade tension, blade guide spacing, etc. 

Pine log yield:



 



Wavy chatter stripes in parts of a cut:

 

[btulloh]

Belt tension. The belt is slipping. On a new saw, you'll need to check and readjust things as things wear in, stretch, settle, etc.

Congrats on the new mill. Nice work!

[KenMac]

I've seen marks like that made by other mills where it was determined that travel speed was the culprit. Moving too slow caused the same looking marks. Good luck with your new adventure.

[JoshNZ]

Those marks are created when your band gets a harmonic in it, sometimes accompanied by a squealing noise. Usually fixed by changing tension or feed speed - betting you need to move faster. It took me a while when I first started out to realise how fast I should be pushing. In straight logs - as fast as your engine will let you!

[Cornerstone]

Congratulations on the new mill! Your work looks really nice work to me, but I'm also a newbie. I should be able to make my first cuts sometime this week on the mill I just built. A four week was hardly nothing compared to most guys, as you well know. In hindsight I probably would have bought the Woodland Mills HM130 instead of building my own, but I didn't because their website said the wait was almost a year and a half when I was mill shopping. It would be nice to be able to just order a part instead of having to make everything.

[btulloh]

Did you get any pitch buildup on the blade or belts?  Pine and ash can both be more difficult to keep the blade free of buildup. That can lead to slippage, or harmonics like Josh mentioned. Are you using 10 degree blades?  They can be a bit grabby in something like ash?  Also wondering if the marks were about the same in the ash and the pine.

[alecs]

I had no marks in the ash.  No marks at first in the pine.  The marks came on after squaring the cant and cutting a few boards.   My first thought was sap buildup.  The manual for the saw said to run it dry without lubricant for the first half-hour to break in the belts.  I tried cleaning the blade with rubbing alcohol after the first half hour, before I filled the lubricant tank and started running with the lubricant.  

I have more pine and more ash to try, so I could go back to an ash log and see if the chatter only happens in the pine.  

The harmonics issue sounds plausible as I could feel a little vibration on the carriage when the chatter was happening.  I'll try cleaning the blade, double checking the tension, and moving at different speeds.  I may have been going too slow.

The pine log was cut down just this week, so it is very green.  The ash was pretty wet too, maybe cut a month ago.

I would have cut more logs today, but got a call from my neighbor that a big pine had blown over across his driveway during today's high winds.  So I went over and helped him out and now have several more long pine logs.

Thanks for the encouragement and tips! 

[WV Sawmiller]

   Welcome and to emphasize what Josh said don't overlook your speed. Belt tension and speed can cause the marks. You can make marks on any cut by slowing or stopping the forward movement.

  With ash and pine I use lubricant to help keep the blade clean as both sap up my blades if I don't.

  Don't sweat the short logs or downplay a 7' log. Sounds like a good haul to me and every one of us uses some 3'-4' boards so I say don't waste them if available. The hardest part about the short logs sometimes is clamping them. Keep the posts and pictures coming.

[thecfarm]

What's all the lumber going to be used for?

[DanMc]

What's all the lumber going to be used for?

I get that question all the time.  My answer: We will see.  Whatever comes along.  The first triumph is getting the log milled, and that's a big one.

[WV Sawmiller]

   The question I always get as the sawmiller is "What would you make out of this log?" My answer is always "Whatever I needed and it would make."

[Wlmedley]

I have owned a WM126 for about 14 months and it has around 65 hours on it .I have tightened the belt twice.The throttle cable will stretch and has required adjustment several times.A little more RPMs makes a big difference.Thinking about adding a small tachometer to keep a eye on engine speed.

[Southside]

Try using diesel fuel to clean your bands instead of alcohol.  Just takes a little bit and the pitch will be gone. 

[alecs]

Cut a couple more logs and have learned some things.

First, before doing any cuts, I tried to track down what was making the wavy chatter marks.  I loosened all the bolts on the saw carriage and paid more attention to getting the saw head plumb and level before tightening everything back up.  The vertical posts that the saw rides up and down on were not previously perpendicular to the track, so the saw was "leaning back" by a little.  I cleaned the sap off the blade and belts.  And I tightened the band tension some and also have been moving faster through the logs.  No more marks that I am seeing.  Only problem is that I don't know which of those adjustments made the difference!   :D

Meanwhile, I cut two more pine logs from my neighbor's tree.  The first lesson was that what I thought was an adequately large log was not really worth the trouble to mill.  It wasn't straight, and had a lot of branches (was near the top of the tree).  So by the time I got down to a rectangular cant, I only netted six 1x6s from the log.  The amount of waste from that log was probably equal or maybe even greater than the amount of net board feet.  

So then I did the next log down the tree.  Even though that log was 12' long to begin with, I cut it down to 10' because there was a bend.  So I got the larger cant out of 10' of straight log rather than a much smaller cant I would have gotten from the 12' log if I had to factor in the bend in the log.   That log yielded six nice 2x8s.  So I got 2.7 times as many board feet from the "next log down the tree" for roughly the same effort, which was an eye opener. 

So the trick, I guess, is to find the sweet spot of log diameter where it is worth the effort to mill vs. turning it into firewood or putting it in the chipper.  I imagine that will change based on species of wood, what you are trying to make in the way of boards, and what you have on hand.  But it was a good lesson, anyway.    

[TroyC]

I don't usually cut anything smaller than 12" diameter.  Like you found out, it takes as much time to cut a 10" as a 15" log and you get a LOT more out of the 15".

[Stephen1]

I don't usually cut anything smaller than 12" diameter.  Like you found out, it takes as much time to cut a 10" as a 15" log and you get a LOT more out of the 15".

Alex a sharp blade will cut a lot easier and faster. Change you blade more than you think you should. 
10" will get you a 6x6. Those top of the Pine knotty tops are good bunk logs. 

I will cut what ever size a customer has until 4 in the afternoon of a portable sawing job. I try to stall the small logs until the end of the day, as by then the customer is getting tired and has a big stack of lumber .  Then I tell them it's not worth cutting the small logs. It's time to finnish up for the day. 

[alecs]

Here went my first "truckload" of lumber to my first "customer".  

This was from the pine that blew over in my neighbor's driveway, I was returning some of his tree to him!  



 

[fluidpowerpro]

Nice truck! Boards too!

[Old Greenhorn]

And so.... It begins.....
 Come back and read this in a year.

[thecfarm]

Nice looking wheels wells on that Ford truck. Not a dent in them. 

[alecs]

Not a dent in them

The dents in this truck are elsewhere!  It's a '65 F250 Camper Special.  It belonged to a friend of mine who drove it in high school in the 1980s, and then his dad kept it in a barn in Ohio for about 25 years before I got it.  I keep it in the barn here in the winter and mostly use it to go around town.  Top speed is about 45-50mph.

[alecs]

Here is a rare winter outing for the town holiday parade.
Proudly showing off a dent!