Whatcha Sawin' 2025 ??

[Stephen1]

We went to a job yesterday, 1.5 hrs away, in the bush, lots of black flies and no heaver equipment. I brought 2 helpers with me and the owner was there. We got thru have the wack of logs , RO and some large one ones, 24" small ends. I did some quarter sawing on the large logs, using the 1/3 method. It works great on portable jobs.  about 1500 bd ft with 6 hrs of sawing. We are going back Tuesday after the long weekend to Finnish up. It was a rain day today.  

[Magicman]

That is a nice whack-o-logs. 


I also see that you build a corral around the hitch with your fenders which is what I have been doing for years.    

[WV Sawmiller]

  Boy is my face red! I had anther epiphany last night (that's 2 in one week and may be a record) that the jerky forward movement on my mill was totally consistent with a belt slipping. I know another forum member mentioned that at the start of my issues but I told him I had checked my belt and it looked good. I had and it did. I don't want to call any names because if I remember correctly it would give him a swelled up head and ruin his birthday party tomorrow at the Grey Fox thingee.

  Anyway I took the feed belt off and sprayed it down with WD40 as a belt dressing hoping its would soften it and make it grab better. It softened it but if anything it stretched and it just made the slipping worse so I replaced it with my new belt from stock. Night and day difference. I sawed one little upper 45 bf poplar log and no issues at all. I had to quit just ahead of a bad thunderstorm we are having now and could not cut up the other 3 upper logs. If we get a break in the weather I'll finish them tomorrow then on to a nearby mobile job Sunday.

  It just goes to prove you should never overlook the obvious and sometimes you just have to double check yourself. I'm just glad to find it and that it was a simple fix. Of course I now also have a spare working Potentiometer out of the issue.

[Magicman]

Howard, hopefully you have conquered the beast. 

Remember that V belts grip on the sides, not the bottom.  If one ever wears enough to reach the bottom, tightening does very little good.  Also those notches on either the top or bottom are not for gripping, they are for cooling.  Of course most of our belts (with the exception of the drive belt) never travel fast enough to need to dissipate heat, but they were simply the correct length for that particular application.  Our B57 etc. bandwheel belts are also an exception.  They ride on the bottom of the pulley but they are tires and not pulling a load.

[barbender]

Lynn, I was just explaining that about belts to someone. If the sides wear enough, it will bottom out. And then it doesn't matter how much you tighten it, it will still slip. I've had this happen on my triple V drive belt 2 times, both times at 1000 hours. The belt looked fine, but it had worn too much to contact the sheaves. 

[Magicman]

Yes, both the sides gripping and the top or bottom grooves cooling are very widely misunderstood.

[Stephen1]

MM where do you think I learned about the placement of the fenders. 

[Magicman]

   I suppose that even a blind hog will eventually find an acorn.    

[WV Sawmiller]

Howard, hopefully you have conquered the beast. 

Remember that V belts grip on the sides, not the bottom.  If one ever wears enough to reach the bottom, tightening does very little good.  Also those notches on either the top or bottom are not for gripping, they are for cooling.  Of course most of our belts (with the exception of the drive belt) never travel fast enough to need to dissipate heat, but they were simply the correct length for that particular application.  Our B57 etc. bandwheel belts are also an exception.  They ride on the bottom of the pulley but they are tires and not pulling a load.

Lynn,

   Thanks for the lesson on belts. I did not know that belts grab from the side and always assumed they caught on the bottom. 

   Now that I learned that I wonder what else I forgot/dumped from my mental hard drive which is full,  to make room for that tidbit. If I start looking like TimW you will know it was my wife's birthday or anniversary or such.

[tule peak timber]

Trimming the horns on a cork oak log today 

[TimW]

Lynn,

  Thanks for the lesson on belts. I did not know that belts grab from the side and always assumed they caught on the bottom.

  Now that I learned that I wonder what else I forgot/dumped from my mental hard drive which is full,  to make room for that tidbit. If I start looking like TimW you will know it was my wife's birthday or anniversary or such.

It's amazing Howard can thank Lynn and knock me in the same post.  Hats off to you, birthday and/or anniversary forgetter. 

Just keep thinking they are mañana and you won't forget them!

[WV Sawmiller]

    I got out today and sawed the last 3 of the 8' tulip poplar logs into 4/4 boards. There are 290 bf in the picture plus some stickers I salvaged off the edgings. 45 bf of these were left from yesterday. I properly stacked and stickered all these after I took the picture. I now have about 590 bf of a 1,000 bf order and all these came from one tree.

   I am loaded up and ready to go to a sawing job 12 miles away.

[Magicman]

Hopefully your woes are behind you Howard and you can now be full speed ahead.

Nothing happening here.  Eight jobs on the schedule, but it's too wet, etc. for anyone to do anything.  I am enjoying the time off.

[doc henderson]

Enjoy.

[Old Greenhorn]

......... I don't want to call any names because if I remember correctly it would give him a swelled up head and ruin his birthday party tomorrow at the Grey Fox thingee.....................

  

Howard, in all my time here on the forum I can not recall even one time when somebody said "I told you so..." Everybody is just trying to help. Glad you got it foxed, sorry it took so long. Those low speed low HP belts do not wear the same way as a running belt does. They dry out, harden up and glaze over, but don't really look 'worn out' when you look at them.
 The devil is always in the details and sometimes those details are hard to see.
 Saw on!

[Nebraska]

What does the inside of a Cork Oak look like, I don't recall ever seeing it? @tule peak timber 

Hope you put up a picture. 

[TimW]

Howard, so happy to hear you got the forward thingie problem fixed.  I get frequent loose belts. 

[WV Sawmiller]

I returned to a many times repeat customer 12 miles away. There are 2 brothers building camps on the Greenbrier River. The first floor of the cabins are ready for the second story to start so they needed more framing and some 5.5" square posts.  The logs are scattered the whole length of the lot.

You can see the river nearly out of its bank in the background.


You can just see the top of one cabin in the left corner over the mill.

Here is the other cabin. All lumber we sawed today was stacked and stickered in the basements where it will be used. As you can see the basement is pretty tall to protect above the high water mark.


Some of the stickered framing lumber. Some tulip poplar, some White pine and some White Oak for posts and full thickness 2X. We started about 8:00 a.m and quit about 2:30 pm or so. Just under 1100 bf. These guys can only work on weekends normally so I see many more weekends ahead - like last summer.


One of the brothers had a 7-8 inch thick Red cedar stump cut-off he wanted cut into cookies for a couple of end tables. With a little trimming on one side I got 2 of these 3" thick. They are about 23" X 27" or so and very unstable due to the inclusions and such. The customer was real happy with them. It took a while but it is fun to help customers create their dream items out of wood.

Tim, Tom, Lynn, et. al,

    I did have one more scare where I thought my feed gremlins were back. It was a large WO log and I would have intermittent stops and I could pulsing in the handle to the drum switch. I removed the belt cover to see if the belt was slipping but I could not see any sign of it. I started to remove the screws to the control panel to see if I could see anything out of whack with the fingers on the drum switch and - VOILA - there it was. The screw to the little plastic handle to the forward and reverse drum switch had backed nearly completely out. A couple of turns with a flat tip screwdriver and the problems seems to be solved.

Today was typical for these guys - we saw 1100-1200 bf and they take a break till next week. Since they are close this is not a problem.

[Magicman]

  on both the sawing and also the sawmill power feed. 

[Andries]

WV, nice gig and it sounds like you get along with the brothers - so all is well.
I haven't ever seen lumber stacked and stickered on its side.
Is there a reason for that?

[WV Sawmiller]

    Yes, there is a reason. I just don't know what it is. I assume it stays straight better for them.

[Magicman]

He is putting the crown up.

[GAB]

WV, nice gig and it sounds like you get along with the brothers - so all is well.
I haven't ever seen lumber stacked and stickered on its side.
Is there a reason for that?

Andries:
The only reason I can think of is that it requires fewer stickers.
GAB

[Andries]

I hear you GAB, it would take fewer stickers. 
Without air to circulate between them, it would take much longer to dry down and mould would grow between all those nice 2x's. 
Wait, are there two jugs of bleach just in front of that stack of wood?
Hmmmm, less work to skip the stickers and more work to bleach the lumber?

Well, I suppose there's many different ways to make and use lumber. 🤔

[WV Sawmiller]

Andries,

    There was a dozen or so bottle of bleach in front of the cabin not shown and they had used it to get rid of mildew on some poplar beams I had sawed last year for them. I agree I would not stack it like this unless I had spacers between each board and that takes as long or longer to sticker as what we think of as the traditional method.