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swing mill

Started by dolce vita, April 08, 2005, 08:07:09 PM

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dolce vita

Has anybody built there own swing mill ?
"it shows"

Tom

Hey Doce vita.  Welcome to the Forestry Forum.

We've got a  member or two in Jax beach and St. Augustine area.  Pretty well represented for a Forum that originated in Michigan. :D

We have a couple of members that are contemplating building swing saws, but none that have et that I know of.  We do have Peterson, Lucas and  Double Cut as sponsors.   We have users of Mobile dimension and interest is gaining in Brand X.  You will see quite a bit of swing saw technique discussed.

I see you are sailors. What brings you to the Forestry, logging, Sawmil, chainsaw and TimberFraming site?   Lord knows it wouldn't take much to generate a Ship building topic here.  We have guys that do everything else.  :D :D

dolce vita

I  spent my first 35 years in Montana . I guess I can't get rid of the timber /logging bug.
    Michael
"it shows"

Tom

You're in Pine country now.  Doing it backwards. ;D   Everybody here is trying to get to Montana ror Wyoming. :


How long have you been here?  Are you wanting to saw?

Fla._Deadheader


  St. Augustine???  That's just up the road.  ;D ;D ;D

  Welcome to the Forum.  8) 8)
All truth passes through three stages:
   First, it is ridiculed;
   Second, it is violently opposed; and
   Third, it is accepted as self-evident.

-- Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860)

tnlogger

dolce vita welcome to the forum you are in very good company down there.
with TOM , and  Fla._Deadheader and the rest.
  if you ask  Fla._Deadheader he might take ya out swing with them pet lizards he has trained to
protect his logs.  ;D
gene

Timo

A friend of mine (not on the forum, so I'll have to do the honors!) built his own swing mill.

It started as a home built band saw with a heavy steel four post frame (like a TimberKing or other dual rail mill) set up on some salvage rail that started life in an elevator shaft. After hearing me yaking on and on about the Lucas design, he went out and bought a 17" blade from Lucas, and fabricated a swing mechanism with an 8 hp electric motor as the power. The whole motor and blade pivot using an air cylinder to make the transfer smooth. It works pretty dang good considering what he has in it! Not really portable unless you have a big generator, but then it was never designed to be anyway.

To be clear, my friend is welder/ fabricator by trade, and has access to a fully stocked metal shop which overcomes a lot of the problems most of us would encounter. 

Another friend of mine owns a 20hp, 15kilowatt arc welder/ generator. It has occured to me that using this in conjunction with a 13hp electric motor might be a good basis for a swing mill. Using electric power does away with the need for a transmission to keep the engine in a stationary position, which is the major engineering feat involved, as far as I can see. You could even build the rest of the mill using the welder! However most of these 'self build' ideas I have tried in the past have ended up costing just as much money as buying the thing from a manufacturer. I guess the education part is free ::) ::)

good luck if you try....
Peterson WPF27 with bipedal, dual grapple, 5'6" loader/ offloader

Furby

Timo,
Any chance you could get your friend on here ???
We would love to pick his brain.  ;D

Ianab

Only thing I would say about making a swingblade... Make SURE of the blade mounting and arbor. Like, get a professional engineers advice. If something goes wrong there you have a jumbo size Kung Fu throwing star doing 1,500 rpm. You could end up looking very silly, very dead .. or Both  :o

Having said that, electric motor / genset is an option. The older Petersons also ran hydralic motors on the mill, powered from a big tractor or a stand alone diesel powerpack, so that might be an option too.  My swingblade is powered by a big chainsaw powerhead, with a pulley in place of the sprocket. Again the engine can swivel with the blade and the saw is happy running upright or on it's side.

The actual idea of the swingblade is elegantly simple, it's just Peterson /  Lucas have got all the bugs out of it and made machines you can just pull out of the packing crate and start sawing with. :)

Oh  and welcome to the forum dolce vita  :)

Ian
Weekend warrior, Peterson JP test pilot, Dolmar 7900 and Stihl MS310 saws and  the usual collection of power tools :)

Timo

Ianab,

I couldn't agree more. Using my Peterson now, it is 'the little things' that are actually big things when it comes to setup, production, and reduced frustration.  I have a healthy respect for well thought out engineering. When you go about building a complex mechanism for the first time, you almost have to factor that you will build it 3 or more times before it is as you want it to be. The tendancy is to get it to a point where it just performs the basic function (at which time you have probably invested about 300% of the time you thought it would take) and then stop and move on to something else, or just use it as is.  Unless the learning is the goal, these projects rarely end up being cost effective in terms of producing a production tool.

Also a big YES to your statement about safety. I usually end up overbuilding things, but that can have it's own set of problems. I would be learly of building my own arbor - a good part to farm out to a qualified machine shop with a resident mechanical engineer. I fabricated a front disk setup for my old BMW motorcycle, but ended up commissioning the adapter plate (similar to the arbor on the mill) as you describe. Not a place to save money!

Furby: I'll try and get him involved, but he's currently half way through building his house and not much in the milling mode ;D ;D
Peterson WPF27 with bipedal, dual grapple, 5'6" loader/ offloader

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