tips for edging and making stickers - make it stand up straight

[PendragonHomestead]

Good afternoon.  I am sawing with a woodmizer LX50 Super (Duper) sawmill and I am very new to this.  I've been sawing since new years basically.  When I turn boards on the side to edge them or say I have a wide board with the heart in it and want to cut it in half the long way so the heart is on the outside and it doesnt curl up, I sometimes have a hard time getting it to stand up straight without twisting while I'm sawing.  I've tried with no back clamp, or with it at 45 degrees and various placings for the clamp on the other side, but somehow it seems to give a twist to it and it'll fall over.  I do know that stacking multiple boards seems to help so you have more of a bundle than just one 2x8 or something on the side.  Do I need to make some sort of jig or something to hold these better?  I figured someone here had this all figured out already and I'd ask.  Thank you!

[WV Sawmiller]

Read this and see if this answers your questions.

https://forestryforum.com/board/index.php?topic=124871.msg2040102#msg2040102

[PendragonHomestead]

Yes sir, that was super helpful.  Thank you.  I like the idea of using the boards the same width. 

[Magicman]

More is better so always try to have a minimum of 2-3 flitches, never only one.

Edging is also the best way to hit a side support with the blade so Welcome to the Club. 

[Larry]

Making stickers out of what would be basically waste flitches is a great way to utilize a valuable resource. I sometimes do it, but on the other hand roi is terrible, probably way less than working at McDonald's. My first choice for stickers is always a low grade log and I saw the whole thing for sticks.

[SawyerTed]

Edging  a stack of 3 or 4 flitches is the way. 

I often edge a stack and have the wider boards get edged to a finished size before the narrow boards.  

I either keep cutting in 1" increments and make stickers Or I flip the wider boards first and edge the opposite edge.  Remove the finished wider boards and repeat.  

One quick method to turn out stickers is clamp 1" flitches for edging, when you get a finished edge, use a skilsaw and cut vertical cuts 2" deep the length of your stickers.  The next 2 passes with the sawmill  will produce 1x1 stickers cut to length.

Cutting long stickers to length is a drag. 

[Magicman]

Edging flitches is just part of my job so I don't think much about it.  If a log only produces a couple, I will pull them aside and wait to edge them with the next log's flitches.  Six is about the maximum that I want to handle.

[YellowHammer]

Around here, many people make some of their first "sawmill" money by sawing stickers and selling them in the springtime to their local lawn and garden shops as tomato stakes for $1 each.  

Air dry stickers will reduce sticker stain, especially in some hardwoods.  When you cut a pile of them, lay them out on the hot asphalt or concrete for a few days and they will dry very quickly and so will help prevent sticker stain.

.  

[WV Sawmiller]

@PendragonHomestead ,

    One thing I forgot to mention is on my WM, and I suspect on yours, minimum clamp holding is over 2". If I put a 2" flitch beside the side supports and clamp all the way,  it will wobble. I always need something over 2". If edging a single flitch narrower than 2" I use a shim board. If you already have one edge cut square you can put that side down and lay a 1X4 or such down flat on the rails and clamp against that for a rock solid hold. That is a tip Marty Parson out of the PA office showed me many years ago.

[Stephen1]

Or you can simply turn the clamp head 90 degrees so it holds the boards. 

[Old Greenhorn]

Just wanted to point out for some who may have missed it that the OP is running an LX50 and not an LT50. The LX50 is a manual mill with a very different clamping system. Those swing up clamps are always problematic for edging on a manual mill until you figure it out.

 On my Hudson, I throw the flitches to the side and when I have the log down to a cant shape, I put the flitches back up, clamped against the cant and do the edging work. The go back to milling the rest of the cant. This forces you to change directions a few times, but it gives the best quality and squarest edges I have managed to produce. Your mileage may vary.

 Best of luck and welcome to the sawing world.

[WV Sawmiller]

Tom,

    Good catch on the LX vs LT. I can see where that makes a big difference.

    I used to edge against a cant then go back and saw the cant into boards but now when I make my final turn I clamp below my last board height and saw boards all the way to the rails. Then I leave the last 3-5 boards, depending on how wide a board my flitches will yield, and raise my side supports to that height and edge against the stack of boards. The stack of boards gives me the same rigidity and stability the cant did.

    I found when I released the clamp on a thin cant (3-5 inches or so) the cant often raised up from stress and I could never get it flat against the rails again without making a couple of trim cuts and losing one board in the process. When I turn the heavy cant at the start of that cut sequence it will generally lay flat so I take advantage of that extra weight. Hardwoods are much worse about raising up that softwoods/pine.

Or you can simply turn the clamp head 90 degrees so it holds the boards.

I can see how that would work but my clamp head is a half moon shape and if I rotated it 90 degrees it would bite into the flitch and leave a scar on my finished board so I won't be doing that.

[Old Greenhorn]

Many of the experienced sawyers here started out with manual mills, but many did not. The is a large difference in mindset running manual over hydraulic as well as the physical differences. The manual miller really has to think through his/her steps to maintain quality, minimize handling (all of which is by hand), and be as efficient as possible.
 Simple things we all take for granted on hydraulic mills just don't exist for the manual miller. For example, when I am on the LT50 and cut a few flitches when opening a log, I just slide them over on the loading arms. I may do that on all 4 sides getting to a cant. Then when I get the cant down low enough, I just bring up the loader arms to dump all those flitches onto the bed, stand them up and edge them, then just finish off the cant. For the manual miller, the same process means taking the flitches off the mill onto a stack, than lifting and reloading them to cut against the cant later. This is why a lot of manual millers (including me) started out by accumulating their flitches and dealing with them after the cants are all milled, bringing us back to the current question/problem here.
 Manual and hydraulic milling are two different things in my mind and need different approaches. Nothing brought this more into focus for me than the fact that I just fired up my manual mill after a 3 year rest and spit out a bunch of 6x6's. It didn't take long for me to realize I had to adjust my thinking and change my approach radically, but the old habits came back quickly and I was surprised at how fast I got through that first log with higher output than I planned.