Double cutting with a swing mill

[Timo]

 ??? Question for you vet swing mill operators out there: Double cutting (coming from the other side for a 9 to 16inch  wide board/ beam with a 8 inch cut blade) is possible in some form with all the swing mills I have looked out. In practice, how does it work out? Are you able to get it to come back on the same plane and meet the original cut, or do you tend to end up with a small lip or ridge in the leave or take piece? What about setting the width, is it fairly easy to calculate where you are, or is it tape measure time every time? I imagine it slows down the process a bit, but how much of a pain is it - enough to discourage you from doing it as often as you'd like?

[sigidi]

Hey Timo,

I'm using a Lucas 618 - haven't had much call for double thickness boards but you might be in a different situation.

The best thing when you do the double cuts (especially in the early days) is draw it on the crosscut face of the log, eat your way through from one side til you make the full depth horizontal from one side (no corresponding vertical cut obviously) Then park the mill on the face of the log with blade horiz (mill off) lower rails until carriage is clear of the rails (use the measuring guage's included with the mill to return back to the same position) now you can use the blade shaft as the pivot point and turn the carriage 180 deg, bring the rails back to their original position and begin chewing into log from the fresh side until you reach the outside edge of your drawn pic, then do the horiz cut to free the double cut board - one tip put some wedges in the other cut side and while you cut this side so it doesn't pinch down on the blade as it travels through the log.

The biggest problem you will have with the Lucas is how specific you are with the amount you drop and then raise the rails, - if you are really specific you won't have any diference between the cuts you will only ever be out as much as you are out in the raising and lowering

Time-wise it does take longer to do the double cut board, it probably takes as long as cutting 2 or 3 normal boards, but then you can have an 8x16" beam instead of 3 much smaller boards.

For the Peterson your, probably better off getting info from the Captain, he's a Peterson rep over there and knows much much more about them than I. I can only offer info I found while looking into my purchase,... I'll leave it up to Captain or others so I don't give any wrong info.

Hope it makes sense and helps out

[HORSELOGGER]

Here ya go, Timo, ask and ye shall receive       https://forestryforum.com/cgi-bin/board/YaBB.pl?board=sawmill;action=display;num=1080521941                  

[sigidi]

Hey HorseLogger,

do you keep copies of your posts? :D

How did ya find it that far back?

[HORSELOGGER]

Well , one of the really cool features of the Forestry Forum is that nothing ever disapears to cyberland. I just went back into the archives to about the time period I remembered cutting those slabs, and looked around till I found it

[sigidi]

I was wondering, as I know Jeff has been looking real hard for a decent search pgm to assist in these kind of situations.

Anyway's I ain't been around long enougth to remember something from more than 2 pages ago :D

What do you saw with Horselogger?