I can't eat sawdust...

[longtime lurker]

I was watching the sawdust pile grow today. And keeping an eye on how many flitches had 1/2"or so left when they left the bench. And watching the sawdust pile grow. And grow. If only I could eat sawdust...

As any circle mill sawyer will tell you, sawdust piles grow fast. Thats a good thing though... fast growing sawdust piles means logs are being turned into lumber which as we all know is the first step in turning logs into money. If only I could eat sawdust...

But anyway, by my count I would have picked up an extra 600 linear feet of 1" boards today in widths from 4"to 8" if my kerf loss at the resaw was 1/8 instead of 1/4. That little incremental saving with every board added to the thickness of the residual flitch each time. Even allowing for a bit of wander in a band 1/8 should cover it right? Call 600 linear close enough to 200m and thats 1/2 cubic meter of 4 x 1 at $1000 a cube GOS and thats... a significant amount of money that goes to the sawdust pile everyday and there aint no money in sawdust. If only I could eat sawdust...

Need a linebar infeed though. Bent timber is harder to sell then sawdust. And DanGit I like my reversing belts. Merry go rounds take up soooo much space. Guess if its space or sawdust well... I can't eat sawdust.

And I need to see the face of my boards so I can change thickness if its dropping out of grade so its gotta be a vertical saw. And the freight trying to keep teeth up to a big band resaw would break me, and I don't want to run my own filing room. So it'd have to be a narrow band. Or a three inch band anyway... I dont need the full filing room for 3 inch bands but they're still stiff enough to be useful. I think. Less sawdust anyway. I can't eat sawdust...

Aint never heard of a narrow band linebar resaw. Interesting. Theres got to be someone building them somewhere surely. Not a gutless little shop bandsaw thingy but a greenmill saw that can handle 12 inch deep cuts at a decent pace.

Any of you guys ever seen one of those Brewco 2" band headrigs? Or even better a 3" vertical band thats a serious mill machine not a toy? And whats the real kerf on those thin bands anyway... band thickness plus how much for hit and miss, what kind of allowance are you making for wander in hard logs? If you could help me out I'd appreciate it, because I've got this little sawdust problem...

[Kbeitz]

Sounds like you need to swap out your blade for a lazer...

[Ox]

I wish I could help but I don't know much at all about circle mills.  Somebody will come along with knowledge and share their thoughts or experiences.  This is a great community!

It sounds like you have quite the operation down there.

[pineywoods]

The evergrowing sawdust pile ain't just a circle mill problem.. Bandmills also, just not as bad. This pile is 12 ft tall and about 25 ft across. When it starts to encroach on the sawshed, I have to spend a day on the tractor and move it. Mostly I just add more pipe to the blower... ;D


 

[kellysguy]

What'cha need to do is figure out how to mix dust with something else cheaply that will make a fake log so all the chainsaw guys can cut cookies outta that stuff for tests and leave logs for making boards....

Kinda like ballistic gel but for chainsaw.  ;)

[LittleJohn]

What'cha need to do is figure out how to mix dust with something else cheaply that will make a fake log so all the chainsaw guys can cut cookies outta that stuff for tests and leave logs for making boards....
Kinda like ballistic gel but for chainsaw.  ;)

I like this idea, and for real-ness make sure to put the occasional rock, nail, bullet, etc. in there to see if it slows them up  :D :D

[AnthonyW]

Any thought about making their own wood pellets?

http://www.makeyourownpellets.com/pelletmillpto.html

[Brad_S.]

Piney woods, here in the over taxed, over regulated State of NY, the Fire Marshall wouldn't let me have an uncovered pile like that. He said it was a spontaneous combustable threat. Had to contain and cover it in a shed.

I saw the old Timber Harvester version of the Brewco grade run-around. It used a 2" band and handled 5 or 6 cants a the same time. Each cant could be flipped to saw on the best face. It did take up some room but not too bad.

My understanding is that blades over 2" are not really considered narrow anymore and both cost more and require a whole lot more maintenance.

[longtime lurker]

[quote author=Brad_S. link=topic=84246.msg1287430#msg1287430 date=143560468

I saw the old Timber Harvester version of the Brewco grade run-around. It used a 2" band and handled 5 or 6 cants a the same time. Each cant could be flipped to saw on the best face. It did take up some room but not too bad.

My understanding is that blades over 2" are not really considered narrow anymore and both cost more and require a whole lot more maintenance.
[/quote]

My understanding is that bands under 3" can be sharpened and set without too much trouble (ie I could install a sharpener and setter and do them in house) whereas 4" is the tipping point for either having a filing room or sending them off to someone who has one.

My sawdoctor used to run an LT50, he always said it was quite effective at cutting what we cut... that it did a good job but was pretty slow. He also tells me if I want a band resaw I need at least a 5 inch band and a 6 would be better.  Strength of a column being proportional to its depth and all that and if you want to feed timber at them fast then you need a wider band. There's still a few wide band resaws floating around up here but mostly guys save them for special jobs because the bands need to go a long way south to get to the closest shop that can handle them and its not the cost of the repair bill to the band... its the freight down and back that makes it cost prohibitive.

If a wider band is stiffer and requires less maintenance should I look at going really wide... ie the freight down and back to repair is not going to change much, and it might need to go less often? How much stiffness do you pick up with an extra inch of band blade anyway?

I just keep wondering how a 2 or 3 inch headrig would work. Every flitch has those first two squaring cuts that might be a foot deep or more and they'd need to go slow, but then it gets turned and at that point the depth of cut is 4/5/6" depending on the flitch width. I have no interest in a band primary - lot of our logs are dirty and the dirts on the inside of them not the outside so I'd never imagine anything but a circle for primary breakdown. But the resaw is getting old and will need major overhaul or replacement in a couple of years and now is the time to start thinking about what comes next.

Actually keeping score yesterday and realising that I'd have picked up at least an additional $500 out of the same batch of logs just by having a band rather then a circle resaw was a bit of an eye opener. Based on the prices I've seen for 2" bands I could change bands 4 times a day and just throw them out without sharpening and still be $200 in front...

[4x4American]

Any thought about making their own wood pellets?

http://www.makeyourownpellets.com/pelletmillpto.html

I had thought about it awhie back.  I have two questions, does it have to be hardwood sawdust?  and how do you dry the sawdust?

[AnthonyW]

Any thought about making their own wood pellets?

http://www.makeyourownpellets.com/pelletmillpto.html

I had thought about it awhie back.  I have two questions, does it have to be hardwood sawdust?  and how do you dry the sawdust?

According to the website it can be darn near anything. Hardwood sawdust, softwood sawdust, grass clippings, cardboard.

Not sure if the sawdust needs to be dry. Reading between the lines, the process creates heat and contains (adds?) some amount of moisture and the pellets need to be laid out to cool and dry after being pressed.

I know nothing other than what I read on that website and a few others a while back.

[Ron Wenrich]

We had a guy come in with one of those smaller pellet mills and tried to make them.  He had the machine as a demo.  The pellets weren't good enough to use.  They fell apart.

When you start putting a pencil to the pellet mill, you can buy a whole bunch of pellets for the price of the machine.  The production rate is nearly 6 hrs/ton.  That's a lot of time to be shoveling dust into a shoot, and it's time that could be spent sawing.  How much is a man and a machine worth on an hourly basis?

You could always make a barrel stove for under $100. 

[Ox]

A barrel stove still is the best darn stove I ever had.  Keep the barrel dry and ashes in the bottom and they'll last you for years.  Big box, lots of heat when needed and a nice slow long time burn for overnight.
I've seen a barrel stove sitting upright on youtube once where he packs it full of sawdust with a pipe in the center then takes the pipe out and has a hollow tunnel going down the middle of the sawdust then lights it and gets hours of burn time.  Search for sawdust stove or heater and you should see it.  Simple, cheap and uses up waste product.

[Magicman]

I thought about this thread yesterday and this AM while I was sawing ERC.  The wind was directly in my face, so I was continuously clearing the radiator, alternator, and various body parts.  The best part was finishing and getting $$$.

[longtime lurker]

Well that's one advantage of blades over bands anyway: we get saw dust not wood flour. Is it possible to fit up a small engine driven blower and some flexible pipe to suck it away a bit in conditions like that? I know it's harder when you're mobile but I'd say two days of wood flour sifting down inside your shirt would be enough to drive me crazy(er).

[4x4American]

wood flour  :D

[JustinW_NZ]

What's your finished product?

been watching a WM industrial 3500 rig in my home town here in a mainly pine mill, it can really move (avg of 20 cube of random sizes daily I think they said?)
And there's no breakdown saw in front...

in your case, one of those being feed cants from your circ mill would be ideal, even two of them...
Just because your cutting fast doesn't mean your cutting profitably, and energy cost is a huge one, here sawdust if mostly turned into boiler fuel for the big mills here.
That's the big advantage with the thin kerf rigs, don't need lots of power to push into the wood.

I allow 2.5mm as a kerf for hardwoods as I tweak the set out a little to keep it running true in some of the annoying euc's.
We are only small here and seem to cut mostly mountain ash which is pretty easy and make flooring. (all quarter sawn)

We run a woodmizer lt40super with the 40horse diesel on it, and to show the 1.5"bands can cut hard stuff (albeit they need to be well sharp) here's a pic of a e.globulus quarter that's been down for a couple of years so very hard... and maxing the mill width out but still perfect straight.


Cheers
Justin

[sigidi]

Longtime Lurker, I've often mused over sawdust, especially when shovelling it!!!

I hear the point of view about the 'saving' a thinner kerf would make, but I don't think you'll save a single board going to thinner kerf and have added expense, loss of production plus quality while going through the learning curve of the idiosyncrasies that will inevitably come with the bands and the new gear.

Here's why, you break a log down using a Canadian? Have the dirt etc you mentioned. So your bench gets flitches right? How many cuts does the bench make in a single flitch on average, no sorry, how many boards do you get from an average flitch? 3-4 maybe 5? I'm just guessing, but let's say 5. So you have 5 passes which produce 5 boards, at the moment your kerf is 6mm, lets say you manage to go to 3mm kerf, the difference between the two is 15mm, so you have saved 15mm on that single flitch. Now here is where people make the biggest mistake, they add up the 15mm they saved on this single flitch and multiply it over the whole day, but in reality you have to reset for each flitch, cos we can't add the last flitch to the next flitch then cut an extra board out, can we? You need to save 28mm from one single flitch to get another 25mm thick board. You need to be getting 10 boards from the single flitch before you will pick up one extra board.
The only time you will pick up an extra board is on flitches you currently get 10 boards from, anything less than 10 boards from one flitch and you just have a thicker piece of waste for the chipper.
You will get the chance to be 15mm further from the heart and therefore pick up a board which may have had one face with heart every now and then, or have a board with no wane versus what would have had wane, but unless you also want to supply pailings at $1.35each the 15mm won't gain you anything except more woodchip.

[longtime lurker]

@ JustinW we run a whole lot of species and product mix is determined by species. Euc scantling is my bread and butter, but we run a fair bit of flooring and decking from it when its cutting well enough, and we also do about 30% rainforest timber which can range from high value cabinetry timbers through to H3 scantling again depending on species.

@ Sigidi. Sorry mate but I disagree. What you aren't factoring in is the thickness of the residual "dog board" in the flitch. A lot depends on log size as to how I break it down but I do a lot of through and through so I get backsawn scantling off two faces and Q/S off the flitches either side the heart. Big clean logs I tend to chase squares out of, big dirty fella's go all scantling, smaller logs I either cut for decking or boxed heart beams.
My favoured pattern in my normal sized log  thats going to cut clean is to take a couple of 50mm flitches off one face till I've got (a) a wide enough face to work off and (b) I'm clear of the backsawn timber, then roll and take one pass off the side, then roll and come in untill I'm out of backsawn grain again. Whatever is left... the middle 40% or so... is what I might break for Q/S. I tend to get either select or feature grade, with not a lot of S&B.
As a pattern it lets me put sappy corners into  backsawn scantling boards that are going H3 anyway, and it suits my product mix which has scantling as bread and butter and flooring as raspberry jam... if the logs good enough I get a little bit of each off every one of them.
Because the bigger two flitches either side the heart are unsized... that is the size is set by whatever is left after I've taken my scantling boards off the other two faces... when they go through the bench I get that residual dog board every time. To use your 5 board flitch  I can take that 15mm kerf saving and add it to the dog board... and that will push anything over 10mm up to another board. I've got the logs for it, which is why I'm looking at it.

I had a good yarn yesterday with an old guy I know who... well lets just say that 30 years ago they were the biggest sawmilling operators in QLD and it was a looong way back to second place... and he told me that in mills where they had band resaws they averaged 5% better then the mills with circles only, that the band resaws made enough extra that they actually covered the wages bill.

Thats all with bread and butter and jam. This week if it doesnt rain I've got just over 50 cube of Qld Maple hitting the yard... time to get me some cream.

[DMcCoy]

I have been avoiding this topic.    Sawdust is a pita!
I used to give it away.   Tried burning it in paper bags in the shop stove.
With the Belsaw,  5/16 kerf,  I figured 3 equal piles when cutting siding,  slabs and trim, lumber,  and dust.
Having a bandsaw the dust pile is cute in comparison.
I plan on sprinkling it is the woods and letting it rot.
What I really miss is the circle saw marks.
I think I will build a board scratcher. 

[petefrom bearswamp]

Brad s
Just finished moving my sawdust pile into the edge of my mill site.
Never heard about the spontaneous combustion issue.
I sell maybe 5 or 6 pickup loads of my saw "flour" a year and spoil the rest out of the way.
Wish I could burn my edgings but in the nanny state of NY noooo.
DMcCoy sawdust is certainly a pita

[Ron Wenrich]

You have to have a pretty big pile to get the spontaneous combustion.  We got that in the bark pile a couple of times, and it was always in the dead of winter and came from pile compaction.  Never in the dust pile, but ours was never too big.  We eventually went to blowing it in trailers and selling it.  Never caught on fire in there.

[sigidi]

Hey Lurker, no need to apologise, not at all. We all have ideas, points of view. In ya previous post there wasn't mention of QS timber, so I had BS in my head for all your logs, and also with the mention of the grade of log you where getting, that's where my thinking came from.

Where in Qld are you based? Be good to get together if possible, this standing mill gig is all new to me, be good to pick your brains :-D

[longtime lurker]

Hey Lurker, no need to apologise, not at all. We all have ideas, points of view. In ya previous post there wasn't mention of QS timber, so I had BS in my head for all your logs, and also with the mention of the grade of log you where getting, that's where my thinking came from.

Where in Qld are you based? Be good to get together if possible, this standing mill gig is all new to me, be good to pick your brains :-D

Yeah, I reckoned you were thinking back sawn from what you'd written. And I'll tell ya mate... I'm pretty nervous about this bandmill idea. I know circle saws - I can drive one, I can fault diagnose one, I can walk into a mill and tell just by listening if a saw is sharp, or look at a board and then go play with the lead... Bands I know very little about. Played some with big old Robinsons and Stenners but ... Play is about my limit.

But. I can see that board that I'm losing when we're quarter cutting, I can hold half or two thirds of it in my hand and know that with different gear I could have had it in a pack instead of a waste chute. im also changing how we cut, shifting more and more production to the higher value products so I'm seeing that half a board more often. The market up here is changing, used to be my biggest competition was DTM, Parkside, and Gympie, and north of Townsville I had enough of a freight advantage that a little show like us could beat the big guys on price and still make a living. I still can but with all of us up here increasing production it's getting to the point where the sandbox is getting crowded, so I'm trying to make myself a new sandpit to play in. And y'know... If I keep running the same old gear in the same old way as my local competition, and the CQ mills, and you; I'll get the same results. Nothing wrong with that but... My gut tells me the game is about to change again, and I want to play the new game differently. I see some guy in Taswegia on gumtree selling structural at $600 a cube, and yeah he's a long way away and maybe rough as guts but I couldn't compete with that anymore then I could compete against the big guys on an even footing. Logs are getting smaller, recovery is dropping, and I can't run any leaner then I have been with the gear I've got. Costs are only going one way, but what we're getting for timber is in real terms less then we were 20 years ago.

They used to reckon that bands were okay in the rainforest stuff, but wouldn't cut spotty.. Used to be that I was told a band needed to sit on 800 fpm to saw, Now I'm told a band can cut spotty... Fit an invertor and drop it back to 420 fpm and they'll cut spotty all day.  Kinda makes sense to me... A band cuts steel at 150 fpm. I've watched a guy with an invertor fitted to one of them cheap Chinese band mills cutting cooktown ironwood and do a dammed good job. Slow, but good boards. Band technology has changed in the last 20 years and me... I think for me to stay afloat I need to change too.

My logs are all over the place. Got excellent rose gum in front of me for another 4 years minimum, the first stand of sawlog turpentine I've ever hit in my life ( no silica and not collapsing and it's cutting like butter), red mahogany ranging from good to absolute rubbish, plus my usual run of toothpick NRI,  carbeen that's hit and miss, and my old standby FRG that here is either excellent or looks like a culvert. And still those odd batches of rainforest stuff come out the woodwork...

I dunno how, but if I can pull off the shift I'm planning then this show is going to be very different. Here's a question for ya... If the lot burnt down tomorrow and there was adequate money to do it... Would you buy the same gear that you have now? For me the answer is no.

I updated my profile map... Right about under that red dot is where I can be found most days of the week.

[sigidi]

hehehe, "right under that red dot"

Yeah a bit of a day trip...maybe one day if I get the chance to chase some Barra up that way, I'll forgo a session and come visit  ;D