setup and sawing procedure

[northwoods1]

What is the most efficient way (direction) to be taking off finished boards & flitches that need to be edged from the mill? Most of the time I'm sawing alone and am stacking the lumber directly on a trailer or some means to move it away from the mill. How often do you edge everything? If sawing alone do you remove every board from the mill as it is sawn or make multiple passes then remove several boards? I'd like to be more efficient when I saw. The thought often occurs to me that saw milling is one of the things that sure takes years of experience to learn all the tricks to doing it precisely and efficiently.  ???

[Meadows Miller]

Gday

If im sawing on a band i usually just flick the boards to be edged onto the loading arms from the operators side then edege them before the next log when I have been on a wm  in the past Mate  ;) ;D

Regards Chris

[Bibbyman]

The answer to all of the above is .... It depends..

We have a WM LT40 with dragback.  So we take most everything off the "driver's" end.  That is except ties and heavy cants that we push off the back end onto rollers.  And long beams we take back out the front.  Slabs always go off the back side.

We have an edger but when we did (and still sometimes do in some cases) edge on the mill,  we edge as we go.  We tend to accumulate the flitches on the loading arms and then when the log is canted down small enough, we place the flitches against the cant and edge them.

When we saw a log down in all lumber, we tend to saw all the way to the deck and drag the whole mess off and stack it.  

[Chuck White]

When we saw, we will keep all of the flitches on the loading arms.

When we get the cant down to 5 inches (I say 5 because 6" is usually our minimum width for boards,and with the cant at 5" we don't mess up the face of the board on top of the cant) we will put all of the flitches on the mill against the cant and begin edging, dropping down 1" at a time and turn the flitches as we get a clean edge.  Throw all of the edgings into a pile.

[Banjo picker]

Like everyone said edge as you go...if you don't have an edger it can be pretty depressing to know you have two or three stacks of boards laying there to edge...not to mention they will be in the way no matter where you put them...

I have three roller tables set up in line with the mill...I drag the slabs back with the drag arms and put the slabs on the first off rack...I have two other racks for two other products if they are not too long....If they are long stuff I would only have one rack for the product...Tim

[paul case]

when i saw i stack flitches at the off end of the mill. stack serveral logs worth and edge them all at once. i usually make 2 stacks, one with 1 good edge and one stack with 2 barked edges. planning someday to have the edger set up to run them thru. the slabs get stacked in a rack in front of the flitch pile. i leave all the boards i can on the mill while i am sawing and unload them with the tractor. sometime i am cutting 2 different size boards off the sides of the log i will stack the other flitches on the mill at the park end. pc



you can barly see the flitches behnd the slab rack.

[bandmiller2]

On the circular mill,boards needing edging go on top of the husk when I'am done cutting that cant they go on the carriage.I have a commercial laser that really helps edging boards.On the bandmill boards go on the dead deck.How many cuts you make on a cant before removing depends if you have a power lift on the saw head,if you don't its alot of cranking. Frank C.

[logfarmer]

This is very helpfull we have got our mill set up and have sawn about 5 logs. Im not sure we can keep the flitches on the deck as it is a manual mill with no arms and we have to walk where the arms would go anyway to push the mill down and back. I dont want to handle anything more than once if it can be avoided. Ill have to check tomorrow in the light, maybe we can stack the flitches next to the log as it is being cut then cut them once there is a cant to cut against. Im so new at this we havent even cut our flitches down we were having so much fun makeing lumber.
Martin

[Brucer]

Like everyone said edge as you go...if you don't have an edger it can be pretty depressing to know you have two or three stacks of boards laying there to edge ...

Even if you have an edger it can be pretty depressing. Especially when the helper is out of town for two weeks.

I dont want to handle anything more than once if it can be avoided. Ill have to check tomorrow in the light, maybe we can stack the flitches next to the log as it is being cut then cut them once there is a cant to cut against.

When I had a manual mill I would set up a couple of sawhorses beside the mill and simply lever the flitches onto them. There was usually enough room for 3 side by side, so I'd try to sort them by width as I was piling them. After two or three logs, I'd lever the flitches back onto the mill and edge them.

Im so new at this we havent even cut our flitches down we were having so much fun makeing lumber.

;D ;D

[northwoods1]

I can't get used to the idea of raising/ lowering the saw head for every cut if I want to leave all the boards stacked on the cant I am sawing until I have a bunch of them to remove. I was watching one guy saw and he would saw a board from a cant and leave it lay there, start cutting the next and then as the mill was sawing he would take off/stack the previous board from the mill. That seemed efficient. I have a manual mill so no loading arms for flitches, I have several log decks around my place with logs sitting up on 8" x 16" x 18' I beams which are level with the bed of the mill. I normally just pull the milll up to whatever deck I want to saw on and have at it I can just roll each log right on without hardly any effort. I tend to let the stuff that needs edging pile up a bit and I think maybe I need to begin edging more as I go and keep on top of that a little better. I'm wondering about the dragback option for the MW mills I didn't know it could pull an entire stack of boards back I would like to watch someone saw that utilizes that.

[Okrafarmer]

I do what Meadow Miller does.You never pick the slab up.You just keep your loader arms halfway up and with one hand slide even heavy slabs downhill to the arms.Then when You finish sawing the cant up,just raise the arms and slide slabs back on.The only time you pick up a board is when its finished.If You dont have loader arms its a lot of work

That assumes you have a loader that will actually stay up while you saw wood. 
Mine comes down pretty quick.

On the Turner mill, which is entirely manual except for the up/down of the head, I try to stay on one side of the mill only. I load, saw, and everything from one side. It wouldn't be good to load from the far side, because the backstops are on that side. I want the backstops to be up when I put a log on. I suppose I could rig up some temporary stops on the other side of the mill-- that might help.
Anyway, I'm new to it too, and I'm trying to figure out the same things you are.

[poolman]

I use to have a manual mill from kasco and it was ground level.Now i have loader arms on my TK.What I did was slide my slabs on top of the next log up to the saw .Then when the cant is cut up then slide slabs off the log onto the track for edging.You should avoid picking up things because sliding is less work.If You slide them, it should only take one hand.You will balance the slabs on the pivot point on top of the log up next.Swinging a heavy object on its pivot point is easy.Wear a back support belt if You are working at ground level.Good luck    , Brian

[woodmills1]

on my non remote, non drag back lt40 I pushed flitches onto the loader arms, and removed a finised board while in the next cut

on the lt70 remote and drag back I almost always drag back anything, then thow slab on pile, put flitch on edger pretable, or put board on trailer or stack

working alone is easier on a non remote mill,  as it is harder to push a big flitch on to the loader arms on my remote 70 and more

that said I love love love my 70

[backwoods sawyer]

Like everyone else, I have always liked to edge as I go on the LT-70. However with the AC-36 that process is a bit more complicated because the whole mill bed is set up backwards and having the edger made it easier, so the other day while running the LT-70 I just made a few stacks to run thru the edger. Then the starter went out on the edger so I had to edge them on the mill. That made for a lot more work then just edging as I go. It depends on which mill you have as to what works best. Edging just a couple boards at a time can slow you down as well as letting the pile build up to much.