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[Too Big To Fail]

Hello all,
I've been lurking here for a while as I've been getting my new mill up and running.  I got an older Hudson 48, put it on a better trailer, beefed up and trued up the carriage, knocked a few kinks out of the posts, installed some pins so it doesn't fly away going down the road (I'm lucky to have got it home- but that's another story) painted her up and was ready to go.

So I'm very excited.  Put a little pine on the deck and it rolls over and off because the backstops and the dogs move together.  Ok, seems like a strange way to design it, but whatever, I'll do something about that later.  Ran it through a little Maple- cut great.  Ran it through the butt log from the same tree and start getting some serious wave.  Ok, no problem, guess I hit some sand I didn't see or something.  Changed the blade.  It cut better, but about this time I'm starting to get very annoyed with the dogs.  They won't stay put, they don't lock in good, one of the cams had been bent and welded and bent and welded again and is basically useless.  And I realize it's backstop is about 1/2" out of square.  I cut my teeth on a neighbor's LT28 and got spoiled a bit I think.  Didn't realize how frustrating little design flaws can be when they add up.

So I put that pine back on and was getting into a rhythm, but noticed that the sight guide on the measure was mangled and 1" was actually more like 1 3/8" so I played with that for a bit, trued it up.
Thought I'd wrap up the day cutting a few stickers.  Got 2 inches into if and WHAM!  Trailer starts rocking and rolling and I jumped off.  Took a quick look and hopped back up to turn off the power.  Figured "weird that a blade would break cutting stickers."  Opened it up and the blade was fine- the 1 1/2" shaft on the carrier wheel had cracked in half. 

I was kind of amazed it could even break like that.  I have since looked over the posts here that make it seem fairly common on the hudson mills.  Fatigue from being misaligned maybe?
I guess I was asking for it by calling her the "Too Big To Fail" right- The biggest, heftiest component on the whole mill fails right away. 

Very frustrating.  And of course one of pillow blocks cracked getting the shaft out.  Oh well, it happens I guess.  It's the mill I could afford.
 
I'm also replacing the belts as long as it's apart, and that's another annoying design issue with the paired pillow blocks since I have to drop the pillow block off the housing to slip a new one on the wheel and it sounds like a real pain to realign the wheels on these mills.  I may weld up some tracking adjustment bolts to set the pillow blocks true-that about the best you can do on this mill I think.

But I would love any advise for fixing the problem with the dogs.  I saw that Hale87 reworked his and would be interested to see his mods up close.  Or maybe it's best to scrap the cam style and do something else?  Any advise is appreciated- what style works best? (excluding hydraulics of course- that's for another day)
I'll probably also upgrade to Cook's guides.  My Carters need rebuilding and at $54 to get a new bearing wheel (they won't sell just the wheel- you have to buy the shaft/bearing/wheel as a unit) that seems to wear out pretty regular judging by other posts, I might as well go for something that's going to hold up.

Sorry to rant and rave!  I look forward to hearing from you guys.

[medic]

TBTF - welcome to the Forum.  I'm not familiar enough with Hudson mills to help you much there.  However, my old TK 1220 mill had 2 cam dogs and a screw dog on it. 
#1.  It takes awhile to figure out how much pressure to put on the cam dogs for them to stay locked without lifting the log off the deck. 
#2.  In my experience, the cam dogs work best on logs.  Once I got a squared cant things seemed to go better if I switched to the screw dog.  I would think adding some type of screw dog would be a relatively inexpensive, easy mod if you want to try going that route. 
Hope this helps.
scott

[beenthere]

Welcome to the forum.

Am sure it is frustrating, but you will overcome the problems and have a lot of good reading material here to zero in on them. It is likely better than nothing. ;)

[sgschwend]

Welcome to the forum.
 
my 2 cents worth:
It would be best to assume everything needs checking and go through the whole mill.

Also saws don't stay sharp that long, 300-500 bf is a good rule of thumb.  If the saw doesn't feel sharp it isn't.

[Too Big To Fail]

Thanks for the welcome.

I thought about replacing the cam with a 1/2" machine screw or some such, but maybe it's worth trying to add it rather than replace.  Or maybe keep a single cam dog for the first couple cuts and have two screw dogs for the rest?

My cam dogs just seem kind of... cheap I guess.  Do you guys know where I could find a good image of a quality cam dog to aid in the rebuild?

Part of the problem is I have to lean over 16" of trailer at 36" high before I get to the backstop, and then over the log of course to adjust the dog.  Wears on the back, especially when the cam's not cooperating.  So I'm kind of wondering if it would make sense to work everything from the operator side (opposite the backstops on my mill) by adding a handle to lift the backstop/dog and adding some kind of extension to the screw on the cam if I went that route.  Of course then you have to go all the way around the mill to make sure you're square to the backstop.  But that's only really an issue on the third cut of the cant I guess, unless I'm confused about that.

And yes, hopefully it will be better than nothing, and I'll be able to sell it for something near what I have into it when I'm ready to upgrade to a Mizer or Cooks!  ...already dreaming about hydraulics....

[hackberry jake]

The only cut where square matters is getting the second face square to the first. After that it's all about the band being level with the bunks. I would check out an ez boardwalk dog. They use a cam, but the cam pushes on a separate piece of metal which holds the log/cant. The ez dogs are linked with the backstops as well, but between them there is a seperate backstop that you raise when loading logs. I would just order a couple dog assemblies from Edward and modify them to fit my mill. He sells them cheaper than I could build them.

[Too Big To Fail]

Hi Hackberry,
Sounds like a similar dog system.  Maybe I just need to rebuild the one offending cam that's been rewelded (sloppy) a few times before I got it.

Also- having a hard time getting the new pulleys onto the wheels.  They're the same length as the old ones, which I had to cut off because they were so tight, and I'm hesitant to pry them on and maybe damage the wheel. 
What's the right way?  Heat it up a bit?  Buy a slightly longer belt and not worry about the little bit of slop inside of where the blades contact it?  That's how the LT28 was as I recall, but that may have been a sloppy fix before I got to it.

[Hunter0831]

Hudson never made a 48 inch mill

[Too Big To Fail]

They upped it to a 52" more recently, but yeah, it's a hudson 48.  Not sure what year it is, I'd guess early 90's?  You really only get about 45" between the bearings if that's what you mean.  I'm not sure why they changed to 52"- maybe so you get a full 48" capacity, but you trade off street legality.  The 48 is just narrow enough to go down the road.

[Magicman]

Welcome to the Forestry Forum, Too Big To Fail.   

[lyle niemi]

welcome to the forum, good bunch of fellas here

[bandmiller2]

To Big,probibly by the time you get everything fixed you could have built a bandmill yourself.Putting "tire" belts on can be exasperating,sometimes heating them in hot water helps and work them on the pulley [sheve] like you would a tire on a rim little bites with something like a couple of old butter knives.Spend some time aligning the mill,look at outher mills and copy their clamping system.The less ridgid a mill is the more important vicous sharp bands and good set is as the bands have marginal guidance.Hang in there its not supposed to be easy.  Frank C.

[Too Big To Fail]

Thanks for the encouragement. 
I guess it's a good way to get to know the mill in and out if nothing else.  I think I fixed the dog that was giving me trouble.  It had been tweaked so the cam didn't have enough travel to do its job.  No big deal to put back together, and I squared up the back stop.  I didn't put a screw on there yet, guess I'll try it out as is first.
Those belts are a pain though.  Talked to the guys at Hudson who said they just work them on with screwdrivers.  I'm going to get some clamps and blocks set up to keep it from running away from me and give it a shot tomorrow.  If I can't get it I guess I'll just get a belt an inch longer or so....  I'll try heating it up like you suggest.  I asked the guy at NAPA if he thought heating it up might help and he looked at me like I was from Mars or something. (some people :)
Oh, and as for the 48" vs 52" thing.  The Hudson guy (Bob) said they didn't get many orders for 48s, apparently because most buyers didn't care to put them on trailers anyway, so for the price difference most everybody bought the 52s and didn't worry about being street legal.  They stopped putting them together 3 or 4 years ago, but he said they'd be happy to make them again if anyone wanted one.
So there you go.

[never finished]

 Too Big, use a string across the wheels to line them up it works pretty good. I've broken 1 shaft then I started using torque wrench at 25,ft,lbs haven't broken one since. I put my dogs on simple hyds. porta power. Wish I could do the picture thing to show you. The bandwheel belts can be a little loose, the book says B77 crowned back. The drive belt is B86 or 5/8 X 89".

[thecfarm]

Too Big To Fail,I like that. welcome to the forum. What kind of wood are you sawing and what will it be used for? Keep at it,you will get it.

[customsawyer]

Welcome to the forum.

[Too Big To Fail]

Thought I'd update my thread-
I think I may have cursed my mill by calling it the "too big to fail" :-[

I got the new shaft in, everything lined up, rebuilt that dog, put a set of cooks guides on it and it was cutting pretty good.  I even had a friend paint up a mascot for the mill, inspired by WWII B-52 bomber girls. (will try to post a pic when I get it mounted)

We've got a very big pile of logs that came down in hurricane Irene to get through, mostly white pine and oak, a little hickory and ash.  I couldn't estimate the board feet, but the pile is about 7' high x 40 or 50' long. averaging 12 or 14' per log.  That's why I got the mill, I figured it would cost more than the mill to hire out the milling, and I've wanted one for awhile anyway.  I'm cutting the pine into timbers for a house, 1x for siding, oak slabs for live edge tabletops and such.  Hickory will be flooring, odds and ends (knotty pine, 1/4 sawn oak etc) for jobs.

So anyway, I was slicing through some of the smaller pine getting a feel for the mill.  Got about 16 or 18 hours under my belt, just getting into the rhythm, when the blade came off the wheels-figured it broke.  Nope, the blade was intact, but the (brand new) shaft appeared to be bent.  Pulled it apart yesterday and it had broken inside the collar  >:(

Hud-son was very good about it, and are sending me a new one gratis (they've been very helpful, especially considering I bought the mill used so they're not making any $$ on me).  They figure it's material failure, but I'm not sure.  What are the chances that two 1 1/2" shafts would fail due to material fatigue in 16 hours?
The guy at Hud-son said to look for broken welds, but I had completely gone over the rig when I got it so I know everything's intact.  Everything seems to be square that needs to be....  The head had taken quite a wallop before I got it and the 2 sides were out of square to each other but I fixed that as best I could, and the cutting head itself seems fine.

There is quite a bit of vibration in the mill compared to the LT28 I used in the past, but it doesn't seem like that should cause that shaft to fail so quickly. ?  The only thing I could see that was out of line were the rails that the head rides up and down on.  They were maybe 1/4" out of parallel, so I fixed that yesterday by building an adjustable keeper for one side.  But I don't see why that would stress the shaft- and it seems like if there was stress there the blades should break before the shaft??

Never Finished, you run at 25 lbs then?  I had been running at 40 lbs this time which is what they recommended at Hud-son.

I dunno... got to wait until Tuesday or Wednesday to get the new shaft.  Guess I'll just have to go fishing instead of working in the hot sun all weekend. :-\

[barbender]

That's very odd to break that big of a shaft, even if it were out of alignment. Bandmills track the blades by tweaking wheel alignment anyways. I would suspect either your band wheel is way out of balance or is bent causing some serious vibration to crack that shaft, especially since you mention the vibration. My .02

[Too Big To Fail]

The wheel seemed ok just eyeballing it.  It wasn't obviously wobbly as I spun it on the new shaft.  I did notice that sometimes the wheels would settle in a certain position as I turned it off, but I figured that was the engine pulling it back- I wouldn't think the wheel being slightly off balance would do that with the blade tensioned. ?  How do you tell if the wheel is off balance if it doesn't settle to a given position on a new shaft? 

Looking just now, the drive shaft may have a bit of wobble (It's hard to tell), but if so it's jest a hair.  Less than 1/64 if at all.

As far as tensioning, I'm kind of surprised a band will cut straight at 25lbs.

[hackberry jake]

I had a high speed fan that was out of balance. I started putting self tapping screws in different fan blades until I found which ones made it vibrate less. It now has four screws in one blade and one in another blade. It runs smooth as exlax now.