i am going to build a mill to fit onto my 076 , today i have been going back through a lot of the old threads on home made c/s mills and i am a tad worried re what the weight is going to be .
bobs bil mill comes in at around 70 odd pound and its ally mine will have to be steel because i dont have any ally welding gear i have stick welder and i have lp/oxy gear .
That's 70 lbs with the 076 and 64" rails with 60" bar and chain.
The 076 has no chain brake and a much lighter clutch housing than stock
All up it's a bit lighter with the 880 and the 42" bar and chain.
Everything on the BIL mill is over engineered, and apart from having to lift it, it is built for comfort. eg I used 10 mm bolts whereas 8 mm would have been fine. I have about a lb of brass dome nuts on the thing whereas regular nuts would have been more sensible. There are also brass wheel bearings whereas plastic would have been fine. The oil reservoir is ally - plastic would be OK. It has all thread height adjustments and cranks and locking cams - none of these are essential, but having used BIL and those that use only bolt height adjustment, I know the BIL mill is MUCH easier to use.
The times I'm lifting this sucker are, onto and off the mill, in and out of my van, and on and off my workbench. The rest of the time - even through the open bush - it is wheeled around on a set of easily detachable wheels - it even stands up by itself for a full compressor blow down.
Someday I'm gonna build a racing version and see how far I can pare the weight down - I'm thinking carbon fibre and Ti :jawdrop:
The 10 seconds it takes to lift it on and off the log is more than made up for with the milling features - some of the slabs I cut take me 20 minutes to cut through.
i want the mill to take a 50 inch bar , so unless i can work out a way of making it in ally and bolting the whole thing together ( ill give that some thought tonight ) the thing will have to be all steel , would like to know if anyone else had made an all steel mill to take the bigger bars and if so how many ton did it weigh .
p.s i have tried gas welding ally and failed big time though it was on thin irrigation pipe.
The main thing you will need to decide is how the mill connects onto the bar. Then everything flows from there.
If you decide on conventional bar clamps only the T-pieces of the bar clamps need welding and everything else can be bolted together.
Whatever you do I would recommend using ally rails. In this picture you can see the Granberg mill rails (black) compared to the BILL mill Highway Sign Unistrust rails.
The ally unistrut is about AUS$100 for 20 ft length (probably half that price in the US). This will give you enough rails for 2 mills eg 2 x 50 for your 50" bar and 2 x 60 for a longer mill and some left over for a cross piece linking pieces (red arrows) like this.
If you can find 1/4" thick 2 x 3" ally angle like I used for the inboard and outboard cross brackets (see "A" on diagram) they can easily bolt onto to the unistrut (as I have on mine) and then you can bolt single vertical bar clamps to those brackets using a U clamp or thru bolts. The the vertical upright bar clamps can be in steel. You will have strength and less weight.
