advice for adding toe boards

[New Brunswick]

  Any of you guys add toe boards to your mill? I guess most mills would come with them on. I have an idea on how I,m going to add them, but am wondering the height they should travel above the deck? Any advice will be appriecated, thanks.

[John Bartley]

I have manually operated hydraulic toeboards on my Champion mill and they're great. For a retro-fit, have a look at this design :

http://beaversaw.ca/html/pictures___features.html

They shouldn't be too hard to make?

cheers eh?

[New Brunswick]

Thanks John, do you have a jack at each end? My mill was made in Ontario, C.B.M. is the name of it. Thanks for the input.

[John Bartley]

The toeboards that I use were from Champion and are a bit different from the Beaversaw toeboards. I think the Beaversaw boards would be an easier build. Here's the  Champion boards :

http://championsawmill.com/photos/jacq1g.jpg

Yes, I have two on the saw and for the extra bit of money I spent, it makes life a whole lot easier

cheers

[cantcutter]

I just use car jacks, hydraulic toeboards would be nice one day though.

[dovetails]

I just lift the log with a piece of pipe,and slip a wedge under the low end
got one of them wedges used to block a trailer made of aluminum. Will lift
from about 1/2" to about 5" depending on how far I shove it under.Also it
holds log towards the back stops so it don't roll before clamping it.

[PineNut]

Scissors auto jacks came with my mill but they were not very satisfactory. At the present, I use a bar to lift small logs and a FEL for the larger ones. Place a sedge or shim to hold the log in place.  Not the best approach but it works.

[New Brunswick]

That is basicly what I do now as well,just lift 1end up and put a shim under. I thought i would ask around for ideas and what others are doing.

[Dave Shepard]

I am a shimmer as well. I have an assortment of wedges and chunks of wood and an axe to drive them in. For really big logs I have a HiLift jack, which can come in handy for other stuff along the way. The mill also has the hand crank toe boards, which come in handy as well, but sometimes the log is too short to reach, or didn't quite land where I wanted it too on the mill.


Dave