Richland's Homebuilt Mill/pictures/first cut!!!

[RichlandSawyer]

Goodmorning all, I've been peeking in your window for quite sometime and figured since its snowing and 10 degrees i'd come on in and sit a spell if'n ya dont mind.
Just got registered today but i feel like i know some of you already. I'm puttin my boots on right now to go out to the truck and get pictures of the new bandmill i'm building.cause i know how much we all love pictures.
I may need some advice on how to get them pictures into this post.

[ronwood]

Welcome RichlandSawyer. A lot to info to learn on this site.Not has quite as cold in Mid Missouri.

Ron

[iain]

Hello and welcome
yes indeed pics are the thing here



            iain

[RichlandSawyer]

Man this photo posting takes forever

[Dan_Shade]

as you do it a few times, you'll see the photo posting comes along pretty easy.

[RichlandSawyer]

I'm gonna be done with the mill before i get pictures posted

[tnlogger]

welcome aboard RichlandSawyer looks like you'll have a fine mill there 

[RichlandSawyer]

You were right posting photos is getting alittle easier.
Wife said i need to space out my pictures more

[SAW MILLER]

Welcome to this great group of sawyers.Having built one of these myself,I can see that you are going to have a real nice mill,well thought out design.Two things I should've done are...1...use two b belts to drive saw instead of one and  2.  buy some good guides instead of making them.Keep them pics coming 8) 8)

[pigman]

Man this photo posting takes forever

Your are a lot faster than  when I first started posting pictures. :( Took me two years to post my first picture. :  It does get easier after a few pictures. Now I can take a picture , resize it and have it posted in two minutes. If the  dialup was not so slow, I could do it in a minute. ;)

[wiam]

Welcome.  Nice looking mill.  I could not wait for a gaurd to throw the first log on mine. : :  But then I put one on. How much track???

Will

[Brad_S.]

Welcome to the club! 8)

That saw sure has a nice wide throat. How big of a log will you be able to do and what's your max. width board? Looking good!

[chet]

Rich,
I fine tuned yer earlier posts, now yer wife should be happy.  ;D

Nice lookin' project. What's yer plans for da power plant?

[ElectricAl]

RichlandSawyer,

Good to see another Iowa Sawyer here at the Forestry Forum ;D

Get your wife to register too so she can critique your posts and photos :D



ElectricAl

[Burlkraft]

RS,

Welcome aboard   8) 8) 8)

You got the pic thing down pretty quick......it took me forever  :-\ :-\

[RichlandSawyer]

Thanks for all the real nice comments,

wanted to answer some questions then i will give some history about the mill and how it came about.

Chet , wife says thanks for fixing the post she said it looks much better! and to answer your question its gonna have a 24hp honda v-twin.

Brad, i havent installed blade guides yet but it should be 35 inches between guides when they are set all the way out.

Wiam, I started building a trailer last saturday before the weather turned bad and it will give me 18 feet of cut. if neccesary i will build an extension to bolt up to the end. cant really see needing it but if the need arises i'll throw something together.


This whole project started out as me wanting to buy a bandmill but couldnt talk myself into spending the money so my wife asked me if i could build one i said sure i guess so but that would be a lot of work. Her response was then buy one and i said they are too expensive. So being the sage of wisdom she is she told me "Then quit whinning and build your own". So i started doing research and drawing and calculating. I bought #60H roller chain at a farm auction for $12 for 50 feet brand new stuff. i bought 2x3 tubing from farmer/steel seller for 40 cents a pound wormdrive gearbox from ebay, so what i'm saying is i'm a cheap skate. The kicker to this story is some guys i work with were giving me a good ribbing about tha fact i buy tools from harbor freight(got a store just up the road) so they said bet you cant build that sawmill with harbor freight hand tools, i said bet i can!!! The entire mill has been built with a 14" chopsaw, 4 1/2"angle grinder, 3/8 drill and an old 1960 something westinghouse handywelder i bought from mmy granddad 15 years ago.Oh yeah and 10lbs of 3/32 6011 welding rod .I'm thinking about emailing harbor freight and see if they need a spokesperson. :D Believe it or not this is my first experience with a bandmill, been around the foley belsaw circle mill and resawed logs on my 18"jet bandsaw in the shop but never run a bandmill cant wait to get her up and running.

well i've rambled on long enough for now 

[Norm]

Welcome a board RichlandSawyer. Good to have another member from Iowa here.

[twostroke_blood]

I love your access doors to the band wheels. That's one of my biggest complains with my hudson mill. Everytime I need to change A band, I have to take the gaurds off.

[Don K]

Nice looking mill your building. Welcome to the FF.

[D._Frederick]

Richland,

Glad to see that you went with steel band wheels, how big in diameter are they? Hope that you found good souce to buy them, they are not cheap.

Looks like you are using Cooks Saw as a pattern for your mill. Your workmanship looks real nice.

[RichlandSawyer]

D Frederick,

They are only 19 inch wheels but i designed the guard to take 26 inchers ifi decide to upgrade. I actually started designing before i ever saw a cooks mill but you are right it does look a lot like there mills (i guess great minds think alike). The wheels did come from cooks i did some research and really liked the way they balance there wheels. Not knowing much about band mills i have managed to gleen from all posts here and on other message boards that a smooth running blade is pretty important.

Again thanks for all the nice comments, it started snowing again this morning, its colder than three day old doggy doo and my boiler ignition controller went out last night so i better get it running, wifes getting cold. If i can scrape up more pphotos i'll try and put some up later today.

[lamar]

richland, how did Cooks balance their wheels. I have one(idler) wheel that wheel they balaned it the drilled about 2 or 3" of holes in the root of the sheave and it squeezed the sides of the angle in so the tire has a slight hump in it. Still havent firgure out how to fix.Its not real bad but iratating. Im just about to the end of the first set of tires need to get new ones before I hit steel.

[RichlandSawyer]

Lamar,
 
Cook's doesnt use rubber tires they are all steel wheels. That way they are not effected if you use petrochemicals for lubrication such as diesel or kerosene. The drive wheels are chucked into the lathe using the taper lock bushing that comes  with the wheel and then the bushing and the wheel are both marked so when you assemble it on your mill they go back together the same way they were balanced.

As i stated earlier i really have no experience with bandmills but i do know a lot about industrial machinery and this makes good sense to me. Also i went with a spring backed tensioner instead of hydraulic because i think without the rubber tire on the wheel there would be no shock absorption using a hydraulic tensioner.
Could cause  a real problem with blade breakage.

If anyone else has any input on this subject i would really appreciate hearing from you. I would hate to get this mill done and find i i've been smoking corn silks this whole time and end up with a 3000lbs. paper weight.

Thanks RS

[ronwood]

RichlandSawyer.

One of the things that I like about using a Hydraulic tensioner with gauge  like Woodmizer has is that you can get a pretty good idea when the blade is getting warm and stretching.  Correct me if I am wrong on this but it appears to me after the blade has been on a while that the loss of pressure ussally indicates that the blade is getting dull or you need to have some lub on the blade to clean it up.

Just my thoughts
Ron

[woodbowl]

Hey Richland, how bout' an update on that fine mill your building? I know Christmas has probably got you runnin'. We're sorta' waiting on some more pics.  ;D