I started working on my next CS mill today. There's nothing to show so far except some pieces of cut up steel. My left hand is still weak and sore so I have to go slowly and not stress it to much.
I'm making the mill out of material I already have laying around my shed and stuff I have found in the dumpster at work.
Because it's mainly gonna be made out of steel and it will be heavy I'm treating it as a prototype and if it works I may reconstruct the steel bit's out of ally with BILs help or I may just plonk it on rails (see below)
There's no plan on paper like I had for the BIL mill, I just have a bunch of related ideas rolling around in my head, the rest I will be pretty much making it up as I go along.
Some features I have settled on are:
1) It will use 4 x 39" long C-channel galv steel uprights.
2) It's all bolted together so it completely collapses down to one dimension bars or rods
3) I will use my existing HMWPE lined spare 54" ally mill rails, since I have 64" on the BIL mill and have only swapped them back to the 54" a couple of times and not at all in the last 12 months
4) It uses all thread vertical adjustment like the BIL mill but being a 4 poster this has some complications.
5) Like the BIL Mill, the new mill will bolt to the bar bolts but the saw will sit much more inside the mill than a conventional alaskan - a bit more like a rail mill - in fact one possibility will be to convert this mill into a mill that runs on rails.
One idea I'm working on is to fix the saw to the bar and mill, and adjust the chain tension at the nose end using a floating nose. The reason for this is so the chain can be adjusted without undoing the bar bolts and even while the mill is in the cut!
Like I said, unfortunately this will be slow progress - I'll post some pics once I have something worth showing.
I'm making the mill out of material I already have laying around my shed and stuff I have found in the dumpster at work.
Because it's mainly gonna be made out of steel and it will be heavy I'm treating it as a prototype and if it works I may reconstruct the steel bit's out of ally with BILs help or I may just plonk it on rails (see below)
There's no plan on paper like I had for the BIL mill, I just have a bunch of related ideas rolling around in my head, the rest I will be pretty much making it up as I go along.
Some features I have settled on are:
1) It will use 4 x 39" long C-channel galv steel uprights.
2) It's all bolted together so it completely collapses down to one dimension bars or rods
3) I will use my existing HMWPE lined spare 54" ally mill rails, since I have 64" on the BIL mill and have only swapped them back to the 54" a couple of times and not at all in the last 12 months
4) It uses all thread vertical adjustment like the BIL mill but being a 4 poster this has some complications.
5) Like the BIL Mill, the new mill will bolt to the bar bolts but the saw will sit much more inside the mill than a conventional alaskan - a bit more like a rail mill - in fact one possibility will be to convert this mill into a mill that runs on rails.
One idea I'm working on is to fix the saw to the bar and mill, and adjust the chain tension at the nose end using a floating nose. The reason for this is so the chain can be adjusted without undoing the bar bolts and even while the mill is in the cut!
Like I said, unfortunately this will be slow progress - I'll post some pics once I have something worth showing.