4 wheeled BIL
Headed for the milling yard this morning but as soon as I arrived it started bucketing down so I spent a fair bit of the day looking at this scene!
In between the two big thunderstorms I managed to cut a couple of slabs and tried out the pair of additional wheels I added to BIL during the week.
The new wheels ones are made out of black nylon and black irrigation poly fittings. They stop the base of the mill rubbing on the log. On a regular alaskan it would be equivalent to the inboard skids which is where I have place a rollerblade wheel on my small mill - this works an absolute treat. Since BIL does not have an inboard bar clamp, the base between and the twin inboard verticals can end up rubbing on the log which slows milling down.
Here's a (not very good) shot showing how the the wheels contact onto the log. I have pulled the closest wheels away from the log so you can see the back wheels - You need to look into the shadow area of the pic.
And here is a schematic showing the rationale.
Cut A - when milling the top half of the log, the base of the mill or bottom of the inboard clamp rubs on the log - black wheel make contact with log and restricting forward motion.
Cut B - when milling slabs near the middle of the log, both the black and white wheel make contact with log reducing milling resistance.
Cut C - when milling the bottom half of the log, the white wheel is raised to be up near the horizontal rail - the white wheel then makes contact with log and reducing milling resistance.
Anyway it seems to work very well.