Horizontal slab shaver.

[Dave Shepard]

Many years ago I saw a horizontal slab shaver for sale on Sawmill Exchange. It was a slow speed, low hp (10 hp 3 phase) setup that would have been at the end of a conveyor. I have never been able to find another, and was wondering if anyone here had heard of them. I know there are Salsco machines today, but they are very expensive and too high hp to work in my desired application. Thanks.

[rusticretreater]

I guess you mean a shaving mill for making animal bedding?

Try this.  Type shaving mill into google and get a page of results.  Then at the top of the page, click on the images link.  Voila! You get pages full of pictures of mills, new, old, on ebay, etc.

[barbender]

Jackson makes them too, but yeah most I've seen are bigger machines.

[Dave Shepard]

This was not a shaving mill in the traditional sense. The slabs fed into it like a planer. It was not a complicated machine, and was low horsepower. It looked like it would be perfect at the end of a set of rollers. Anything that wasn't a board or flitch, just let it keep going to the shaver. This would make slab disposal happen without adding any additional time to sawing, and at 10hp, would not add much cost to the operation. Product would presumably be suitable for cattle bedding. My options right now for disposal are hauling then away at around $8-900 per tri-axle load, or hiring a large chipper a couple times per year, assuming I can talk someone into doing it. Owning a chipper plus spending the time to chip would be many years of just trycking it away. Burning is not an option. 

The Salsco machines look awesome, but they are actually too productive, too expensive for my purpose, and would add probably more fuel expense than running the mill itself. I think they would make sense for a higher volume mill than what I'm running. Disposal costs are only going to go up around here.

[Magicman]

What does @Peter Drouin use?

[Dave Shepard]

I think he has a small brush chipper. He also has a market for chips, I don't. For the cost of a chipper, plus the time it would take to do the actual chipping, plus having to have a truck to haul the chips, I could pay to have them hauled away for years. Neither of those options is financially feasible. 

[melezefarmer]

Does it work like this one?

Hutto mini mill


Edit: There's also Salsco that makes a 40hp unit.

[Dave Shepard]

No, this machine was more like a big planer, the slab was fed through with some sort of roller system.

[Southside]

The Salsco's are not what they are cracked up to be, so yes, stay away. 

[mrfu]

google japanese super surfacer might be what your looking for. 
Tom

[Peter Drouin]

You must have a debarker for the whole log then. Without that, you would be changing blades every day. With the planer thing.
I have a 12" Morebark.  When the rack is full I take the Lull and dump them in the one-ton. Bring it on the hill back it up to the chipper, and pick the dump body up some. So the slabs almost load them selfs in the chiper.
The load = a cord + of wood. Feed with the bark side down to save the chipper knives.  people love chips I now have landscapers, and farmers, too
That load I do takes less than a half hour to do. When people find you have some they will come I think. A good way to get rid of the mill waste. I move sawdust some not as much as I would like to. 

[Nebraska]

I would think organic undyed wood chip mulch would sell well especially in certain areas.  

[Southside]

Yea - but is is gluten free? 

[Dave Shepard]

I'm not looking to get into any other businesses. I just want my slabs to go into a metal box at the end of a conveyor line and and get blown into another dimension. Or at least blown into a pile somewhere else that isn't a pile of slabs.

[Cedarman]

When making slabs into small pieces, horsepower is your friend.
We have two machines, each 125HP and 30HP blower.  But we are making 1 to 3 box vans each week.

[nopoint]

Equipment is fun but IS there a market for the product you will create?

[Dave Shepard]

Horsepower is not my friend. The whole point is to have something that converts the slab about five seconds faster than the time it takes to create the slab. Any machine that has more horsepower, more equipment expense, or more investment of my time, won't wor for me. 

I neither need, nor want, a market. If the machine I'm thinking of will make cattle bedding, then it'll go across the street to the freestall barn.

[Southside]

What about a hammer mill then?  

[Andries]

On YouTube, there was a well done series called "Linda's Sawmill Cinema" 

Linda would be catching lumber from the mill, feeding the resaw and a son would stack lumber or feed edgings into a "next dimension" machine.

All you could see on the video was the slabs or edgings going on a conveyor to a hole in the wall, never to be seen again. I always assumed there was a hungry hammer mill outside the mill shed.

Dave, is it reasonable to say that you want the slabs and edgings to be turned into sawdust or mulch without any additional horsepower or expense? You're one of the most practical and down-to-earth guys on this Forum. 
Just having a wishful moment? 

[Magicman]

That would be FF member ElectricAl and his wife Linda.

[rusticretreater]

The whole point is to have something that converts the slab about five seconds faster than the time it takes to create the slab.

That requires a lot of HP and Torque or a big electric motor with three phase power.  Either way, HP is definitely your friend. Take a look at various wood chippers/shavers and see what kind of power they are using.  Low dollar equipment is slower, weaker, more prone to break down and more dangerous to use.

Sounds like you need to constantly sift through the auctions looking for what you need.  Or maybe you can just use a blaster! Pew! Pew! Pew! Pew! 

[Dave Shepard]

What I mean by it taking as long  to grind the slab as it does to make them is that there isn't a steady flow of slabs like a big mill. If it takes 2, 3, or even four minutes to grind up a slab, that is perfect. Low horsepower over a lot of time. If I have to  spend $50k on a machine, and spend my spare time doing it, then I'll just hire someone to haul it away. This discussion was prompted by the fact that I have seen machines that I think will do this, I just haven't been able to find one, or any information on one 

[fluidpowerpro]

A few years back I built a stump grinder for my skid steer so I was thinking that if built one of these I would use a wheel and carbide teeth in it's design.

[barbender]

 It should be doable, but is there anything like that available is the question? Just a planer head bottom mounted with power feed should grind slabs up. 

 I've never watched a shavings mill in action, but the way they've been described is the log just sits in the box that feeds back and forth across a cutter head that is similar to a planer head. 

 

[fluidpowerpro]

What I'm imagining is a feed system that clamps the log like a wood chipper. It feeds the log past a stump grinder wheel that sweeps across the top of the log, shaving it down. The log would likely have to move back and forth multiple times depending on how much hp you threw at it.