I'm about to start framing on the new house and I was in need of a beam planer to plane some oak posts and beams. I'd looked at the commercial Makita portable beam planer but it was a little pricey for my blood. I have a 13" Rigid that has done a good job with smaller stuff.....so I decided to give it a try. I removed the base and attached a pair of 4 inch angles. I was going to let it "walk" down the beam. That idea did not work too well. The contraption was hard to handle and I had a major problem with snipe on either end of the beam.
Then a light went off in my head....or maybe lightning. I thought about that 4 post sawmill that I sawed the beams on......the perfect carriage for the planer.
(https://forestryforum.com/gallery/albums/userpics/10624/Planer%20mounted.jpg)
Here is a picture of the planer mounted to the sawmill carriage (disregard the portion of finger covering the lense).
(https://forestryforum.com/gallery/albums/userpics/10624/Planer%20working%202.jpg)
(https://forestryforum.com/gallery/albums/userpics/10624/Planer%20working.jpg)
Above are a couple of pictures of the planer in action. I would take about 1/32 of an inch per pass. About 4 passes down the beam on each side and it was as slick as a baby's backside. With sharp knives it would do the trick. The planer would walk the carriage down the beam. I'd raise the head at the end and return to the starting position and let it go again.....no problems with snipe.
(https://forestryforum.com/gallery/albums/userpics/10624/Beams%20n%20planer.jpg)
The end result.....a nice lot of planed oak beams and posts.
Wudman
Great way to plane those beams.
Yeah, the sawmill beds are good for a lot of things that the manufacturers hadn't even dreamed of.
Here's one that one of my customers did. He was building a log cabin and needed a groove cut down the log so that chinking would be just cosmetic. He was going to make a D log an put this groove on each side with a board in it.
He hung a big router on his Wood Mizer and cut the grooves. It did a really good job. He was thinking that, with some jigs to hold the logs, he could do some of the joinery too. I don't think he ever did that. I think he stayed with butt and pass.
I was thinking the same thing, but using a circular saw on a slight angle. If it was mounted on the centreline of the log and a few light passes werre taken you would end up with a nice clean dish in the top face. Just like cutting a cove on a table saw but upside down.
If you were really keen it could be driven off the bandmill driive wheel. Flip the B57 off and run a belt down to a blade between pillow blocks. Thinking out loud if the blade guide was strong enough it would give you an adjustment for different diameter logs!
DTR
He fixed his mount so that the router could be moved on pipe horizontally along the mill head and vertically enough to get below the band blade. He didn't have to take the blade off or anthing. The router ran off of 110ac household current.
I was impressed.
you put a raw log on the mill and had a log cabin "D" log, with that groove in it, when you finished.
it was separate operations but everything was there ready to work.
Wudman, that is one great idea 8)
well crap!! another one of my money making idea,s out in the public eye. i have a bunch of ideas but,i don,t have the work shop or money to make them happen. a planing head for sawmills was one of them.
i,ve thought about sawmills and firewood processers alot.
delbert
Yea, thats me to. A day late and a dollar short. Years ago I made a tip-up for ice fishing using the parts of one of the kids old ray guns. When the fish tripped it it had a siren on it so you didnt have to watch it, and it had a flashing red light on it so at night you could easily find it. It was the talk of the lakes up here for a couple years. I started seeing lights and sound alarms in the catalogs a few years later. :)
JEFF B:my biggest hobby is fur trapping.years ago,i thought up a dog proof coon trap.but,once again i couldn,t make them to sell.a few years back a guy in mo started making them and he has sold a boat load... just my luck!!
delbert
Don't know if any body else noticed, but I think the wooden guards on wudman's mill look cool. LeeB
The red cedar blade guards are a recent addition. I re-geared the saw by changing sheeves a few weeks back (running about 4700 feet per minute now) and went ahead and enclosed the blade using materials on hand. Previously, there was not enough protection around the blade, especially to the rear where I stand to push the carriage. Here are a couple of before and after pictures.
(https://forestryforum.com/gallery/albums/userpics/10624/Sawmill%20original.jpg)
(https://forestryforum.com/gallery/albums/userpics/10624/New%20blade%20guard%202.jpg)
The cedar panels are joined with biscuits, glue, and screws. It's hinged across the top so the entire front panel lifts for blade access. The only thing I've done since adding the guards is resaw those oak beams. I did it on a day the wind was blowing 20 MPH and sawdust was flying everywhere. I hope it was only a symptom of dry wood and wind, and not a sign of wind turbulence within my guards. Hopefully, I won't have any problems sawing green wood.
Wudman
Now I just think that is about the best deal I have seen in a long time. Our house has Cypress ceilings and beams in every room. Lots of different sizes and they figured out just over 10,000BF. A sawyer named Newton Gray down in Rayville, LA cut them for me and a local mill dried um. When I got home with the first load of dried beams the wife looked um over and said "they aren't smooth" For over a year I'm thinking rough cut beams and she is thinking smooth beams. Needless to say they are smooth now. Hand power planer and belt sander and many many hours of work. So, yea, I think the setup on the mill is mighty nice and a real time saver. Well done Wudman.
I Like the planer Wudman.
I had always thought that might be the way to make cants. Instead of cutting off slabs have a planer head ahead of the band saw that could make the first cut on a side. So instead of handling slaps you would be turning it all into shavings on the mill, and then you could sell the shavings. After you have the cant square you can use the bandsaw to do the rest of the cuts. Biggest down side is you would need some real HP to run the planner and tree nails could tear up some planer blades in a hurry.
Stand back from all the chips comming of that sucker.
Boy, I am glad I read this thread. I have been thinking for several years of some kind of gadget to edge boards for glue joints. Most everyone I have known who owns a jointer have less than the normal amount of fingers.
I was planning to take an old 6" jointer head and mount it on a precision track. The head depth would be adjustable and the boards would be clamped. My plan was to lay the boards flat but now I am thinking of a vertical board rack.
I'll let you all know. Back to Autocad.
Well I will jump on the bandwagon. I don't know why Woodmizer (Psst! Woodmizer are you reading?) hasn't made a slabber attachment for their mills. I have one designed (chickenscratch on paper) for my 6' bar attached to the mill head. It's a sweet looking design and no doubt will work. I have it designed to run off the 395 powerhead or the 18HP Honga I have. I have not yet firgured out how to use the mill engine for it but I am sure that's doable as well.
It will be next year before I can do it but maybe throwing the idea out one of you can be working the bugs out for the rest of us. ;D
Slabber attachment.
I've got a good idea that bandsaw mill manufacturers don't create slab attachments because the band mill itself is already a slab saw for the size of log that they designed the frame to hold. They cringe when we put the oversized logs on there that we cut now. :D
I think the frame would hold up to an occassional huge chunk.
I never thought of that being the reason why they don't offer one though. You is probably keyrect.
I am seriously thinking about building a jig onto by bandsaw that you could drop a circular saw into to edge at least one side of the flitch at a time. Might be unteresting for my small production to even put two quick adjusts into a sliding bar so you could cut widths at the same time as depths. I have no need to go up to a recutted, but if you got the depth set well, you could cut rough dimensional pretty fast with just a couple of cheap circular saws.
Since this thread was exactly in keeping with another one which I had
started recently, it seems good to post to it and, in so doing, bring it
back to attention.
It provides another great solution to the problem of planing really big
beams.
Phil L.