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Retrofit roller guides on Timberking 1600

Started by Coltbodi, October 05, 2017, 12:59:07 PM

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Coltbodi

My mill has the old style roller guides, two bearing with a zerk bolt and another bearing on the back that is sealed. I can't run 1&1/2" blades with this set up, well I could, it just wouldn't be very smart. I called Timberking and they said it would cost me about $350 to retrofit my mill to run a 1&1/2" blade. On the setup I have the zerk bolts and 1/2" I was looking in my cooks catalog and they have the new style roller guides for a Woodmizer for only $103 for the pair. The woodmizer guides to run a 1&1/2" blade have a 1/2" i.d. So I see no reason I cant just order these, bolt them on, make my guide adjustments for the new blades and go to cutting. Has anyone else done this or see a problem that I am missing?
If I can't fix it, I don't want it.
Timberking 1600 with lots of mods, a 65hp mahindra with a front end loader, a welding shop, and sugarcane mill from 1890 for making syrup

Will_Johnson

The first question I would ask is: why do you want to switch to 1.5" blades? Usually (not always!) the desire to switch to the wider blade is the result of trying to solve a cutting problem for which there are likely other solutions. So it might be worth going back to the baseline issue and looking for solutions from there.

A complete retrofit to the current, greaseable guide roller system for 1.25" blades on the 1600 mills is $178. The includes two black-oxide steel rollers with bearings, two axles, two mounting blocks and instructions.

If you want to go to 1.5" blades you would need to get the 3" diameter x 1.5" depth guide rollers. Once you have the rollers, bearings, posts etc you will be at about $350 as you say. In taking a quick look at the Cook's site it looks to me like the comparable thing there would be their "Mega Guide Assembly" which run $179 each. $179 x 2 = $358.

You could try just putting Cooks' 2" diameter guides on (looks to me like two will run you $118) but you're replacing a 1.5" roller with a 2" roller. This is going to leave you with 1/4" below center line you're going to have to deal with. You might be able to adjust some of that out, but you're probably going to end up with more down pressure than anyone would recommend. Which will end up, among other things, shortening blade and bearing life.


Coltbodi

I'm not having any cutting problems, just going to be cutting some pretty wide boards and want a wider blade for it. And yes the 2" guides are what I was talking about. And there is plenty of adjustmeant on the mill to get the down pressure right, that's not an issue. I ordered the rollers from cooks, should be here by Monday and I'll let y'all know how it goes. I'm about 95% sure I will have no problems.
If I can't fix it, I don't want it.
Timberking 1600 with lots of mods, a 65hp mahindra with a front end loader, a welding shop, and sugarcane mill from 1890 for making syrup

dean herring

I think I've said this before but I would really like to replace the my TK 1600 log stops with vertical ones. Also would like to add hydraulics to the log dog. Was wondering if you can get them from Timberking.
Failure is not an option  3D Lumber

Coltbodi

i'm sure you could order the setup from Tk, but you would pay big bucks for it. It would be much cheaper to fab it yourself if you have the know how. I'm going to be making mine verticle soon. I have other mods I have done to make life easier. Send me a message sometime and I'll fill you in
If I can't fix it, I don't want it.
Timberking 1600 with lots of mods, a 65hp mahindra with a front end loader, a welding shop, and sugarcane mill from 1890 for making syrup

dean herring

Failure is not an option  3D Lumber

Coltbodi

I got my new roller guides in and installed. It took about 2 hours to get them on and get everything aligned correctly. I had to do a few mods but nothing major. The rollers cost $53 a piece from cooks, they are woodmizer 1&1/2" guides. The original bearing guides on my mill had a 1/2" zirk bolt and that's what the block was tapped for, the woodmizer rollerguides are 1/2". That's why I had to go with the woodmizer rollerguides. To do this conversion thru Timberking would have cost me over $350!



 



  

The new guides are bigger than the original bearings and hit the bolt that held the block to the mount. The bolt was pretty useless anyways since I adjust the height of my guides with the bolts that hold the bracket on. So I took the bolt out, slide the block all the way up and welded it. Timberking did a pretty bad job on the design of the adjustment bolts that hold the tubing the guides go on. The bolts are just tapped into the tubing, which is only about 1/8" thick. The bolts strip the tubing really easy, so I welded on some grade 8 nuts. I can really crank the bolts down now and hold the guides very tight.



 

Other than that bolt that holds the block on I didn't run into any other issues. It took longer to realign everything than it did to take out that bolt and weld on the block.
If I can't fix it, I don't want it.
Timberking 1600 with lots of mods, a 65hp mahindra with a front end loader, a welding shop, and sugarcane mill from 1890 for making syrup

Magicman

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