a little springtime milling

[mikeb1079]

hey fellas had a great day milling today figured i'd share some pics. the first log was a gnarly american elm chunk that i whittled (massacred really) down to fit on the mill. man my freehand chainsawing needs some work!

i took a few slab cuts to make a cant. here i got er cut down a bit. typically to set my depth of cut i just use a combination square and make a tic mark. i cut this elm at 4/4 and a few 8/4.

this pic is too close up but i got some nice vertical grain elm boards out of it.

then on to one of the last quarters of a giant walnut log i picked up last summer. a few clean up cuts and it turned into a nice pie wedge.

some really nice qsawn pieces out of this. probably 10-12" wide. then a fella i know stopped by with some smaller apple logs and we cut em up. cut nicely, very very fragrant. smelled fantastic, almost like an organic version of tang. the upper logs had a pinkish color but the butt log had much more brown heartwood, very pretty.

he took all the apple home, but by the end of the day i had a nice little pile of lumber to sticker. :msp_smile:
hope you enjoyed the pics.

 

[mtngun]

You probably already answered this in a previous thread, but what kind of mill do you have ?

 

[mikeb1079]

oh that's a homebrew my friend. 16h hp briggs, 25 1/2" wheels (craigslist). there's a couple of design flaws that i need to fix this spring/summer but overall i've been surprised at how well it works. beats the pants off my old csm.

 

[n8ghz]

Having just recently ran my newly built CSM, and getting quite a kick out of milling, a bandsaw build may be in the future? Can you post some additional pictures of your mill's band wheels and the drive setup?

The wheels are very interesting/impressive. It looks like the throat of the mill is around 30+ inches wide and of course 25.5 top to bottom of blade?


Thanks for the other fine pics.

John

 

[MHouse1028]

love the apple wood it's not very often that you find it solid and big enough to mill..at least around here...and love the homebrew bandmill very cool

 

[mikeb1079]

Can you post some additional pictures of your mill's band wheels and the drive setup?

sure.

this is the front of the mill. it's very simple in design. there is a centrifugal clutch on the shaft of the motor which at idle spins freely. as you ramp up engine speed (remote throttle towards the rear where i push the carriage) the clutch kicks in. the pulley to the right of the clutch is the belt tension pulley, it slides to in/out to tension the drive belt. the whole motor/wheels/etc sits on a 4" piece of square stock that is welded at 90 degrees to two 1 1/2" square tubes (maybe 6" long) that fit over the 1 1/4" inch square tube that makes up the main frame of the mill. you can see this just behind the eye bolts that attach the lift cable to the cross member.

this is a better shot of the drive setup. the drive belt turns a 12" pulley that's welded to the jackshaft. the jackshaft is simply 1" round bar from a farm store. the drive wheel also rides on the jackshaft but via a bearing with a 1" id and i think 2 3/8" od. can't remember the name of those bearings. the jackshaft rides in two pillowblock bearings, the trick is to make slotted holes where the pillowblocks bolt down so that you have the ability to adjust the drive wheel for blade tracking.

this is a shot of the other side, the operator side. the driven wheel is the tensioned wheel, it just slides in/out with a 7/8" bolt and a spring, this tensions the blade. up top is the gas tank, water tank with drip line, and hand crank winch which raises/lowers the mill. it's kinda tough to see but there's two pulleys towards the front which the cable passes over to raise/lower the mill head.

a bandsaw build may be in the future

do it. i was a complete newby when it came to fabricating and welding before i built this mill. one of the main reasons i wanted to build it was to learn. and learn i did. like i said, it's actually a very simple machine, you just have to figure out how to put the puzzle pieces together. if you have access to a welder and a grinder you can build a bandsaw mill. all told i have around $1500 into the mill, and if you scrounge you could build one for much less. go for it!

 

[jimdad07]

Great work Mike, you did a great job on that mill, I still haven't been able to get a band mill built but I have been running my carriage mill again finally. Always busy here it seems but I am finally into those cottonwood logs I cut last fall along with a nice maple log that has some great spalting. Again, always great to see your work.

 

[Jredsjeep]

nice setup, do you know where the wheels came from. i know you picked them up from criaglist but i am not sure what to search for. that would be one of the keys i would need to build one. i know they can be bought new but are $$$, if i could scrounge them that would help a lot.

 

[mikeb1079]

thanks for the kind words jim. glad to hear you're back milling with your carriage mill!

i was told that the wheels were old woodmizer wheels when i bought them. i have no idea if that's true. what i do know is that someone posted a link on here not too long ago for 19 or 20" sheaves that could be used as wheels from some surplus center. they were very affordable, around 100 bucks apiece. to be honest though, if i were to build my mill again i would purchase a pair of 19" wheels from linn lumber. i think they're around 300 for the pair. to me this isn't that bad, considering how important the wheels are. also they are compatible with a jackshaft and pillowblock bearings etc which is one of the challenges of building a mill. anyways, that's my 02 cents :msp_smile:

 

[n8ghz]

Thanks MikeB, for the big pictures of the main parts. I will be keeping an eye out for some wheels....maybe go for the Linn's, like you said, as I don't have access to a lathe big enough to make my own.

I do have a chance to get quite a few bandsaw blades from some unknown ancient saw mill that were left behind years ago at a friends shed. I have not seen them yet, but he is supposed to measure them and let me know what width,etc they are and how many he has. He has no use for them.

John