req : building plans for sawmill

Ebay has plans for bid

I've seen the second one, not too hard to follow.

DE

I'd like to build one of the bandsawmills. And I've been thinking about how you might design the mounts for the bandsaw wheels.

If you have the two wheel axels under tension, what type of bearing is best/standard/normal for this type of application?

I was thinking that a roller or ball bearing wouldn't be quite right for this sort of thing. But I don't know much about bearings, or bearing terminology.

And second, I was thinking that one wheel could be fixed, while the other one would need atleast the tension adjustment. But is this true or a good idea, because you might need to adjust each wheel to keep the band from jumping off.

I was thinking that an excellent way to begin to mount these wheels would be to take a solid bar and put it on a vertical mill and make both axel sides as accurate as you could get it, with some sort of slide provision for the tension adjustment.

But then I thought maybe this would be wasted effort because the wheels

might not be available to take advantage of this precision. IE. Can you get super balanced, super true wheels?

Thanks.

I've been scrouning parts for a bandmill for a while, there's a group on yahoo for milling (lumber). I've picked up an old front wheel drive car and plan on using the rear axle parts for the band wheels. Some plans specify a trailer axle set, cast wheels would be ideal but more than I want to invest.

The mini spare tires are said to work nice in this application. I've been hoping for steel prices to come down a bit before I start. I'm going to use hydraulics for tensioners, feed ect. I want to use a 20hp 3ph electric motor for power.

The tracking adjustment is simular to a standard shop bandsaw. A

1.25" blades needs a* lot* of tension . My main concern is to operate remotely away from the blade, non of this pushing the carriage by hand for me.

Use tele tubing with roller bearings for guides. The plans on ebay are worth looking at along with some of the web sites. A lathe/mill would be very helpfull.

Yep, cast wheels are available from some of the manufactures also used mills are sometimes cheaper than building a mill.

DE

I saw pictures of a well used home made bandsaw mill. The drive wheels were actually drive tires. Yup, regular car wheels, with inflated tires on 'em. It looked as if the wheels were mounted to axles and axle housings that had been cut down. It was a pretty big setup in that it could handle large diameter trees. I'm sure it's still out there on the web. ERS

I'm going to use hydraulics for tensioners, feed ect. I want to use a 20hp 3ph electric motor for power.

Are you going to use the motor to power a hydraulic system then use hydraulic motors to sping the band and move the carriage? (keep me filled in on this, if you are)

I hear you about staying away from the thing. I'm also going to put a fairly hefty cowling around the thing, a balistic shield.

I thought maybe I would pony up for the wheels and build everything else.

Go price your steel. I needed some the other day, and was expecting something outrageous, but the total wasn't that bad. Shop around.

Finished goods made from steel warped my expectations a little bit for the raw metal. Things made from steel sure have skyrocketed.

On Mon, 02 May 2005 16:42:16 -0700, the inscrutable Eric R Snow spake:

Y'mean this one:

Sharp looking! Here's one for a metal bandsaw:

Wow I just posted something similar before I saw this thread,

I'm going to use those mini spare tires for wheels and spindle assy's from a geo storm or Pont grandam. Just bolt a CV axle thru the assy cut off the other CV joint and attach a pulley or two for the drive.

I'm leaving some of the obvious items like pillow blocks to support the cv axle but by using one cv joint it will allow you to shim the spindle assy's without binding up the drive shaft.

Those spindle assy's cost around 60 bucks new in KY and a new CV axle costs 75 bucks.

Good luck.

Same here. But - what about this...why? Could you start with, say, a 14" Delta, add a riser block to get the opening you want, and add rails to that? While DIY is a wonderful thing, all the fiddly bits are in getting the wheels & band & bearings all tweaked just right. Why not start with a saw that has done all that already?

I've got the Delta (well, Rockwell) 14" saw, and I can't see a compelling reason not to try rail-mounting it for sawmill use. What am I not thinking of?

What am I not thinking of?

If it would handle the tension required to keep a 1.25+" blade tensioned and be power fed into a log I'd say nothing. I want hydraulic tension for a couple of reasons and that would require some mass to stand up to the higher tensions. The longer the blade the sharper it stays.

If you are sawing along and hit a hard spot heating up the blade it will expand and I want something to keep the tension on the blade. That would be either a big spring or hydraulic.

I have to agree about the fiddly part, a friend had a cabin done by a man with a bandmill --top of the line with all the goodies. It did some great work and fast but a 40k investment in the saw alone.

Also know a fellow who built a cabin with a chain saw mill---talk about detemined, said he wouldn't do it again.

DE

Well, I have a resaw blade for it, and it handles 6" of wood in resaw just fine, so that's nearly there for logs.

Makes sense - less passes per tooth, when there are more teeth.

The big spring is already on a bandsaw, so ... ???

I don't use that much lumber to justify that sort of thing, but if I can do this for 500 bucks plus the saw I already have, then it's attractive. Doubly so if I can make the saw a temporary member of the sawmill, and bring it back into the shop when I'm done.

I've seen chainsaw mills used, and I'd tend to agree. Maybe for the challenge, but not as a routine. Too much kerf loss if nothing else.

If you have a look at the plans for these things, a 14" delta would simply not cut it. It's way out of the ballpark. The mills are designed to tear through large quantities of wood, mlaybe up to 12" or more, at high speed.

The Delta simply could not take the tensionming of the 1.25" band

I always see this mentioned in regard to chainsaw mills, "too much kerf loss" and I guess compared to a band saw mill, it does chew out a wider cut, but have you ever seen one of those old Bell-Saw circular saw rigs? The kerf on those runs as bad if not worse than a chainsaw mill! If it gets the job done and you are not paying for the trees, a chain saw mill is the cheapest solution. If you are talking about production work, then even the lower end bandsaw mills could be called "too much work"

Hm... the resaw blade I have is I think a 1" band, does good on smaller stuff. Do you suppose it's a "won't work", or a "would be slow" kind of situation?

Greetings and Salutations...

On 5 May 2005 17:28:03 GMT, Dave Hinz wrote:

This is a point.

This is true. IIRC, the largest blade the Delta 14" was designed for was a 3/4" one. Getting a proper tension on a wider one would be nearly impossible...although I do seem to remember hearing about some low tension blades out there...

I have had really good luck with using my Delta 14" for resawing lumber, and, for preparing bowl blanks for the lathe. It is a bit slower than some other machines...but, then...I am not trying to make a profit here. There is a big difference between hobby milling and milling for profit. If I was going to go into the small-scale sawmill business, I suspect I would just go ahead and drop the cash for a small commercial mill. After all, my goal would be to make money off sawing wood...NOT to burn a lot of expensive time building a kit. my problems with using a 14" bandsaw for any serious milling are as follows: 1) unless serious surgery is done, 12" is the biggest chunk of wood that will feed through it. That is pretty small for lumber. If you do the surgery to build a frame to hold the two parts of the saw in sufficiently rigid alignment, then, you will have done so much work that you might as well have spent the extra 20 minutes to cobble together the mounting plates for a couple of car tires for the band to run on. 2) awkwardness. That Delta is cast iron...and pretty heavy, so getting it mounted would be an issue. 3) As a part of that...it is DESIGNED to be used upright. While I have seen a few mills that cut with the band vertical, most of the smaller, hobby mills run the band horizontal. Mounting it vertically means that there is a lot of work to raise the log up to it. Mounting it horizontally means that it MAY not be rigid enough to withstand both the force of gravity AND the tension of the blade, so, might well be hard to align. 4) To get the full benefit of the blade, one would really have to remove the table and rework the guide mechanism...not only is that more work, but, it means that the saw becomes useless for anything BUT sawing logs. realistically, it is unlikely that anyone would take the 30 minutes to an hour or more to get the removed parts remounted and the saw set up for other uses around the shop.

Now, having said all that...I think that by building an infeed and outfeed table that provide good support for a log carrier, it would be quite possible to use the saw for SMALL sawmill projects. Frankly, I find that with the WoodSlicer blade from Highland Hardware, I can feed a full, 6" board through the saw pretty much as fast as I like without bogging the saw down (I have a 3/4 HP motor on my saw, too), so, I suspect that with a manual saw like this, it should be "fast enough" for hobby work. Regards Dave Mundt

Dave, A good way to look at this is in the horsepower ratings. My 12" shop bandsaw is a .75hp A 14" delta can't be much more than that.

10 hp on a bandmill would be underpowered, 14-20 is more like it. It's not just the wheel size but the axle/bearings on the wheels not to mention the guides needed for highspeed sawing. Size matters.... Are the pulleys on the delta rated to handle 20+hp?

My chainsaw mill is 12hp 36" bar and it will rough mill a log into cabinet wood fast. I resaw on the bandsaw in the shop after drying.

Making a homemade carriage with the wheels aligned and coplanier is not brain surgery, just basic setup work in a mill with the adjuster doing the final tracking. For me the hydraulic engineering is the tough part ie making it somewhat automated.

DE

I don;t have any problems resawing on my homebuilt 20" bandsaw with a

1" blade. Works fine for what little woodworking I use it for.......I built it to make metal chips not wood, but sometimes you just have to make those woodchips as well.

============================================== Put some color in your cheeks...garden naked!

what does it mean to 'put a crown on the band wheel'?

Is this a hump in the middle or lips on the edge, or what?

Thanks.

============================================== Put some color in your cheeks...garden naked!