900ft an hour! Yea right!!!

[Sawyerfortyish]

Just reading the Baileys catalog 922ft per hour on the Lucas mill . How can that be right?There ain't no way hour after hour. Who was keeping tally and how long where they out in the sun  ;).

[Ianab]

Per hour.. I can believe that if you were cutting larger dimension lumber from big softwood logs, and had Conan the Barbarian to offload for you. :D
That doesn't mean that you are going to to 7376 bft a day  :
The MILL could do it.. but all the help would have been carted off to hospital by lunchtime  :D
You are right, you have to take those figures with a large pinch of salt. In theory they may be true... in the real world your mileage may vary.

Ian

[FeltzE]

Oh now that isn't so hard.... a 46 inch by 12 foot saw log without any knots, ripped into 2x4's would be about 200 or so totaling over 1000 ft.

Of course you couldn't start your time clock until your saw was set up and started, and stopped as soon as the last board flew off....

Then reset the clock for an hour or so to move the saw to the next piece and take a brake! ;D

Eric

[Sawyerfortyish]

If the saw is set up over the log and you start sawing it without turning it. I would think that after you get about 3/4 of the log sawed the log would start to bow badly. If thats true then there must be a lot of odd shaped boards made.

[Ron Wenrich]

I guess we got snookered when we bought our big equipment.  I'm only doing about 50% better than that sawing grade hardwood.  But, that's taking out my downtime in the figures.  

I saw on the one day that we sawed locust and some misc species, I only got a little over 1 Mbf/hr.  They were probably really small logs and doing 4x4 posts.  I wonder what the Lucas would do on locust?  It would probably be hard to maintain that production rate.  

[ARKANSAWYER]

  Nope I hear that you saw so fast that logs do not bow and every board is perfect.  They also do not rock when you get to the bottom and you can go from boards to cants most quick.
  As for the 900 bdft an hour they will saw that fast if you can get the stuff out of the way fast enough and have a log with that much in it.  They do and can out produce any band mill costing 2 to 3 times as much.  But they are manual mills and it takes alot of physical labor to run them.   Yesterday my 16 yearold boy and I sawed for 10 hours and produced 2,937 bdft on a hydralic band mill.  But we had to lift the boards off and cut alot of 12 ft 8/4 oak boards that went close to 100 lbs each.  Total between the 2 of us we lifted over 15,000 lbs of lumber and slabs in 10 hours.    900 bdft an hour means some one is going to have to lift close to 4,500 lbs in an hour.    And there is always that stacking and house cleaning that one has to do.  
  They was not lieing it can be done.
ARKANSAWYER

[Ianab]

Posted by: Sawyerfortyish Posted on: Today at 12:57:04
If the saw is set up over the log and you start sawing it without turning it. I would think that after you get about 3/4 of the log sawed the log would start to bow badly

Normal operation of a swingblade is just that. Start sawing at the top and keep going till you only have a bottom slab left. I have noticed slight bowing in the occasional log but never enough to produce reject boards. It's also posible to leave an "L" shaped bottom slab that reduces the bow in that bottom quarter of the log. Most of my sawing has been with cypress and pine, they may be better behaved ???.

On small and/or tough logs or smaller dimension boards... no way you will get those figures. The mill will cut them OK, and at a sensible rate. But if you can only push thru the log at 1/2 the speed, and are stopped loading logs 1/2 the time... :

When I watched Jake demo his automatic swingblade recently, he had 2 guys offloading, and a Bobcat type loader for placing logs on the mill and removing slabs etc. This was only a show demo, but I can see thats what you would need to get full production out of that mill.

Ian

[Captain]

I was there in Bangor, I saw it.  World Champion Kiwi Lumberjack David Bolstad cutting 2x material in Eastern White Pine with a Lucas 827.  I also saw Chris Browne cut 911BF/HR with a 10" 24hp Peterson WPF.  Chris had a couple of rejects because of miscuts, admittedly the log rolled on the bottom due to improper dogging. Could have been a differrent outcome.  

As many have said before, it would take quite person to keep up a pace like that.  But I have to say that with the ASM it is quite possible to keep those kind of numbers, with enough people working around you to move everything.

Oh yes, Arky.  You wouldn't have to handle 4500lbs more than once in an hour to keep up that pace.  We don't have to put them back on to edge them ;D

Captain

[FeltzE]

On second thought my estimate earlier would require 200 saw passes in an hour thats just over three times a minute down and back....

12 ft down and 12 back.... 24 x 3 thats 72 ft per min saw speed...pretty impressive


A friend of mine has a peterson he has the rails set up out back of my barn and comes over occasionally to saw. I havn't been impressed so far. The saw seems to bind up a lot and the logs tend to pull into the cut and roll up a little even when wedged in place.  Whats the key to making it cut smooth?

Eric

[Captain]

Hey Eric, tell me a little about his mill and the stuff he is cutting....there are several things that could cause his issues.

One of my biggest problems that we are trying to overcome is the fact that a lot of Peterson owners got their mill in a crate with a training video, and therefore don't really know when the mill is cutting correctly or not.  I would invite any owner to come to a demonstration show or field days to see how one should cut and get some questions answered.  Remember, Peterson is always just a phone call or email away!!!

Captain

[FeltzE]

Captain,

He definitely has some alignment problems with it. Not dramatic but enough to cause some drag. It really seems to pull the log into the cut too.

I don't have the saw here to mess with he takes it home and leaves the frame in the yard. Should the board splitter run fully to the bottom of the cut? Is it adjustable? Can the blade be leveled in all directions?

Is there a electronic down load of the instruction manual available on line?

I am very possibly the reason he bought his mill. He has helped me saw on my WM in the past and he wanted his own portable mill and in discussion I have commented several times that no one in the area had a swing saw capable of sawing the oversize stock we occasionally get from the tree services .

Eric

[Captain]

Eric honestly, everything is adjustable.  First, just click on the link to the left and email rex in sales.  He will send you all of the training information (book/video) you and your fellow need to straighten out the problems.

The riving knife should be straight with the blade and is mounted on 3 screws with adjustment nuts.  Providing it is not bent  : a simple asjustment with a straight edge and it is in line.

The statement "dragging in cuts" is a bit vague. The vertical and horizontal adjustments are independent of one another, and relate only at point of intersect.  By reading the rotational swirl as the lumber is cut, one can determine if there is correct lead on the blade in either position.  Another telltale of misadjustment is carefully re-entering the sawn area oppesite the normal cutting direction after a cut is completed to see if the blade wants to contact the freshly sawn area...for example, a blade that just exited a vertical cut if adjusted correctly should re-enter that cut in the vertical position without any additional material being cut.

I would be happy to help in any way possible including a phone consult if necessary.  I am certain the problem is correctable.  

CAPTAIN





  

[FeltzE]

Captain, Will do.

Maybe I'll get to mess with it this weekend.

Eric

[Wife]

Wow Captain, can't believe you've still got time to help out on here - what with unloading that container, sorting out the components, assembling the 12 mills, taking time off work to train the new owers, AND preparing for a show for us next week! Oh yeah, and add your milling work AND your full time day job too.
So all you guys, if you manage to get some of Captain's time, utilise it the best you can - it's valuable! And must I also add, invaluable. This guy is even giving US hints on how to improve our processes. And yes, we're using them. ;-))
So here's a big to you, Captain. Thank you. And we look forward to sending you more container loads of sawmills to divvy up....the last one sure filled quick. But Peru's load is taking our attention right now....

[Pete J]

Captain and I are gonna try for 950hr next week. The only problem is we're gonna cut for a 5 minute demo and take a break. I'll have to figure the rest out on a calculator.

http://www.empirefarmdays.com


Well, maybe not 950, but we'll be cutting and tailing pretty fast!