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I have a drag back on my sawmill, but I have not been using it. I have been unloading off the side. I was running some conduit in the shop today, and had an idea for a roller table. A piece of 3/4 PVC slid over a piece of 1/2 rebar. Obviously not as good as a manufactured roller table. But, do you think it would work??
Try it, but I don't think that'll last too long. The electrical conduit(sch40), I don't think will hold up on it's own, let alone with a rebar spindle. Maybe it'll work for a while, maybe it'll work for a long while; it's your dime, and time.
No not really. I tried a steel pipe greased up inside a steel pipe.. Loose fit.. And it still kinda bounded up and just skidded stuff along once a load was on. Needs bearings unfortunately
Keep us posted, I would think round rod would work better than rebar. Also, I wouldn't add any grease, that will cause more resistance.
I set up a rudimentary roller table for my table saw using the cheapo screw on roller ball bearings from Harbor Freight. It worked pretty good.
I often saw alone and without a roll case I would not do it. This may be considered overkill but if you ever used a powered , that is fwd. , reverse, jog, stop, etc. controlled while you saw, you would be willing to pay the price. The contraption I am talking about sorts boards and slabs while you saw more.
do you have pics of your setup moodna?
This is what I got behind my LT70....can cut a few logs before moving at all. With a helper, the sawyer just pretty much stands there. I work alone lots and this system helps me get it done.
Sawmill Contraptions - YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JfwI-HzbqB4)
Nice Percy!
That is sweet.
Quote from: Percy on February 14, 2021, 06:10:57 PM
This is what I got behind my LT70....can cut a few logs before moving at all. With a helper, the sawyer just pretty much stands there. I work alone lots and this system helps me get it done.
Sawmill Contraptions - YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JfwI-HzbqB4)
Percy that's awesome. And man you can jam! Don't let me down. Pretty cool 👍
Wow!
Nice!
Are you controlling the air kickers or are they automated somehow?
Your powered rollers, are they daisy chain driven off of the meltable round belts that you buy in a coil and cut to length yourself?
Thanks for all the comments. I was just looking to do some thing with what was on hand.@Percy that's A nice set up. I'm just a hobby guy, i....... ( i'm not going to say I don't need one ) ;D ;D. I'll say I don't have room for one right now.
Quote from: Bigly on February 14, 2021, 06:05:21 PM
do you have pics of your setup moodna?
others have asked. I just got my first cell phone and it can take photos but I need to find the time to learn. It's not that i don't want to, it's just hard for me to get out of the stone age.
Quote from: rooster 58 on February 14, 2021, 06:22:23 PM
Nice Percy!
This set up does what mine does only it is spread out in a nice yard that I don't have. A set up like this is the only way for one or two men to really get any lumber done especially if they are not young. My green chain is outdoors, big problem this winter.
That is pretty amazing!
Don't know rules for posting eBay. Real rollers aren't expensive take a look
Note: Link removed by Admin. You can read FF Rules. Link at bottom of page.
@trimguy... at the fish plants they make there own all the time using this idea using a piece of Teflon inserts each end about 1 1/2'' long drill hole in the middle and insert small shaft somehow... idea is good... i.ve done some using pieces hard wood of a shovel handle.
Thanks. I will see what else I have laying around. There are some cheaper roller tables on eBay, but with my set up I'm not sure that they'll even help me. I just thought I would use some stuff laying around. I can always upgrade later.
Quote from: mike_belben on February 15, 2021, 06:49:14 AM
Nice!
Thanks
Are you controlling the air kickers or are they automated somehow?
When the pice/slab is going down the rollcas, it will hit a mudflap suspended just over the rollcase activating a switch which activates the air cylinders.
Your powered rollers, are they daisy chain driven off of the meltable round belts that you buy in a coil and cut to length yourself?
There is about 64 feet of rollcase all chain driven.
Percy, being in a cold climate , how do you keep your air lines from freezing?
Quote from: moodnacreek on February 18, 2021, 08:04:43 AM
Percy, being in a cold climate , how do you keep your air lines from freezing?
Drain compressor every night, and put about a cup of airbrake anti freeze in compressor air tank every morning. Freezup of the system is worst around the freezing point or slightly above....When its minus mucho, the RH around here drops and hardly no moisture in air tank. Can forget the air brake anti freeze on those days....till it warms up...heh
Quote from: Percy on February 18, 2021, 09:46:35 AM
Quote from: moodnacreek on February 18, 2021, 08:04:43 AM
Percy, being in a cold climate , how do you keep your air lines from freezing?
Drain compressor every night, and put about a cup of airbrake anti freeze in compressor air tank every morning. Freezup of the system is worst around the freezing point or slightly above....When its minus mucho, the RH around here drops and hardly no moisture in air tank. Can forget the air brake anti freeze on those days....till it warms up...heh
Kinda like carburetor icing. I once worked in a shop, body shop, all air tools, and the compresser was next door with an underground line that was not deep enough. I have done all hydraulic in my mill because of that experience. Takes a lot of time to build a set up like yours but worth all the effort if you are serious.
Quote from: moodnacreek on February 18, 2021, 01:57:27 PM
Quote from: Percy on February 18, 2021, 09:46:35 AM
Quote from: moodnacreek on February 18, 2021, 08:04:43 AM
Percy, being in a cold climate , how do you keep your air lines from freezing?
Drain compressor every night, and put about a cup of airbrake anti freeze in compressor air tank every morning. Freezup of the system is worst around the freezing point or slightly above....When its minus mucho, the RH around here drops and hardly no moisture in air tank. Can forget the air brake anti freeze on those days....till it warms up...heh
Kinda like carburetor icing. I once worked in a shop, body shop, all air tools, and the compresser was next door with an underground line that was not deep enough. I have done all hydraulic in my mill because of that experience. Takes a lot of time to build a set up like yours but worth all the effort if you are serious.
What I like about hydraulics is also why I chose not to use them for my kickers. They are just too positive and strong...One of my first contraptions used hydraulics and my first hangup while using said contraption was the last as the powerful hydraulics bent and busted my apparatus because of the power....I have plans for a trimsaw setup with scizzorlift table..Ill be using hydraulics there for sure. ;D
Percy, my roller kicker table kicks with lifting arms left and right. It was not built by me and was intended to be 2 stage. I plumbed it single stage, that is gravity down because if a helper gets his arm caught he is strong enough to hold it up. I am 50 feet away pushing a button and not watching. The down side of this is cold days. all that oil has to warm up and I have to adjust the time delays. The problem, as you would know, is building these things and not having them work right, then they are right in the way.
This is my first attempt at showing a photo.
This is my first attempt at a photo.
(https://forestryforum.com/gallery/albums/userpics/44989/IMG_0577.JPG?easyrotate_cache=1614347784)
Very nice 👍
Here are some pictures that I took of Percy and his operation:
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With his LT70.
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And with his flipper/flapper roller tables. I see that he is wearing the Wood-Mizer cap that I gave him. ;D
Quote from: moodnacreek on February 26, 2021, 09:28:16 AM
This is my first attempt at a photo.
(https://forestryforum.com/gallery/albums/userpics/44989/IMG_0577.JPG?easyrotate_cache=1614347784)
Thanks for the likes. I did not do this, my wife did, took her 2 hours. We could never find 'click here to add photo'. She found it latter by accident . Need alot more study.
I picked up eight, 10' medium duty roller conveyor tables last week with hopes to improve our material handling efficiency and minimize the lifting. After seeing how well Customsawyer's system works and looking at pictures of Banjo's and videos of Percy's and Yellowhammer's, I'm still looking for something that will work for us. We do not have the power or elevation that Percy has, and we do not have the room under cover that Jake has.
If any of you have rollers incorporated into your operation, I'd appreciate some pictures and explanations.
Also, we've been considering making a table that goes from the last bunk (towards the tongue end of the mill) back to the hydraulic controls, and possibly incorporating a roller that is about 1/4-1/2" proud of the top of the table to facilitate moving stacks of boards or heavy slabs. If any of you are using something that works for you, please share some pics. I've spent the past hour or so searching with limited success (my deficiency, not the FF's).
Thank you. Looks like we'll be sawing cypress and pine today. Finished off a good whack of cedar last night.
I will stop in here for a visit and see what shows up. popcorn_smiley
I dont know if any of my ideas will work for you but here is my YouTube channel.
There are several videos there.
I recently removed the green chain and replaced it with the (lumber stacker) video
Byrne Millwork - YouTube (https://youtube.com/@byrnemillwork2526)
Thanks for kicking this caveman, it's got me back thinking, maybe it will get me working on it. For two years I was begging the boss to fid some roller tables and I kept searching all the local listings/ Well, late last summer he drove past my place and leaned on the air horn as he often does and I saw he had a dump truck load of 10' and longer roller tables. He told me later he had more to pick up, he got them free as part of a warehouse cleanout/demo contract he had. I actually have not seen them since, they are stored in a trailer 'someplace' on the complex I assume. I think they are all 12" wide, but that's a good start anyway. So now it falls to me to build some stands and start messing with a layout and I have been dragging my feet.
Maybe your endeavor will inspire me to get moving. Certainly watching PAMizerman's videos recently got my juices flowing again. I have long had images of Roberts setup in my head, and see how Jake has made very quick simple setups that are both flexible and allow for working room to get around have all added to the little voice in my head saying 'git 'er done!' :D
Take steps to save steps and man those things can save a lot of steps.
Only thing I can say for sure about roller tables is I grab everyone I can get my hands on.
Thanks, fellows. Today was an exercise in futility. We trashed six blades before 11 a.m. this morning due to metal strikes in cypress logs from a customer/tree surgeon. After we finished sawing the rest of the logs, we grabbed the cant that we trashed at least three blades on with the telehandler. A loud noise alerted me. It sounded like a chain broke, but it was a hydraulic hose busting instead. After lunch, we tracked it down, pulled it out and will try to get another made next week.
(https://forestryforum.com/gallery/albums/userpics/22883/EBE8F640-C202-4779-99F7-B95816E46947.jpeg?easyrotate_cache=1682813921)
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We also built three more raised bed planters and may have had a few barley sodas this afternoon. We are still five jobs behind and next week is not looking good for sawing due to regular job responsibilities and family duties.
(https://forestryforum.com/gallery/albums/userpics/22883/54DD867D-312E-4AC8-B478-7C7464A40AD8.jpeg?easyrotate_cache=1682814207)
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The blades on top of the cedar are all metal hit blades. We must have hit 20 screws in cypress today. The kids at school will have a lot of material to make knives out of.
Metal in wood just sucks the life out of a fun day.
It sure gives you something else to talk about.
Well when I hit metal, its the last thing I want to talk about. :D ;D
I forgot about this thread. has anyone thought about an electric motor with a cam on it for directing boards? could be very simple, cheap and easy. and electric is pretty responsive in all temperatures.
QuoteOnly thing I can say for sure about roller tables is I grab everyone I can get my hands on.
I can attest that they come in very handy for sliding 38' foot long, 17" wide, soppin' wet sinker cypress boards. And cutting them to length and stacking. smiley_thumbsup
You, Daniel and Travis were hopping that day.
On another note, the customer came by today to get his cypress and cedar. He was stoked with the live edged cedar and even thought the cypress that sawed flat but rougher than normal, with the last screw-stike blade, would look perfect for the siding in his office. He wanted to take a couple of blades with him for decorations in his shop. He paid for them, and I was happy for him to take them away.
There are many ways to convey boards and slabs away from the saw. Belts are great because they can do rough slabs upside down along with boards, timbers and sticks. Spiral rolls with flag stops allow you to unload at the flag or keep going to another and they can go on forever with more stops allowing one man to sort his entire production. One way is to first have a belt that can dump slabs first and transition to spiral rolls. The ability to move material away so you can keep sawing may inspire someone to build a conveyer to do that but that is only half of what needs to be done. You want to sort your wood at the same time.
Yesteday, while awaiting a phone call to go pick my mother up from the hospital in Tampa (she ended up getting released this morning), I hauled the mill out from under the shed. While it was out, I used the box blade and dragged out a lot of sawdust, bark and other debris that had accumulated under the mill. The mill got a good scrubbing and I put it back under the shed at a little different angle. Now the radiator does not smash into a fan at full height while at the tongue end.
One of the roller tables that we got a couple of weeks ago was placed near the mill. I think it will help quite a bit but the guy who was tail gunning today was not patient enough to let the boards get back to the rollers, even when pulling back three 2x4's at a time.
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How do you handle your normal sawdust discharge?
We have a hose attached to the discharge chute that goes to an overhead blower/dust collector fan that discharges it outside of the shed. I then move it with the tractor bucket. We have not moved the mill in quite a while, so the bark and debris piled up under the mill. Before we installed the blower, we would do a better job of cleaning under the mill. I typically used a Council Fire Rake to rake out the bark and other stuff that would accumulate under the mill and a scoop shovel to clean up the sawdust.
The discharge chute for the blower is hidden behind the pole in the foreground of the picture even though it is on the other side of the shed. We need a more robust blower but we only have 120 volts on two circuits feeding the sawmill shed, the solar kiln and the hot box (I have three other 220v blowers).
What about using multiple 110 blowers?
The little blower actually does pretty well unless we are sawing cypress and it can't keep up with the heavy, wet sawdust. We may add one of the bigger blowers and just not run the fans in the solar kiln or the halogen lights in the hot box while sawing. That little blower has saved us a lot of work at the end of a sawing day.
Cypress sawdust will clog the sawdust chute and is difficult to deal with no matter what.
Yup even my big blower doesn't like a steady diet of wet cypress sawdust from the mill. If I'm sawing a full day of it I just unhook the chute and blow it on the ground. If I try using the blower the 30' plus of inlet pipe will get plugged and has to be cleaned out. If it's just a couple of hours of it I will use it, knowing that whatever I'm sawing next will clean it out.
One disadvantage of the traveling saw is sawdust discharge. With a carriage mill sawdust spills in a pit and you can have a blower or a drag chain or even an auger .
The problem with cypress is the amount of moisture in the sawdust. As those that were at the project can confirm you can't get any more water in that wood. As it gets in the sawdust chute/blower hose than it just starts sticking to everything. It will plug everything up in short order.
After seeing what I saw, and for the first time ever to see it also, I would characterize more more like you had a lot of sawdust in your water. :) :D
Geez some of those boards just had puddles on them as they were being stacked. I've milled soaking wet wood but never saw anything like that. It's almost a paste.
I just read through this whole thread again today. I was looking for tips to improve efficiency as most of us have found that the milling of boards is just one step in a material handling process.
We have made a few changes since the inception of this thread that have improved our efficiency. The roller tables I bought were 10' long. The one positioned right behind the mill to handle the dragged back slabs, boards and flitches was recently cut into 4' and 6' tables. This saves a lot of steps walking around a long table. The last couple of times we've sawn, we sawed 8-10' logs so we positioned the shorter table at a 30° or so angle off to the side of the table behind the mill. The slabs go to a slab rack I made a few months ago. The boards are stacked according to size on steel sawhorses beside the roller table behind the mill, while flitches are sent in a linear direction towards the edger and are stacked on steel sawhorses or on square tubing on the ground. Last week we stacked some wide 2" thick oak on the tubing on the ground. That was a mistake as they did not lose weight down there.
Our rinky dink operation is in continual evolution, but a few things we have incorporated lately have definitely improved efficiency and cut down on the manual labor.
1. Roller tables
2. Telehandler
3. Slab rack- it can be emptied with the fork or the whole thing can be hauled to the burn pile, dumped and retrieved using the forks without leaving the tractor or Lull seat.
4. dust collector/blower attached to the discharge chute of the mill
5. Edger- most recent addition. This is truly a game changer for us. The speed at which it produces accurate, straight boards from flitches is phenomenal.
6. I almost forgot about pallets.
7. Stickers- I've started sawing them at 1"x 1.25" and two inches longer than the lumber pallets are wide, so 44".
There are several more things we can do to further improve. One will be an always available pull through area for trucks and trailers. It is amazing how many people are incapable of backing the trailers that they haul. We are really limited by space, but this has to happen. Another will be concreting the floor of the mill shed to stack lumber. We've about stopped stacking under the shed due to the hassle of leveling blocks for each stack of lumber. Concrete has just gotten stupid expensive- time to buy and cry.
I would be interested in seeing any other things y'all are doing that makes tough jobs easier.
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I'd like to see your blower and where it goes. My biggest problem is sawdust in an industrial setting. I shovel it into a Uline bag and then take them to my property where I am building a sound barrier from the noise bikes blasting by. I think A blower with a hose right into the bag will work. I just got finished planing my cedar decking with my Dewalt735 which has a built in blower and I hooked a hose to it and into the bag. Worked great. Now I need to figure a blower and hose from the mill.
Below are a couple of pictures of the little blower and the sawdust pile.(https://forestryforum.com/gallery/albums/userpics/22883/IMG_7442.jpeg?easyrotate_cache=1694743339)
(https://forestryforum.com/gallery/albums/userpics/22883/IMG_7441.jpeg?easyrotate_cache=1694743343)
I need to clean out under the mill again soon. We also should concrete under the shed but the price of concrete is outrageous right now. It will take 15 yards3.
You have a nice setup for your locale Kyle. Let the breezes blow. Yes, tidying is always a constant but worthwhile endeavor, but part of the job. :)
That looks like a great little setup. I setup and take down my mill almost everyday as it sits in the parking lot of an industrial complex. I need to see where I can hang a hose to the mill, maybe a sky hook, I did not mind the sawdust from the hardwood salvage logs, but I have been doing quite a bit of EWP B&B siding and it is getting to be a pain to keep shovelling. I on the look out for used roller tables.