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Foley Belsaw 4x20 edger-will it do this?

Started by karl, May 18, 2009, 08:16:44 PM

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karl

We have been looking for a (cheap) edger for some time now, and it appears that we are going to need to make several hundred feet of log siding from slabs this summer. I have done this in the past with a jig on our MD, not very efficient and quite labor intensive, not to mention a bit scary.

The question is- Can we edge slabs up to 3+ " thick on a 4x20 Foley edger? I have a lead on one for sale.

My concerns (having never had my hands or eyes on one) are that irregular material is not going to feed well or straight through a machine that feeds with spurs rather than belt feed.
I have no problem with altering a machine to better fit my needs....but I ain't real inclined to spend more than buying the right machine in the first place to get what I need. If a few more spurs or some sort of outfeed guide will get me what I need, great. Otherwise I am open to suggestions.

Anybody done this?
"I ask for wisdom and strength, Not to be superior to my brothers, but to be able to fight my greatest enemy, myself"  - from Ojibwa Prayer.

Ron Wenrich

I'm not sure about a Foley, but I imagine they are designed after those older edgers.  The first thing you'll have to make sure of is that you have enough hp to pull your slab through the edger.

I think the spurs you're talking about are on the feed roll.  They will pull straight as long as they're not worn.  The old Fricks would wear in an area of constant use, and that could pull your board crooked.

The condition of the teeth on the blade have a lot to do with how a board is pulling.  If they're worn, damaged or dull, they'll pull a board crooked.

I have an idea about how an MD works.  Its pretty similar to the basics of a vertical edger on a circle mill.  I've made log siding from logs on the mill by putting the edger blades the desired distance apart and cutting my log the desired depth.  There was no need to run it through the edger.

Won't that work on the MD mill?
Never under estimate the power of stupid people in large groups.

Chico

Ron is dead on those little machines  Some of the old meadows towers or frick could do it but as Ron said the feed rollers if worn too deeply will move the slab all over If you could find one of the three I mentioned You can rebuild most of the rollers as they have insert teeth otherwise I would do it on the head rig. You could find an old ripsaw but it's double the work and if the slat bed etc breaks it's a headache in both ends the head and the billfold JMO
Chico
My Daughter My sailor MY HERO God Bless all the men and Women fighting for us today If you see one stop and thank them

karl

Thanks for the replies. 8)
The spurs look like chain sprockets as far as I can tell from the pics, the ones I saw were on the outfeed, have no idee what the infeed looks like..

Can we use our Md edgers? Yes, but....we use the mill with only the large edger so we can cut 8 by cants for the resaw.....so, I guess we could if we turned the log, I think to have enough to clamp, we would have to use larger logs than we do normally, or just take two from each log.... Hmmmm, have to ruminate on it a bit. ???. Also we have a stock pile of wide slabs that are left in the clamps after we saw on the MD (we don't normally turn our logs) that we would like to use.....
we will keep the advice on bits in mind if we do get an edger, hopefully we end up with the same inserts we now use in the MD....I think the odds are agin us there though....

The edger we were thinking of has an 18 hp engine- I was thinking it may be a bit under powered for thick stock.... seems like I read somewhere here that 5hp per inch, per blade was about right???

Good to know that the rolls are rebuildable since we now have a lead on a Towers....

We did some siding from slabs a couple of years ago by laying a 3x 10 in the clamps on the MD, running the saw down the edge to get a perfectly paralell edge to the saw, marking a line on the plank 6 1/2" from the trimmed edge. screwing a couple toggle clamps with springs on the ends to the plank and a couple drywall screws driven up through 1/4" to keep the slab from flying away. Then we duct taped the dragback up, put a slab on so that it centered between the path of the saw and the line, run the saw slowly down the track to trim the first edge, unlatch the clamps, spin the slab around to aline with the line on plank, re clamp before the saw reached the end of track and trips the return so that it trims the slab to width on the way back.....I don't really care to do it that way again- my back is tooo shot for all that bending 'n lifting. :(
"I ask for wisdom and strength, Not to be superior to my brothers, but to be able to fight my greatest enemy, myself"  - from Ojibwa Prayer.

Chico

Yes I would definately slow the feed rollers down and leave the arbor speed up most of those rollers have a nut on the ends and the teeth come out in sections If you only going to use it for the one job for a while you can pick and choose the best teeth to use to save buying a whole set but I've found it's usually a lot easier to just replace them also make sure the press on the top roller is even as this will allow it to crawl also Good luck it's very do able just have to have a little patience JMO
Chico
My Daughter My sailor MY HERO God Bless all the men and Women fighting for us today If you see one stop and thank them

Ron Wenrich

When rolls get bad, its usually only on the side that has the fence.  That's where most of the edging is done.  You might get away with flipping the roll over, if its bad.  It takes a lot of use to make them bad.  If the roll doesn't flip, you can take off the bad sections of teeth and put good ones from the other side on. 

To change infeed speeds, you're going to have to change some pulleys to slow it down.  18 hp should do the job, if you're using one saw.

You might be able to put a fence on the opposite side and do everything with your movable saw.  The fence is used when you are edging a board with one straight edge.
Never under estimate the power of stupid people in large groups.

woodhick

I recently sold a foley belsaw unit since I purchased a larger meadows miner edger.  I never did have the foley set up and running but I would guess it is way too light to take the horsepower you are going to need to do what you want to do.  they are a lightweight unit, not saying they wont work well at edging lumber but not sure about slabs.
Woodmizer LT40 Super 42hp Kubota, and more heavy iron woodworking equipment than I have room for.

StorminN

Quote from: karl on May 19, 2009, 09:52:56 PMWe did some siding from slabs a couple of years ago by laying a 3x 10 in the clamps on the MD, running the saw down the edge to get a perfectly paralell edge to the saw, marking a line on the plank 6 1/2" from the trimmed edge. screwing a couple toggle clamps with springs on the ends to the plank and a couple drywall screws driven up through 1/4" to keep the slab from flying away. Then we duct taped the dragback up, put a slab on so that it centered between the path of the saw and the line, run the saw slowly down the track to trim the first edge, unlatch the clamps, spin the slab around to aline with the line on plank, re clamp before the saw reached the end of track and trips the return so that it trims the slab to width on the way back.....I don't really care to do it that way again- my back is tooo shot for all that bending 'n lifting. :(

Karl, what if you put the smaller edger blade back on the MD (I assume you still have the upper edger in place?) and do all the edging on the MD? Build a jig similar to what you've described... but vertical, instead of horizontal... maybe a 10"x10" cant clamped in the bunks, then toggle clamps or drywall screws or whatever to clamp the slab to the vertical edge of the cant, one at either end. Remove your main blade and just run the edgers. As long as the thickness of the slabs is less than 4" (I hope they are?), then you'd be fine... set your top edger blade at 6-1/2", lower the mill to center the slab in the cut, and edge in one pass. Depending on the slabs, you might be able to put a plank on the inside, to use as a skid for the dragback. Labor in between slabs would involve loading the slab, clamping or screwing it down, and removing two edges and the cut piece.

[EDIT] Thinking about this for another minute... if you took a 2x10 and a 2x8 or so and screwed them together in an "L" shape, clamp that in the mill, used this instead of a big cant... you could run screws through from the backside that way, and not have toggles on top (or rather, to the inside, or left) of the slab... just have to make sure the "L" stayed square... could maybe even use a 3x10 for the vertical piece, clamp it in the mill and shave off the side of it with the main blade, before you removed the main blade. This would ensure it was square with the mill.

Would this work for your needs?

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

karl

Thanks again for the replies.
All good info- we still are thinking of a separate (heavier duty than the Belsaw) unit to reclaim slabs for strapping, battens etc. anyway, so would like to do the same for the siding. My digital camera has gone to camera heaven, or I'd post some pics of our operation so my thinking might make more sense to others.
I'll give a shot at describing the layout and how we saw;
Logs come onto the MD set up with one large edger and are sawn into 3 or 4 sided cants depending on the size of log, what we are needing from it, log quality and my attitude.
As the dragback brings the first slab, cant, or second slab back, it goes onto a set of dead rolls where it either gets tossed to the cull slab pile to end up as boiler fuel, or goes down the accumilator toward the resaw.
This continues until the accumilator is full (20' of deck)
We then start resawing cants and thick slabs
As we resaw boards/planks are sorted by width/lenght and stickered in racks
The infeed person sorts slabs that are too thin for planking or beams that require no resawing onto bunks beside the infeed rolls to the resaw or onto forklift forks.
We resaw thinner slabs from mill and returned from resaw at a later time into live edge stock that needs to be edged- enter our plan for an edger to clean up this stock. we can now take 4/4 stock to the planer mill and run it through our woodmaster that we added edger blades to, but it will only take up to 1" thick, and it means moving and handling another time before it is stickered and stored- not worthwhile for softwood strapping stock
If we can edge as it leaves the accumilator we save time and steps, also we accumilate quite a bit of 2" that is suitable for roof ribbing for metal roofs from slabs-especially from the thick bottom slab that we get with the MD- that we need to edge..Making the siding would be real simple  to do the same way it seems, without impacting the rest of the operation and reqireing reset time. Another thought I have been mulling over is that with an edger I should be able to add a pair of dado heads mounted on modified skill saws to run the rabbets on top and bottom of the siding, might also be handy for shiplap siding,eh?
Clear as mud?
Flaws in my daydream?

Dang, I like this place.
"I ask for wisdom and strength, Not to be superior to my brothers, but to be able to fight my greatest enemy, myself"  - from Ojibwa Prayer.

Ron Wenrich

Seems like an awful lot of handling.  Are you sawing mainly pine, or do you have a mix of hardwoods?  How much of the siding are you figuring on moving?

I've never seen a Dado on an edger.  Some of the problems you'll run into on the edger is that you're looking for it to do something that a bigger shaper is designed to do.  With an edger, its pretty hard to get an exact width board on every run, unless you are running with a couple of fixed saws.  So, your siding ends up being a certain width +/- 1/8".  It doesn't sound like much, but it can be a real bear to work with.
Never under estimate the power of stupid people in large groups.

karl

Actually- less carrying (everything stays on rolls until it leaves the resaw)than when we sawed only with the MD, plus we now gain on scale and consistancy. The big advantage for me is that stock is kept at waist ht until it hits the stack- lots betterr for my(bad) back.
Pine, soft wood dimension, cedar, some hdwd.
We have one large addition to a cabin I sawed out a couple years ago, and it has been my experience that the first one of most anything leads to  the second......but not really planning on taking over the siding market, so thinking cheap.

I'm sure there has not been a dado on an edger- just figure that by using the feed mechanism and doing what we will be doing someplace anyway at the same time, we save handling. I rabbeted them in the past with a dado in the tablesaw for the back/bottom, and one tipped sideways in a radial arm saw for the top rabbet.....lots of lifting and pushing that I'd rather not do again...
Good point on the variation in width- our sizer in the planer mill has fixed blades that we set with splines and set screws for each run- so had'nt considered that.

I really appreciate being able to pick other brains.....I kinda misss the days when I knew it all ::) ;)
"I ask for wisdom and strength, Not to be superior to my brothers, but to be able to fight my greatest enemy, myself"  - from Ojibwa Prayer.

Ron Wenrich

Just when I thought I had all the answers, they changed the questions.   ;)
Never under estimate the power of stupid people in large groups.

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