Unconventional Sawmill Build

I don't think you can readily power feed a small mill. You need an infinitely adjustable feed that would be sensitive to the load. With more power, that becomes pretty much a non issue.

 

If you guys follow my builds, you’ll know that I have no problem admitting defeat, or admitting that an idea was terrible. If this doesn’t work, it’s infinitely modifiable.


I spent the morning drilling and tapping the bar mount, then tackling the height adjustment.



I decided to go with a manual adjustment rather than a boat winch. I figure it is simpler, cheaper, and more reliable and accurate in the end. The weight of the motor and mount pry on the vertical tube, and tabs welded to the back support it at 1” intervals. (I stopped after a few because I’m rethinking the intervals. 2” drop in cut height will net a 1 5/8” - 1 3/4” stock. After finish milling, I’d be left with odd sized lumber. I’d rather have 2” stock for some extra fudge factor.)

I’ll drill holes through the side at every height setting for a locking pin to secure it as a safety measure, but it should work fine without it.

 

If you need more power, you can get miniature turbos on ebay for $120 or less: VZ21 Mini Turbocharger Turbo for Small Engines Snowmobiles Motorcycle ATV RHB31 | eBay

 

If push comes to shove, I have a line on a 20hp Briggs for $50.

 

Absolutely modifiable . I Myself , think you do incredible fabrications. My money is on the fact that if anyone can do this' You can. Great work & design .......I'll be interested in your tweaks & changes along the way . BTW, I agree with your thought on the thickness stops. Always can go thinner , but not thicker !

 

I am waiting to see a Jeep rear PTO belt drive powering this!
I enjoy following your builds. Have you ever heard from the buyer of the Fat Hippo?
Keep on keeping on.

 

He contacted me in October of last year about an issue with the battery not keeping charge. I think we pinpointed it to the HF wireless winch controller draining the battery, since there’s no real way to turn it off without adding a switch. That’s the last I heard from him, so I hope it’s been trouble-free since. I miss that thing, but selling it allowed me to finish the jeep, and I like that more, so c’est la vie!

 

Cable on a pulley, with a gravity-fall weight. Maintains constant feed pressure, not forward rate.

 

How about an acme thread screw, like from a trailer jack? A precise number of turns per inch, strong, and no variability.

 

I spent a solid 4 hours on this thing this afternoon trying to get it to run. A combination of about 4 different things… tipping it on its side filled the cylinder with oil, which fouled the plug, plus the carb must’ve knocked some dirt loose or jammed the float shut, so it wasn’t getting gas, and trying to start it with starter fluid made it backfire which destroyed the recoil starter. I pulled the battery from the 3b and tried the electric start, which promptly stripped the plastic gears off the flywheel.

That’s when I broke out the big guns. I ran the big corded Milwaukee drill on the flywheel nut to clean out the cylinder, I pulled the carb and gave that a cleaning, made a new gasket, replaced the fuel hose, got it all back together, and it finally fired. Seemed to run well, and I’m dying to see what it’ll do under load.

There are a few small adjustments I want to make. The bar isn’t perfectly parallel to the bed; some shims under the near side caster brackets will fix that. The bar is way too short; I’ll run it like this to test it, but a longer bar is going to be necessary, and that might require the use of a harvester bar for the added rigidity, and that might require a bigger engine. Slippery slope.

It rolls on the track really well.

 

How do you plan to keep the bar/chain lubricated?

 

I haven’t gotten to that yet.
I’m planning on mounting a tank of oil with a petcock that will drip oil on the chain. I dumped some on it for today’s run.

 

Genius.

 

Today was the first time I had that thought of, “Hmm, this is dangerous.”

My daughter, who always complains she’s too tall, came down to the shop while I was messing with this today. I told her, “Stand there, I can fix your height problem.”

 

Savage.

 

You could consider using veggie oil.

 

So......'Cuz of the won't run sideways issue , presently you can only crosscut , not rip .....correct ?

Perhaps a Horizontal shaft engine is the answer ?

 

If you install a longer bar, you can support it like this. I have seen one of these run and its a thing of beauty!