Slow Milling

[Gush]

First off |Iam new to milling. I recently picked up an od Husky 2100 with a Grandberg milling attachment. I have a 42" solid nose bar with an auxillary oiler from Grandberg.I got the bar dirt cheap or I would of bought a smaller bar with a sprocket nose. So I tried milling a 16" wide 6' long pin oak log for practice. It takes me about 6-7 minutes for one pass. From what I read it should not take that long. The saw has good compression (150psi), the bar is new, the chain is new and I had it resharpened at my local dealer. They are aware that it is a milling chain and sharpened it correctly.While cutting, the chain stopped quite a few times and I had to teeter totter the saw to get it to cut faster. Could it still be the chain?? I am stumped.. Any help would be appreciated.

 

[FJH]

how big is the wood your cutting !5 to 7 minutes in a 18 inch log 16 feet long is not excessive

 

[woodshop]

Welcome to AS. I agree that with a saw that big, and a sharp chain in only 16 inch wide oak, you should be milling up a storm, but 6 ft in 6 minutes is about an inch every 5 seconds. Not bad for your first time down the log. Keep in mind you're pushing a lot of chain around a bar that big, takes a lot of power. You said it bogged down a bit once in a while and you had to jog it... that right there tells me you weren't milling as efficiently as you could have been. It takes a few logs worth of milling to get your technique down so you are applying the right pressure at the right time to keep your saw slicing like it should. I can't speak for others here, but I have a 396 with a 36 inch bar, and in 16 inch oak I don't get much faster than that either.

 

[carvinmark]

6-7 minutes doesn't sound to bad to me, especially your first time. Keep an eye on your chain, if it is new it will loosten up on your first cut. Don't try to muscle the saw thru the log, let the saw do the work. Oh ya, welcome to AS,
Mark

 

[oldsaw]

+1 on that. It isn't that bad, however, you are going about getting speed the wrong way. If you are repeatedly bogging the saw, you are trying to increase your speed by pushing the bar through the log harder. Wrong move. Back off a bit and keep your chain speed up. Chain speed = cut speed, you will shave a minute or so off of the cut.

That solid nose bar is costing you some power, but it will work for a while.

Mark

 

[aggiewoodbutchr]

Welcome to AS!

I was going to say the hard nose is hurting you but I see oldsaw beat me to it.

As he also said, chain speed = cut speed. Get some practice under your belt then change to a 3/8" pitch chain and a 8 pin sprocket. With the right touch that saw should do well with it.

 

[flht01]

Welcome to the forum, I guess it's too late to warn you about the perils of csm addiction. All I can say is your in good company if you need moral support

You mentioned bogging in the cut ant the others offered sound advice on keeping the chain speed up by letting the saw do the work. The only thing I'd add is stopping ever couple of feet to slip wedges in the cut to keep the weight of the slab from adding addition chain drag.

 

[Marco]

16" dia. x 8' oak log we're at about 15 to 20 seconds to make a pass here,maybe, never really clocked it. Save the chainsaw for getting the tree on the ground

 

[Al Smith]

You won't make much faster than about a foot a minute.Chainsaw milling is not fast at all.It is an alternative .

 

[carvinmark]

Welcome to the forum, I guess it's too late to warn you about the perils of csm addiction. All I can say is your in good company if you need moral support

You mentioned bogging in the cut ant the others offered sound advice on keeping the chain speed up by letting the saw do the work. The only thing I'd add is stopping ever couple of feet to slip wedges in the cut to keep the weight of the slab from adding addition chain drag.

Real good point, I always use wedges.

 

[Rodney Sinclair]

You won't make much faster than about a foot a minute.Chainsaw milling is not fast at all.It is an alternative .

Say what? Ya gotta be jokin'. Tell us Al Smith, just how do you know all this?

Rodney

 

[Al Smith]

Say what? Ya gotta be jokin'. Tell us Al Smith, just how do you know all this?

Rodney

Well old buddy,I've sliced a few using a Homelite 2100 and also a Mac super pro 125. On 18" oak that's about how fast I cut it.

Now tell me ,old wise one,do you have something faster?

 

[Rodney Sinclair]

Well, I went back and read again. Thought maybe I missed something the first time. I was pretty sure the man said 16" wide and 6' long. Somehow that became 16' long. And I do use a 385 huskey with a 24" bar and the 3/8 lowprofile chain. On Oak this size (16') it takes maybe 2 minutes. Any thing longer, I'd better stop and sharpen a chain.
As for as being an alternative, hell anyway you cut could be called that.
Rodney

 

[Al Smith]

If you can make 16 foot of oak in two minutes with an 85 cc sized saw one of two things has happened.One,Texas oak must be like balsa wood or two this is slight exageration.

I would be willing to make a gentlemanly sporting wager you could not cut at nearly that speed in the oak logs in my saw log pile,Ohio grown red and white oak.

As for myself,even though I have much more powerfull saws,these logs are destined for the bandsaw mill.As for low profile chain,to tell the truth,I would be afraid my larger saws would pull that stuff right in two.Even if I could adapt some thing to run that baby saw sized chain on those man sized saws,I would not do so.Do you cut with a suit of armor on?

Opps,edit after thought,Arkansas,close to Texas maybe the wood is softer.Ha.

 

[aquan8tor]

I'd add to this that the lopro chain is a lot faster, but not that fast. I call BULLS&%T! Even if the log were only 6 feet long, not 16 feet, there's no way you can slice 16-18" boards in 2 minutes with lowpro or any other chainsaw chain and an 85cc saw, unless its running on nitro or something else I don't know about. Bandmill, sure, but CSM, ok, your stopwatch needs new batteries.

The MAC125 has about 40 more cc than the husky. I don't know the chainspeed, but something is being miscommunicated here, or I need to relearn something.

 

[woodshop]

If you can make 16 foot of oak in two minutes with an 85 cc sized saw one of two things has happened.One,Texas oak must be like balsa wood or two this is slight exageration.

Well... I REALLY don't wanna get into a spitting match about who can run their csm down a 16" log the fastest, fruitless unless we're all lined up next to one another at a gtg with identical logs (which would be kinda fun I think... but). However, the gentleman that started the thread was simply asking for a ballpark figure on how long csm milling actually takes, and I think he deserves a solid real world answer. Al I think Rodney above meant that his 385 with 24inch bar and LP chain could run down that 16 inch SIX ft log, not 16ft, in 2 minutes. HOWEVER... I agree that even that is pushing things a bit. That's more than 1 1/2 inches every second. No way in heaven hell or limbo will a stock 385 slice through 16 inches of oak that fast. I don't care what kind of chain you have on it. Not saying anybody is exaggerating, just sayin' there is no way a csm could go that fast in oak that wide. The physics and math just don't add up. Half that speed would even be kinda fast, but at least that could be believable if everything else were dialed in just right.

 

[Al Smith]

Well,maybe I over reacted,imagine that.Just plain old fact though,no matter what power head you are using,chinsaw milling is not fast at all.It has it's place,no doubt.

Whatever the case though,if it were 16 feet by 16 inchs wide,that is 20 bd ft per pass in whatever time period.If you could do 5 passes per hour,that would be 100 bd ft per hour.In the unlikely event you could keep this up for 8 hours,800 bd ft,not too shabby.

If I recall Alan Combs commented about maybe 4 or 500 bd ft per day using that track mounted mill he sells plans for,cutting lumber from pre cut cants.Even old Bill Rakes says something about a short 1000 bd ft per day using the rubber tired bandsaw he pedals.

 

[aggiewoodbutchr]

I've produced nearly 900 bdft in 4 hours before.... but they were all 3" thick slabs 3'-4' wide and 10'-12' long.

 

[Al Smith]

Well,it would make a difference how thick they were.The 3 to 4 feet wide is feat in itself,mercy.Do you have a crane?

 

[woodshop]

I've produced nearly 900 bdft in 4 hours before.... but they were all 3" thick slabs 3'-4' wide and 10'-12' long.

Exactly... telling somebody how many bd ft milled without any more info doesn’t really say much as far as how productive you really were that day. Throw in that you milled mostly 12 inch wide 5/4 and you get a better picture. With my system of using a csm to mill a log into 9-14 inch wide, and however tall, cants… then using the Ripsaw to slice those into 4/4, 5/4 or 6/4… on a good day where the logs are already down on the ground, my limit is about 400 bd ft. At that point, even if there is daylight left, I am usually too wore out to want to mill more. I’ve burned through 2 gal of mix, a gallon of bar oil, dulled a ripping chain and one or two bandsaw blades. Obviously with larger logs, say 32 inches or more, although harder to maneuver, you can be more productive since those cants are taller and thus you can slice more bd ft per cant. With smaller logs, it still takes time to slice into cants, then you stand them on end and make say only 10 runs down the thing with a Ripsaw and it’s done, and you have to spend time making or setting up another cant. One of the negatives of my system, or any manual system using a csm or small handheld bandmill like mine, is that there is a lot of setup time involved. Since there is no carriage, YOU are the carriage. Maneuvering logs, maneuvering the cants into place, getting them up off the ground onto horses (easier on back when milling), measuring, setting up the guide just right etc etc.. all that takes as much or more time than actual running down the log with the mill making the boards. That’s the gravy part. Heck if I pulled up to a place where all the logs were already sliced into cants propped up sitting there ready to slice into lumber with the Ripsaw, I could probably mill 6-700 bd ft of 5/4 before I collapsed.