iDRY Vacuum Kilns

Sponsors:

Home brew log winch for saw mill

Started by John Bartley, January 08, 2008, 03:59:58 PM

Previous topic - Next topic

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

John Bartley

Building it took less time than deciding how to build it ...  I though it might be overbuilt, but having stressed it a bit to see how it would hold up, I think it might be just right. All that's left is to make the idler pulley mast that I'll use for rolling cants (pictures to follow)

http://oldradio.ca/MiscProjects/LogWinch/logwinch.html

cheers eh?
Kioti DK35HSE w/loader & forks
Champion 25hp band mill, 20' bed
Stihl MS361
Stihl 026

Foxtrapper

2014 WoodMizer LT28

dad2nine


Slabs

I like that.  It shows craft  that I admire.  If the speed seems a bit slow  a direct drive capstan might be applicapabile, depending on your ramp angle.
Slabs  : Offloader, slab and sawdust Mexican, mill mechanic and electrician, general flunky.  Woodshop, metal woorking shop and electronics shop.

scrout

Hi John,

Cool winch.  Nice mill too.
I went to the Champion website, really like the interference pin on the blade guide that prevents sawing your dogs, very nice detail.
I think I will be building something very similar for my winch system.

John Bartley

Thank you all for the kind words, they're appreciated!  I'm also wondering about speed, but the way I've built this, all I have to do is pull the hand winch assembly out and drop an electric winch into the receiver and if that doesn't do it, then I guess the whole assembly will have to progress to version1.02 :)

Dad2nine,
I had a look through your photo album just now. It seems that maybe I should have looked there first ... :-\ ... you have some good winch ideas there too!! On the subject of the pricing and notes page ... I would gladly accept with good humour, any criticism or suggestions that anyone would care to offer. I had many years of business experience in the lawn and garden field, but have none in this sawmilling business, so I anticipate a steep learning curve :)

cheers and thanks again.
Kioti DK35HSE w/loader & forks
Champion 25hp band mill, 20' bed
Stihl MS361
Stihl 026

LogDawg

Hi John,

   I was looking over your pricing page as I am contemplating doing some part time sawing. One thing that I am running into is people that have old or dirty logs that no one else will touch. Even sawing by the hour it seems a guy would take a beating on blades if he got into a pile of this stuff. I have not actually got involved in one of these logpiles yet but it seems like it would be a no win situation for the sawyer or the customer. I assume a previsit is a must before agreeing to saw for someone so as to avoid these issues. Have you done much customer sawing yet or are you just getting started?

                                                                               Kevin
Wood Mizer LT40HD
Kubota L4200
John Deer 40
D2 Cat
Home built John Doe tractor
Jonsered, Husky, Stihl

John Bartley

Kevin,

The sawing that I have done has been for a friend, using his mill on his site, and a bunch of his stuff was pretty bad ... dirty and partially frozen. Other than his wood (a few thousand feet) and a few logs of my own, I am a complete newbie at the "business" of sawing. As far as the mechanical end of it, that's a bit different. I have always been a hands-on person, from contract gold mining to running my own lawn and garden equipment business with several employees, and have serviced a few sawmills, so I have a "reasonably good" grasp of the mechanical end of it.

As far as the cost of cutting dirty wood, I agree with you. If it's not factored into your operating costs, then it could get quite expensive. When I did the operating cost budget on my mill, I was brutal ... 4000 hour mill life, 2000hr motor life, 25 hour general maintenance, 250hr belts and bearings and ..... 2 hours between sharpenings. My limited experience has been that in dirty or frozen wood I get about 2 hours (+/-) and 3-4 hours in nice clean wood. Those times seem to leave me with a blade which is getting dull, but which is easily sharpenable and settable and which has not yet started to leave a poor quality cut. Using that brutally conservative costing, I calculated an operating cost of $25/hr, so I think I've got the bad wood well accounted for.

The last comment  I'll make I guess is one that some business people don't like (at least in my experience) ... if a job looks like it's a loser, I think the best solution is to say "no" and don't take it. In the small engine business I saw lots of guys, mostly part timers who still believed that you had to do every job that came in the door or your customers would all leave. Those guys spent a lot of time (money) subsidising the repairs to the junk that they couldn't say "no" to. I guess I was a miserable guy, but I learned quite quickly to say "no" to some jobs and I found that only the customers with bad jobs left. The customers with decent jobs who wanted good work done stayed .. and paid..

Just some thoughts, and I would surely like to hear other thoughts on these subjects. All I can do is learn eh?

cheers
Kioti DK35HSE w/loader & forks
Champion 25hp band mill, 20' bed
Stihl MS361
Stihl 026

LogDawg

Thanks John,
  Looks like you have done your homework. I have been doing some number crunching myself but I have doubts that I can get the price per hour or bd ft that I am looking for. There are quite a few guys with mills in this area cutting for .20 or less a bd ft and doing a good job at it. Some of the guys on here are doing some very impressive numbers but there is a local guy here with a Woodmizer LT40 that seems to average 800-1200 bd ft a day working alone . He  is very fussy about what he cuts and has a lot of experience so I don't expect that I could do any better with the same equipment. I have been looking for a niche but nothing has fell and hit me on the head yet. LOL.
  You got me laughing when you told about working on junk. I owned an outboard motor dealership for 11 years and tried to work for the good, the bad and the ugly. Worst part for me was most of the customers that brought in junk were either friends or family and I'm to soft to be a good businessman. It was a thriving dealership when I got out of it but I can't say that I miss it or the 200+ phone calls I used to answer a day.
  Best of luck to you with your milling operation and thanks again for the input.
Wood Mizer LT40HD
Kubota L4200
John Deer 40
D2 Cat
Home built John Doe tractor
Jonsered, Husky, Stihl

jamesamd

Nice Job. :D

I would only suggest that You replace the friction lock.With a through pin.A quick release pin or just a grade 8 bolt and add another angle with a pin to the outside of the winch mount so it will not drop under any condition.
James
All that is gold does not glitter,not all those that wander are lost.....

Furby

Since it was brought up........
The friction lock is on the wrong side of the rig.
The end furthest away from the winch takes the load and sould be a fixed end.
Bolt or weld it in place and make the other end a friction lock.

John Bartley

James and Furby,

You guys are absolutely right. It did shift slightly at its first test, but not as badly as it might have. As I sit here thinking about loads etc, I can see a problem brewing with the lock. For now I'm going to taper the locking bolt to a point, then drill a small hole to receive about half the taper.

The materials (excluding the winch) weren't too expensive, so seeing as there's several other things about it that I don't like, I'm going to use this one while I start to build version 2 ....

Version 2 will have a sliding clamp also, but rather than a side lock, the clamp will be tensioned with an "all-thread" rod thru' the end, similar to the band tensioning device on a sawmill, and yes, the outboard end will be welded solid and the sliding adjustment/lock will happen at the winch end.

Any, and I mean "any" other suggestions will be gratefully and graciously received.

cheers eh?
Kioti DK35HSE w/loader & forks
Champion 25hp band mill, 20' bed
Stihl MS361
Stihl 026

Furby

I think your current lock will work just fine IF you move it to the other end.
As you pull on the cable, the rig is not only trying to shift toward the log, but the winch end is lifting upward a little as well.
As long as the end away from the winch is fixed in place that is.
As long as there is tension on the winch, the winch side of things won't drop down very easily.
I'd just swap ends with the lock and call it good, myself.
Yes the all thread will give you a constant lock, but take longer to install/remove if needed.
Really up to you.

John Bartley

Yeah, I know ... no pictures - it didn't happen ... but it DID happen ;)

Today was test day for the winch ... a friend had some fairly large pine trees cut last fall, so today we cut the first chunk off the first log. The log was 26" small end, 30" large end and we cut the big end to 8-1/2' long, leaving about 20' to cut up next. We skidded it to the mill on an icy laneway with a tractor, then wrapped the log with the winch cable and ..... up she went ... slick as can be. We cleaned up the edges of the log with the chainsaw, slabbed off the sides to square up a cant and to do that we rolled the log/cant with ... yup, you guessed it ... the winch ... pretty happy here today 8)

I've got a couple of minor things to clean up on it, but at least now I know that I don't have to build version 2 :D

cheers for now, pictures to follow ... next log.
Kioti DK35HSE w/loader & forks
Champion 25hp band mill, 20' bed
Stihl MS361
Stihl 026

John Bartley

And, after battling a flu for a couple of weeks, then finishing up a sawing job for a friend, I finally got back to the pine and had a chance to work the winch (and the mill) again. So, here's the pictures I said I'd post ::





The log was almost perfectly round, being about 26" one way and 28" the other, and was a shorty at about 9' long. If I have it calc'd correctly, it'd be about 1000lbs?

cheers eh?

Kioti DK35HSE w/loader & forks
Champion 25hp band mill, 20' bed
Stihl MS361
Stihl 026

beenthere

John
How did you do that?  thumbnails??
south central Wisconsin
It may be that my sole purpose in life is simply to serve as a warning to others

Radar67

"A man's time is the most valuable gift he can give another." TOM

If he can cling to his Blackberry, I can cling to my guns... Me

This will kill you, that will kill you, heck...life will kill you, but you got to live it!

"The man who can comprehend the why, can create the how." SFC J

StorminN

Hey John,

The FF doesn't allow links to photos outside the Forum... so you're gonna have to upload those pics to your gallery on the FF and then post links. The photos can be a maximum of 450 pixels in the largest dimension, and 35kb, I think...

-Norm.
Happiness... is a sharp saw.

John Bartley

QuoteThe FF doesn't allow links to photos outside the Forum

Yup ... that's what I thought I remembered too, 'cause the last time I tried that it didn't work. This time though, they linked up just fine and stayed there when I posted ... go figure ... then I guess they got moderated (and that's ok  :) )anyway, I uploaded the pic's to the gallery and then edited the post ... too bad the pic's are so small.

cheers eh?
Kioti DK35HSE w/loader & forks
Champion 25hp band mill, 20' bed
Stihl MS361
Stihl 026

james04

Hi John,

I have a few questions for you regarding your winch. I would like to do something similar. What brand/model is the winch? What are the specifications (gear ratio and line capacity)? Were did you get it? Also do you feel that the mill bed wants to twist when trying to move large logs. I have seen other log loaders like this. But in my mind I see the weight of the mill the only thing resiting the log. So If my mill only weights a total of 1000 pounds and I try to move a 1500 pound log. It seems the mil will be pulled off its footings and not the log moving. Perhaps the log needs to be in contact with the ramp prior to attempting to move the log with the winch? Do you see my point here? I mean if my mill head is at he opposite end of the mill I can easily shift the mill with just a kick of my foot. So I cant understand how this type of winch will work.

James

John Bartley

James,

The winch is a Shelby, made in the USA. I'm sorry I don't have a model #, but it's a 2-speed with ratios of 5.1 and 14.7 to 1 and a rated pull of 3200lbs. It has a free wheeling feature and a brake and I put 50' of 5/16" cable on it. I bought mine at a store here in Ottawa. The store is called Princess Auto, and as I recall, the winch was on sale at about $80.

As far as the winch pulling the mill frame off its mount, here's my take on it and experience... The resistance by the log is very low, no matter the weight. The reason for this that the log is not being dragged onto the mill, but rather it's being rolled and while the log may weigh 1500 or 2000 pounds dead weight, the rolling resistance may only be 10-15% of that dead weight (say 200-300lbs). The winch cable passes over the top of the log, passes down over the outside, comes back under the log and then is hooked back onto the winch frame itself. When you crank the winch handle, the cable pulling back into the winch reel rolls the top of the log towards you, so the only way you'll have any resistance is if you've left any branch stubs sticking out, or if you have an abnormally "flat" side on the log. The loading ramps are hooked to the mill bed, so once the log gets to the ramps, the winch is only pulling against itself, and the mill bed is pretty much out of the equation.

So far, since I built my winch, I've loaded three logs, each about 1000-1200lbs, and I've had absolutely no trouble. I don't think I've even come close to a "move the mill" weight of log.

I hope I've answered all your questions. Please ask if you have any more.

cheers eh?

John
Kioti DK35HSE w/loader & forks
Champion 25hp band mill, 20' bed
Stihl MS361
Stihl 026

james04

John,

Thank you very much for your reply. I will see if I can find that winch. Seems that the boating supply places want more than $100 for one.

James

james04

Oh ya. Buy the way. I had a very scary experience today that emphasizes the need for something like this. I was loading a 24" x 10 foot red oak log on to my mill using the fork attachments for my front end loader. Now I don't know how much that log weighs but I can tell you it was heavy. Well as I was easing it down on to the mill I stopped for a second and the jerking action was enough to blow out a hydraulic line. Well as soon as herd the pop and  hiss I immediately back the loader up and got back about a foot before the whole load slammed down on to the ground. Half an inch forward would have wrecked the rails on my mill.The forks just barley grazed the rial. Lost about three hours today going to look for a replacement. I should be thankful that it was not worse.

James 

zopi

about 2010.88lbs...according to the calcs...

close call for ya...I've been using a set of blocks and parbuckling gear to load the ones too big for the hooks...

gotta gotta wench...she uses the other hook...gotta build me a winch.. ;D
Got Wood?
LT-15G GO chassis added.
WM sharpener and setter
And lots of junk.

Furby

James, you just saw the very reason a lot of sawyers will not load a log directly onto the mill with tractors, skid loaders and the like.
To protect your mill, it can be just as easy or easier to load onto a dead deck that is level with the mill and then simply roll the logs onto the mill be hand.
You can also load more than one log at a time on the dead deck.

Thank You Sponsors!