I have one of WM's siding/shingle deals to fit on my mill and it works pretty good. But on ERC the cants are not as large as pine and oak so it is slow going for the coin. Then there is the waste of the bottom that you have to re-saw later to get the board out of it. I needed a better way as cants that will make a good log home log are worth more then the siding and you do not have to re-saw them. As well good logs that will make 8" and wider boards bring better money then siding. I talked to a guy who has a band re-saw that the blade can be tilted from the bed and he splits boards in half and can use up scraps and side wood to fill his orders.
This got me to thinking and the engineer in me kicked in. I got big thinkings going on and even went to price band re-saws that I could tilt. But poor people have poor ways. So I modified my ARKY re-saw into a siding machine. It is crude but does a real fine job and two people can split boards most quick.
(https://forestryforum.com/images/03_21_04/DSC00593f.JPG)
Most have seen my ARKY re-saw so I just mounted a piece of siding on it so the bed was tilted from the blade. I added some "finger boards" so the board being ripped does not raise up and ruin the angle cut.
(https://forestryforum.com/images/03_21_04/DSC00596f.JPG)
(https://forestryforum.com/images/03_21_04/DSC00597f.JPG)
We split 93 1 1/8 thick ERC boards 5 1/2 wide in just over an hour for 186 peices of siding. I had no waste in a bottom board and cut boards from logs as small as 7 inches. The siding is 5/8 on one side and 3/8 on the other. My ARKY re-saw is 12 ft long but the siding on the bed is just 8 ft. The only important part is that it is held down at the cut. I screwed the siding and finger boards on so I can remove them and use the re-saw.
ARKANSAWYER
It looks plumb slick. 8) You need that $4 roller on a spring that Harold is using on his re-saw. ;) Take a look http://www.surpluscenter.com/item.asp?UID=2004042717254394&item=1-2210&catname=trailer
Andy
I have spent a lot of time looking at these pics and I'll be Danged if I can figure them out. I need to saw a bunch of siding and I'd like to not re-envent the wheel...so help me out here!
Quinton
Arky took a piece of siding (tapered board) and mounted it on his mill with sides attached to the piece.
Then he mounted some "fingers" to hold the board down as it is pushed through.
What you do is slide a pre cut board through, and it makes two pieces of siding by cutting that board in half on an angle.
Clear as mud?
Pretty clever... but one would expect no less from Arky!
Would attaching a power feeder help keep the boards down better than the fingers? It would also save you some effort pushing boards through. That's my plan for making siding if I ever get my dream house out of my head and into the ground.
When I had my little timberking 1220 I made a 12' resaw beam that I could set up on the mill frame with the forks on the tractor the beam looked just like a beam off of a resaw I would then plug the hyd lines from the beam into the remotes on the tractor and away we would go I had to put a flowdivider on the hyd line to reduce the speed of the belt so that the saw could keep up ,but the little koler had lots of heart it would still cut faster than most people like to keep up with .
But back to siding ,I could tilt the bed of the beam enough to cut lap siding similar to ARKYS pics at the time we were cuting mostly 8" syp pine that was 1 1/4 we put enough tilt in it to cut from one coner of the board to the other I dont recall the degress of the tilt though .
hillbilly
Ah Ha! Furby, Now I can see it clearly! Strange how our brains work...or in my case, don't work. Hillbilly's idea sounds good too. I gotta build one of those!
Thanks
Quinton
hillbilly do you have any pictures of the resaw beam??
Will
Nope I sure don't sorry ,but if you have ever seen a bakerA beam resaw .The beam I built looked alot like theres except I had little short legs built on the bottom of mine with adjusters to get the bevel the legs were spaced out just right to set on top of the cross members of the mill .
hillbilly
(https://forestryforum.com/gallery/albums/userpics/10186/DSC01155w%7E0.JPG)
A power feed would help feed things along. It is important that the wood be held down just infront of the blade. It can bow up everywhere else. For 6 inch I saw boards 1 1/8 thick then run them through my shaper to cut a 1/4 by 3/4 notch on opposing corners. Then when I split the board looks like the one above. I just shove one board after another and with help can split about 80 to 90 8' boards an hour.