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Slab Rack?

Started by jander3, October 08, 2010, 10:02:01 PM

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jander3

I'm getting better and more confident using my TimberKing 1220.   Dealing with the slabs is making me crazy.  I've been stacking them adjacent to the mill, but then when it it time to cut the slabs into firewood and move them out of the way, this takes forever. 

I am looking for the ideas that will make dealing with the slabs more efficient. In general, I cut the lumber, stack the slabs and then sometime down the road, turn them into firewood.  Looking for good ideas and photos.

metalspinner

Mine is nothing fancy.  Just four green fence posts pounded in the ground. You can see it here behind the trailer.  The posts are set just wide enough apart to run my 36" bar through it.





I'm sure others with heavy moving equipment will have nicer set-ups than this.  But this keeps me from handling anything more than neccesary.
I do what the little voices in my wife's head tell me to do.

isawlogs

A man does not always grow wise as he grows old , but he always grows old as he grows wise .

   Marcel

Magicman

OK.




We can burn um too.   :-\
Knothole Sawmill, LLC     '98 Wood-Mizer LT40SuperHydraulic   WM Million BF Club Member   WM Pro Sawyer Network

It's Weird being the Same Age as Old People

Never allow your "need" to make money to exceed your "desire" to provide quality service.....The Magicman

Gary_C

If you want to accumulate the slabs, it's best to have some strapping equipment and make some fixed or portable racks that will allow you to get the forks under and move to storage for cutting later. It does require a loader with forks, some kind of strapping equipment, and some kind of rack to make the bundles. And don't forget to make the bundles small enough to lift with your loader.

Without the loader or straping equipment, you just need the rack and a chainsaw to cut to the length you can handle right where it sits. But that is messy, inconvenient, and a lot of work plus you must not let the slab pile get away from you (too big) or you will really have a mess where you don't want it. 
Never take life seriously. Nobody gets out alive anyway.

ladylake

 I put mine in a rack, bundle them up with strapping and sell them for $20 a bundle. More than pays for the diesel but you need a skid loader or loader to move them.  Steve
Timberking B20  18000  hours +  Case75xt grapple + forks+8" snow bucket + dirt bucket   770 Oliver   Lots(too many) of chainsaws, Like the Echo saws and the Stihl and Husky     W5  Case loader   1  trailers  Wright sharpener     Suffolk  setter Volvo MCT125c skid loader

clif

Mighty Myte Mark IV Band Saw Mill .  " Don't let the past hold you back"

Tim

You should have let someone know that you wanted to get rid of that skidder isawlogs. It seems to be an awful waste to torch it with the slabs...

We'd bundle the slabs in a 2 piece rack to about 3/4 of a cord. When it was time to move the bundle, I'd lift it a bit and tip the two pieces of the rack over...

I had built a sawbuck 16 feet long. There were slots for the chainsaw bar every 16". When that one rotted away, I built the next one with screws and 10' long.
Eastern White Cedar Shingles

sdunston

I have been stacking them in an easy to load spot, In feb and march all the maple suryp guys fight over them :D
Sam
WM LT28, American fordge 18x8 planer,Orange and white chainsaws, NH TC33, IHT6 dozer, IH-H tractor and alot of other stuff that keeps me agravated trying to keep running

jbeat

Check out Sawmill&Woodlot mag. (sponser). An issue or two ago a guy built a nifty rig to cut small diameter firewood.
John B

arj

https://forestryforum.com/gallery/albums/userpics/10049/wood%20rack.jpg [/IMG]

Here`s a pic of mine, made with left over 2 bys
                    arj

paul case

a pic of mine.




i pick them up a forkload at a time and take them to another building to cut them up for firewood. edgings get bundled and give away or burned. pc
life is too short to be too serious. (some idiot)
2013 LT40SHE25 and Riehl edger,  WM 94 LT40 hd E15. Cut my sawing ''teeth'' on an EZ Boardwalk
sawing oak.hickory,ERC,walnut and almost anything else that shows up.
Don't get phylosophical with me. you will loose me for sure.
pc

fred in montana

Where do you get the nylon strapping, clips and tools?
woodmizer lt15, mf 65 tractor
logdovetailjig.com

redbeard

I set up a cutting deck for fire wood just cut between the 6x6 and it gives me 16" pretty consistent. Also have a homemade saw buck that holds a good load, I used to just pile them up and found that it is labor intensive untangling the pile, Its best to dispose as you go, Keeping in mind iam a stationary set up so bark,sawdust and slabs and tailings are a constant chore but i have found that all are marketable on a small scale.





Whidbey Woodworks and Custom Milling  2019 Cooks AC 3662T High production band mill and a Hud-son 60 Diesel wide cut bandmill  JD 2240 50hp Tractor with 145 loader IR 1044 all terrain fork lift  Cooks sharp

paul case

Quote from: fred in montana on October 10, 2010, 02:00:30 PM
Where do you get the nylon strapping, clips and tools?
baileys-online.com has the poly woven strapping in a kit with manual tightener and some buckles for less than $100. it works well but i hear that the strapping and buckles can be bought a little cheaper on uline. pc
life is too short to be too serious. (some idiot)
2013 LT40SHE25 and Riehl edger,  WM 94 LT40 hd E15. Cut my sawing ''teeth'' on an EZ Boardwalk
sawing oak.hickory,ERC,walnut and almost anything else that shows up.
Don't get phylosophical with me. you will loose me for sure.
pc

Brucer

Year 1 - part time - my place: Burn them.

Year 2 - full time - permanently set up at the customer's: Burn them.

Year 3 - full time - permanently set up at the customer's (burning banned): built a 16' rack with pairs of verticals every 4'. Customer's employees level up the slabs in the racks, band them with steel strapping, buck them into 4' lengths, move and pile with a forklift.  Rectangular bundles, about 1/4 cord each. As soon as you lift the bundle out of the rack the strapping goes slack.

Year 4 -full time - permanently set up at the customer's: two 8' racks, 8' long bundles (1/2 cord each). Takes half as much strapping, 1/3 as many saw cuts, and half as many trips with the forklift. Strapping still goes slack when you lift the bundle.

Year 5 - full time - rented property, running my own show: three modified racks -- smaller cross section and large braces at the bottom to give an octagonal cross section. Heavy polyester strapping with metal buckles. One rack for each of 3 different lengths -- 8', 10', 12'. Strapping doesn't go slack when you lift a bundle because they're nearly round to start with.

Customers really like the smaller bundles. Small enough that a typical backyard saw can buck them with a single cut from each side. The bundles stay tight enough to make sawing much easier.

Year 6 - full time - rented property, running my own show: The wooden racks took a real beating, so I rebuilt one using 1-1/2" x 1/8" HSS. Same cross section and octagonal shape, but designed so I can roll the rack onto its side and roll a bundle out onto a set of bunks. That way I can unload 2 or 3 bundles before I need to fire up the loader to move them. The new rack has stood up well and I've begun fabricating two more.




I produce far too much wood to be bucking them into firewood lengths. Some customers want 16" pieces, some want 12", some want 4 feet for OWB's, some want a trailer load of bundles to buck up at home. I can pile the bundles up to three high -- the poly strapping takes lots of abuse. I unpile the bundles from the dry end of the row and let the customers decide what to do with them from there. I'll load them onto a trailer or into a truck, or put them on some 6x6's for the customer to buck up in the corner of the yard.

I used to mix edging and slabs together and some folks would complain about the "small wood". "OK, says I, you can get 'real' wood from the firewood guy down the road. He charges $200 per cord, I charge $60."

Now that I'm running an edger (about once a week) I tend to get bundles that are mostly slabs or mostly edgings. Funny thing -- some folks really want slabs, some really want edgings.
Bruce    LT40HDG28 bandsaw
"Complex problems have simple, easy to understand wrong answers."

Meadows Miller

Gday

this is all i have used just whack them on the ground and fill er up with about 2200lbs of trash  then put one or two straps round it Too Easy  ;) ;D





Regards Chris
4TH Generation Timbergetter

redbeard

 







I was at a old buddy of mines place and thought i would take a few pics of his slab rack, he built this firewood cutter slab rack for his sawmill operation, he had hooks welded to the sides of his loader bucket, and this was one of his attachments he made,he also had a nice set of forks that he could quickly grab and take off without getting off the tractor,  the nice thing about the slab rack  was he was able to dump the firewood in a pile or at least take it to the wood shed for stacking, less handling is a good thing. He had a early 80s Mobile Dimension set up on concrete ribbons and he could really put out the board feet on a good day. He has since sold his mill and has retired from milling he did it for 15 years as a side bus. I use to take my logs to him before he got me hooked on milling.
Whidbey Woodworks and Custom Milling  2019 Cooks AC 3662T High production band mill and a Hud-son 60 Diesel wide cut bandmill  JD 2240 50hp Tractor with 145 loader IR 1044 all terrain fork lift  Cooks sharp

slohand

A while back I put a video on about our  slabwood processor... Go to youtube and search "firewood processor and slab saw" . Ours is pretty deluxe I guess with air cylinders and automatic operation, but it would be really fairly easy to make up a simpler version That would allow you to process your slabs into firewood lengths and straight into either a bin or truck ready for delivery.

Handling slabs on our mills was a total time consumer with no benefit before. Now I often make a couple of big bills just driving home from work with a load for delivery.

Problems are opportunities in disguise!

tcsmpsi

I was finally able to get my slab rack finished yesterday.  I primarily use my slabs for firewood, excepting the occassional load going to other folks for horse stalls, etc.















This is the end result of the last stack of slabs I rendered last Sunday.  Prior to that, I had been using an old headache rack turned upside down, resting on cinder blocks with posts running across it.  Thhis rack will be very helpful in drying and cutting.



\\\"In the end, it is a moral question as to whether man applies what he has learned or not.\\\" - C. Jung

cutterboy

Reading this thread back in May got me thinking about building a slab rack of my own. For years I've just stacked the slabs up on two 4x4s and cut them up one or two at a time and that took a lot of time. So, Sunday I finally put one together and yesterday I cut up slabs in it.





The up rights are 16" apart and the rack is just 2 feet wide so my 24" bar can cut down through with one swipe.





Then I throw them into the tractor bucket, take them to a shed and stack them up. I will burn these in the winter of 2012-2013.

   Ralph

To underestimate old men and old machines is the folly of youth. Frank C.

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