Yet another DIY band sawmill

Picky2016 · April 28, 2016, 06:28:22 PM

Well gentlemen, pleased to meet you all. I've been watching your travels for over a year now (gww in particular), and it's time.

Name is Dave, aka Pic, hailing from Timmins, Ontario, Canada (we have lots of wood). A bodyman by trade, I moved back to my roots in the country. I work for the local municipality, and as a pastime, I build stuff! On the short list is many a collision repaired vehicles, sleds, motorcycles, a house and tons of bits of furniture and tshirts. Talk to my wife, I have adult ADD, I'm good with it most of the time.

I've seen how easy it is to build your own mill, lol, so away we go. I've studied every commercial mill out there, read builds here and other forums. I've been stockpiling parts and materials here and there. Sledding season is over and the 6 wheeler is out. So in between work and cleaning a winters worth of two dogs business, I am building a bandsaw mill. A bare bones, no dicker, all manual, portable, somewhat, mill. I call it the NBNW Mill. (No Bells No Whistles)

I came across a pile of old parking sign post at work in the fall, so I'm going with that. It's 2" and 2 1/4" stuff full of holes that sleeves together. Brings me back to my youth and my favorite meccano set. Picked up some 7/16" ready rod, some pillow bearings, some shafting, and a couple trailer tires, a cold 12 pack and locked myself in my "lab" (basement workshop), for a couple days on spring break. Built carriage, rebuilt carriage and modified carriage two more times, lol. I have some photos on the camera in basement that I'll post this weekend for the visual guys. She's going to be a 13hp, trailer tire model with cable boat winch raise/lower, 36" wide carriage, 20" capacity (24" log) that will run on two 10' rails with 6 log dogs.

I'm glad I found this forum and can't wait to share my trials and tribulations with y'all!

Kbeitz · April 28, 2016, 07:04:19 PM

I'll be watchen....

Welcome to The Forestry Forum...

Picky2016 · April 28, 2016, 07:10:27 PM

Couldn't wait. Pic of carriage. Little on the lighter duty side I know. But mostly proof of concept. If I get this to work, my wife won't mind me spending some real cash on some real steel.

(Photo posting learnt and posted below.)

Picky2016 · April 28, 2016, 07:12:10 PM

Gotta work on posting photos, sry for external link. Thanks Kbeitz.

Jeff · April 28, 2016, 07:46:41 PM

Okay, first, welcome.

Now second. Real good idea to read the rules to save some future administrative type contact. Your first post you used a word desined to get around the censored words program on the forum. What we call pseudo swearwords. Not allowed. This truly is a family site. Not profanity or simulated profanity is allowed.

Third, photos must be in jpg format and located in your gallery. Using the document uploader and changing a photo to pdf format to use it is also not allowed. There is a posting photos topic that will help you learn to do that, or you can simply ask someone.

Picky2016 · April 28, 2016, 10:42:53 PM

My apologies, won't use the $ again. And I'll search for photo posting, Thank you.

Huh, look what a little reading can do. Don't mind my mess, it's mine, all mine. Here is a pic of the carriage.

PC-Urban-Sawyer · April 29, 2016, 02:19:08 AM

Good job on picture posting.

Looks like you've got a good start on your build project.

Keep up the good work.

Herb

Magicman · April 29, 2016, 05:48:57 AM

Welcome to the Forestry Forum, Picky2016.

Kbeitz · April 29, 2016, 06:07:17 AM

What size blades are you going to use?

Picky2016 · April 29, 2016, 06:58:24 AM

Just to be fair, before I got to this point, I did a ton of drawings and math. A lot of formulas that I argued with my grade 9 math teacher that I would never use again in my lifetime. I picked up some 16" trailer tires. I will run it with a Princess Auto (Canadian version of Harbor Freight) Chinese 13hp. 3.5" centrifugal clutch to a 8" driven pulley. 1" superior chrome shafting running on two pillow blocks per side with tensioning adjustments. I figured out it will run 1.25" 0.75 pitch 120" blades. After some Internetting one evening, found an Ontario guy that will custom make any length blade. Sent him an email with specs, two days later, voilà, 2 blades at my doorstep. Just bolting it all together as I go, will tear down, weld and paint before the big day.

Ox · April 29, 2016, 07:00:30 AM

Welcome to the forum! There's at least a few of us that frequent the forum almost daily that have built our own mills so I'm guessing if and when you run into a problem there'll be good help and probably a few different suggestions to accomplish the same end result. Options are always good, right? Looks like a good start you have there.

Doing and re-doing things when building a mill seems to be the norm. :D

Picky2016 · April 29, 2016, 07:10:26 AM

Thanks Ox, the norm here, or in life? Both in my case, lol.

I had some cast Teflon wheels in the shop so I had them turned with a groove in them to run on angle iron rails.

Picky2016 · April 29, 2016, 09:33:17 AM

My carriage which assembly.

Picky2016 · April 29, 2016, 09:34:57 AM

Pillow block tensionners.

Picky2016 · April 29, 2016, 09:40:34 AM

My stub shafts. I wanted this thing to run as true as possible. I designed end plates on AutoCAD and sent file to plasma guy neighbor. Dropped off plates that afternoon when I told him I was building a saw mill. No charge because he may want to use it some day, lol. I had the plates welded and then faced true on a lathe. You might notice when I say DIY, I mean Do It Yourself while cashing in some machine shop favours!

Picky2016 · April 29, 2016, 09:44:07 AM

Getting excited at this point. Installed some pulleys and cable for winch, installed tires to get a peak at progress. Measured for blade length and as faith would have it, 120" bang on. Thank You Archamedes.

Joe Hillmann · April 29, 2016, 01:59:03 PM

I think you may need to stiffen it up a bit and add some bracing. When I started mine it was similar to what you have. Now the head has 4 posts and every place where it wouldn't get in way I added a 45 degree brace. It still flexes more than I would like.

Ox · April 29, 2016, 03:08:00 PM

Geez, you're really flying along! Well done. I agree with what Joe Hillmann said. You're going to be surprised the amount of flexing that will happen. Think triangles wherever you can put braces. Double bolting where possible is also nice.

You're very fortunate to have machining places close by willing to barter. That's fantastic and I hope you feel blessed in this way. Those "holed" tubes you're using must be pretty nice to work with, right? How thick are they? I'm guessing around 1/8"? You may find you need to plate some higher stress areas. I hope not for simplicity's sake.

Thank you for putting up all the pictures. Someone will see your build and glean some info from it, which is great. People helping people in this forum is the best. This is the best place on the internet.

Kbeitz · April 29, 2016, 07:14:57 PM

Is your winch cable lifting both sides ?

Picky2016 · April 30, 2016, 09:45:48 AM

Thanks guys, yes spreading and absorbing a little knowledge here and there is the key to all. I will be gussetting the uprights for sure and the top of carriage also. Seems like flying along but I did all this last month, just posting pics when I can. The winch cable runs down, across and up other side via two pulleys. I tried it and there was a bit of ratchetting side to side, but when I installed engine weight, it settled down fairly well.

Pulley on one side.

You can see cable routing in this one.

Magicman · April 30, 2016, 10:19:58 AM

I suspect that you are going to need to do some serious bracing and maybe even doubling/sandwiching everything that you have. Tensioning a blade and pulling it through a log can/will give your frame a workout. Any flexing will be transferred to the blade and sawing ability/quality can be compromised.

Picky2016 · May 02, 2016, 02:25:41 PM

Thanks Majicman, that's my job for tonight, gussetting. A weekend of bday parties kept me out of workshop.

Here are the blades I ordered.

Picky2016 · May 02, 2016, 09:55:54 PM

Well, had some alone time tonight. Made the uprights to hold bearing guides and band guard. Bolted in engine on mount and realized it was going to hit top crosser bar. Extended them by 10". And started concentrating on stiffening whole rig. Plated where I could, triangle gussets at other points. Makes a big difference already. Raised and lowered engine, no ratcheting, woot woot! Thanks for the input guys.

Ox · May 03, 2016, 12:30:24 AM

Now you're firing on all cylinders! Keep it up and you'll be making sawdust and cussing with the best of them. Be sure to share when you hit your first clamp or backstop. This will make you a "pro sawyer". I was on my second log, so I was a pro rather quickly. ;) :D Everybody does it at least once, eventually!

Picky2016 · May 03, 2016, 07:56:22 AM

If that's the case, I'm going to try and remain an amateur for sure. I'm trying to learn from all the new terms I read like "log dog polishing" and "bandsaw blade necklace" to name a few!

I've thought of the log dog problem and was wondering why no systems clamp from ends of log? Not possible or has anyone tried? Or is there that much side force from blade if it's pushed to hard? I've seen some smaller mills on YouTube that just use gravity of the log with some small wedges on the sides and they seem to do fine.