Vertical band mill

[bigred1951]

Does anybody run or have one. I've only seen one before it may have been homemade. Looked like a circle mill track and carriage with the bandsaw vertical and stationary. The carriage run the log thru the blade. I thought it was pretty neat.

[bandmiller2]

Red, that's the way large commercial mills are, vertical band, log on a carriage. A mill with a carriage has to be twice as long and heavy duty enough to handle heavy logs. The advantage of most band mills is the heavy log remains stationary and just the relatively light head moves. If a fella is going to all the work of building a vertical band and carriage he might as well just use a circular saw. Frank C.

[Crusarius]

I thought about building one of these but the extra amount of track involved was a huge turnoff for me.

Be nice to not have the sawhead anywhere near the loading and unloading area but thats about all I can think of. 

Now if you take the head lay it flat and make the bed go up and down then you got something there. Especially if the bed was flush with the ground so all you had to do was roll a log onto it. Then raise the bed make your cut, repeat....

Logosol makes something like that.

[bigred1951]

The one I seen wasn't commercial. Probably homemade. It took just the regular band size

[moodnacreek]

A company in  Missouri made a small blade traveling vertical bandsaw mill. Was it Woodland ? Anyhow it's apparently gone. There are heavy commercial slant track , traveling models built. Lumber pro comes to mind. The 'wood miser' style is a horizontal band re saw [softwood style]  made to travel and cut logs. The real band re saws for hardwood are vertical.

[longtime lurker]

Always thought the slant bed Sanborn looked like a handy unit myself... log stays in one place on a conventional looking slant bed "carriage" and the head goes back and forth on a track. More transportable than portable but I'd say she'd be a producer once you've got her set up.

[Woodpecker52]

I think the larger commercial units of verts came about for speed and smaller kerf from logs.  I would guess they would be impractical for most moderate users today.  Seems like everyone wants to return to the days of hernia  when every log had to be carried by a carriage down a train track, this is so out of date. Most mills like GP use chip 'N' saws and such and logs are run down a line one time for speed. The game is speed and efficient handling with fewer humans, I am surprised that they still use human lumber graders, I would have thought a computer scanmra would have taken over by now.

[tylerltr450]

a guy in PA sells them

https://clouserfarm.webs.com/Bandsaw/panther.pdf

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Band sawmill vertical - YouTube

[Ron Wenrich]

I always felt this was the best method I've seen to convert a circle to a band.  A lot of the time savings in a vertical mill is the amount of speed the carriage could take, especially on the gig back.  This could also be used on an automated carriage system, which handles logs a lot quicker.  

Slant heads are nice, but you need a different type of log loading system, as the carriage is stationary.  

[Crusarius]

the board you just cut would just fall of. less handling

[wisconsitom]

Cleereman Lumber Pro (Newald, WI) has that angled log bunk.  Carriage glides to and fro with a quickness!  Way out of my league.  Unless someone is selling one real cheap!

tom

[moodnacreek]

Many condemn the circle mill with a traveling carriage. Have you ever watched one run in a small mill with a verticle edger ? With all different dia. logs coming in and all different orders to fill this is a hot set up.

[hacknchop]

I have produced lumber in commercial setting with both and I can tell you there are advantages and disadvantages to all types of mills what is gained in curf size is quickly lost in processing time also log size and quality come into play , as an example one set up we ran I processed spruce and pine into cants with a 52" circular and used a heartwood double cut bandmill as a resaw worked good on softwood but not so much on hardwood when the money is all in the sapwood especially hardmaple and yellow birch .  Also a friend of mine tried to convert a vertical resaw into a bandsaw mill it could'nt take the stress of feeding a log into it as it was designed to just resaw lumber being fed through the feed rollers, the wheel on a resaw are flat and the saw is adjusted by the slant on the wheel whereas a bandmill wheel is ground concave and the saw runs on the outside grooves called a tire these are mills with 6" or bigger bands and are pretty much stationary. Sorry for the long post .

[woodworker9]

There's a guy in the next town over from me that took the carriage and track of an old circle mill, and mounted it with a 42" vintage American Tool Works resaw.  He removed the table off the bandsaw, and rigged the whole thing so he gets a 30" full cut.  Pretty slick setup.  I've seen it run.

Only 'bad' part is he has the track and carriage mounted about 4' up in the air, and he uses a bridge crane to load logs.  This whole setup is indoors.

[Ron Wenrich]

The last circle mill I sawed on was 5' in the air.  So much easier to work on and to keep clean.  Also used a vibrating conveyor to get rid of all waste.  We had log decks for log infeed.  Loaded with a loader, so there wasn't a problem.

The biggest problem with vertical mills is the gig back with the carriage.  If you rub the saw, you might pull it off the pulleys.  The Clouser mill pulls the head back on the gig back.  That eliminates the problem.  

[longtime lurker]

For me the crucial thing in all this is sizing.

Every horizontal mill I've ever seen makes a cut, gigs back, and drops down however much you tell it to, then cuts again. It's indexed to a point in space rather then the physical surface of the log

The old verticals worked like that - back in the dark ages. In their case the carriage knees kicked the log over whatever distance and you took another slice. I know theres plenty of older mills out still doing it just the same way. But in the real world of commercial sawmills you fit a linebar. And a linebar serves as a fence, meaning you can adjust the headblock pressures independently during each cut and push your log against it and the actual thickness that you cut is indexed to the cut face of the log.

Maybe it's just me - being in Australia and cutting species with a lot of spring - but being able to cut a consistent size regardless of spring has always been a major factor in equipment choices for me.

I nearly bought an 8" (vertical) band resaw the other day. I am doing a fair bit of 3/4 and 4/4 work and I'm looking for the kerf saving over my circular resaws. But again its got that feed hob that holds each cant tight to the fence during each cut. You can swing the hob out (or leave your linebar out) if you wish to take a shim cut because of tension issues. But what you can't do with horizontal is bring it in and know every board is the same thickness, even if its bowed from end to end.

[moodnacreek]

Lurker, ever see a gage roll on a circle mill husk?

[longtime lurker]

Okay what's a gauge roll? I figure its a translation thing but maybe not. Seems like around here we went from breakdown saws to fully hydraulic linebars in one jump... We never had handset headblocks at all. 

Most of my time is around circles of one sort or another, but band or circle is all the same regards general setup in a vertical.

[moodnacreek]

A gauge roll was an option on old time sawmills. Some small guys like me still use them. It is a vertical iron roll mounted on a horizontal screw just ahead of the saw guide. It can be flipped out of the way. In use you pull a cant up against it and saw the board off. It gauges the thickness of the cut and improves the accuracy.  You have exposure to sawing machines I have never herd of.  Thanks for the reply, Doug

[nativewolf]

This quickly became an education thread.  Liking the whole conversation.

[JB Griffin]

Like Ron said, the converted circle to vert. band is the most efficient way run a band.

I have a really, really good geuss that an automatic carriage and track with a band headrig using a 2" wide blade would CONSISTENTLY out produce any horizontal band mill on the market.

The biggest problem with vertical mills is the gig back with the carriage.  If you rub the saw, you might pull it off the pulleys.  The Clouser mill pulls the head back on the gig back.  That eliminates the problem.  

The lastest design from Clouser uses a moving guide now. They don't use the tilting head anymore for some reason. 

[longtime lurker]

Brewco do a 2½" band headrig thats actually designed to be a "drop in" replacement for a circle husk. If you watch close you can actually see the saw set back as the carriage returns.


1 VERTICAL BAND BREWCO 22 CUT.wmv - YouTube

[moodnacreek]

Never saw that tilt back feature before. No problem gigging with that. To bad you would need a debarker. If I sawed that maple I would get 2 less boards.

[JB Griffin]

That Brewco is exactly what I was thinking. 

Doug, you wouldn't have to have a debarker, but it would significantly extend blade run time, maybe enough to justify a debarker alone, without figuring in chipping the slabs. But as you probably already know, a debarker and chipper will replace one warm body that would have to stack slabs.

[longtime lurker]

Never saw that tilt back feature before. No problem gigging with that. To bad you would need a debarker. If I sawed that maple I would get 2 less boards.

Yeah but...

This goes around and around in my head about 3 times a year.... how to go forward from where I'm at / how to be more efficient / use less labour / actually have a life where I get like a normal life with days off in it.... over and over and over.
Lot of ways we're in different places..... there is 200 years worth of equipment optimisation to suit local resource and conditions between me and you guys. And yet we're still pretty much all running circle saws and while techniques and equipment are different the basic stuff is still the same. I'd love to be able to sit down and have a beer and a talk with ya's.

Australian mills are different: we use the headsaw to cut flitches and cants and then sort it out on the (circular) resaws... its a response to the resource. Technology came along in say the 60's and meant that instead of the straight breakdown saws the headsaw became a linebar carriage with independently controllable headblocks so the flitches were sized, and the circle resaws got faster and had automated sizing and flitch returns and linebars and waste separators etc on them as well.
 
Now technology has taken the big guys to optimised twins (like super giant scrags) and multisaws (like a gang edger). I stood in one of those mills a while back and came to a number of conclusions:
* that I can't compete with that anymore then a small operation cutting softwood can compete with a quad canter.
* that I don't want to compete with that anyway
* that their equipment has limitations too, and theres a place for me doing what they can't.
* that theres still a difference between small and backyard, and small and boutique, and I need to push that difference.
* that I still need to increase my yield per man, and my dependance on dumb labour, by using the smart stuff where it can be fitted          to equipment more in my program..... even if its their castoff's. Auto stackers and the like: I can buy a second hand, outdated              stacker for like 12 months worth of two dumb guys standing at the back stacking boards and placing sticks.
* 300 other odd thoughts as well and I'm getting sidetracked away from the band headsaw debate.

Yanno that extra two boards, its highly dependant on log size and you might only get 1. And if you'e cutting 6/4  or thicker you might not even get that. I keep looking at bands.... particularly when we're doing the 3/4 and 4/4 timbers... but it's always to install a band resaw as well as my circle resaw. I still don't see a place for a band headsaw... it just doesnt add up in my operation. It's about the debarker, and knots or rot pockets that will make a band do silly things and... yeah.

So thats my current goals, aside from more "smart" tech that can run itself pretty much: circle headsaw, and a vertical band resaw on a roundabout. Oddly enough when I look at whats about secondhand both there and here that gear: the big vertical band resaw, is often available at a pretty reasonable price being cast offs from some bigger operation because it aint big enough no more. Still way to big for me but.... cheap horsepower... all that means is I fill the infeed chains, maybe run another longer greenchain to it for more storage, then turn it on at the end of the day for two hours and pick up a 10% yield increase in my 4/4 and 23% in my 3/4 ( that ¼" kerf gets realllll hungry cutting thin stuff as you guys know)

Dunno... I've got to get bigger to meet demand and order deadlines and diversify my risk. (We had our largish wholesale customer go under last year and it hurt: not the initial lost $ when he went into bankruptcy but the giant cashflow hole behind it. I need that guy, and the only way to diversify that risk is to have more then one of them but while he might have been 50% of my business I was only 10% of his so it means some bigtime capacity upgrades to think about having a couple of them)

Sawmills.... why can't I own a strip club or something?"???