Home made 72" chainsaw mill

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AggieWoodButcher

As you should be having a problim drilling the bar, your drilling a finshed proudect, I'm no machinest, but it's very possable the bar is a 5160 or an L-6 steel ( like a truck coil spring or a band saw blade) .60 carbon. To HSS or M-2 steel at .75 carbon , but there is a chance that the heat-treat of the bar has a case-hardened surface thats very hard and irreguler grained,,,,, bit killer.

If your ever at a trade show were they have magic HSS drill-bits, that pop holes in a file just as fast as they pull the handle,,,,, take a close look at the color of the file, it's a dull gray-blue Annealed file!

If you feel lucky, you could wet rags to keep the surounding area cool, and dounut so to speek the area you want to drill, and heat it with a tourch till red and back the tourch slowly away, I would need to feel real lucky that day.

Not doubting that there arnt drills that would cut just about anything, half the fun is the task it self!

Kevin

I drilled an Oregon bar last week using a hammer drill and a 5/16 cobalt bit. I turned the drill down all the way and just eased on the trigger to give me about 50rpm. The coolant was occasional spit. Each hole took about 15 minutes. Other than taking a long time I had no problems.

That's how I'm going to do it from now on.

 

[oldsaw]

The problem I was having was the cutting edges of the bits were breaking off almost immediately. I'm don't doubt bit speed is a big factor in this but I'm curious how hard this bar is compared to a HSS bit. Maybe if a machinist is reading this they can enlighten me.

I got lazy when I was modding my 42" Oregon bar to fit my 3120. I was impatient and used the drill press. First hole went fine. Second hole started okay, then suddenly shredded the bit. Had to finish with the Dremel, and even that was hard work. When I did the Aux oiler hole I used my HD 3/8 drill with a cobalt bit and kept it just above stall speed. Took forever, but didn't harden.

D

 

[woodshop]

Aggie, thanks for the pics of your tree and rig... I toyed with the idea of making my own also, still might for stuff I can't get with my 36" GB. I love these milling threads. Milling definately gets addicting, and I wish I had more time for it than I do now. Lady across the street just told me she is going to take down a huge sweetgum tree in her back yard and "so do ya want any of it?" I have seen sweetgum with a large heartwood area, beautiful reddish brown streaked with blacks. Tree is variable though, so its a roll of the dice, will know next Tues when it's dropped.

 

[aggiewoodbutchr]

Aggie, thanks for the pics of your tree and rig... I toyed with the idea of making my own also, still might for stuff I can't get with my 36" GB. I love these milling threads. Milling definately gets addicting, and I wish I had more time for it than I do now. Lady across the street just told me she is going to take down a huge sweetgum tree in her back yard and "so do ya want any of it?" I have seen sweetgum with a large heartwood area, beautiful reddish brown streaked with blacks. Tree is variable though, so its a roll of the dice, will know next Tues when it's dropped.

My pleasure.

Sweetgum heart is beautiful as I recall. It's a booger to dry straight though.

I planned to mill a 30" x 12' post oak today and post pictures of it. It turned out to be punky all the way through. Grrrrr It's mostly firewood now.

 

[woodshop]

I planned to mill a 30" x 12' post oak today and post pictures of it. It turned out to be punky all the way through. Grrrrr It's mostly firewood now.

...one of the few downsides of milling on the small scale that we do, is the anticipation of some fantastic stuff that you might take lots of time to prep for, put aside a Sat for, maybe maneuver this beast of a log to where you can mill it, only to open it up and find firewood. Bugs, huge checks that run the length of the log, rot not easily seen on surface. Hey... again I say nature of the beast. Milled up an 8 ft oak a month ago. Beautiful 14 inch wide knot free boards coming off the cant. Thought I had me a stack of premium stuff. But after I stickered it to dry, found that it had lots of ring shake, and as it dried over a period of only a few weeks the places where the rings separated got worse. So... 200 bd ft of MAYBE 3-4 inch wide boards when its all said and done. Sure, usable in my shop, but a lot more work handling them and fussing with storing that size. Often you can see that defect on the end of the log, but this one hid it well till it started to dry.

Never milled sweetgum before, so thanks for the heads up on being hard to dry. Now that you said that, I will mill it thicker, maybe even some 12/4 planks. An 8 ft long 12/4 green plank 14 inch wide is pushing 140lbs so much harder to handle, way longer to dry, but I'm in no hurry for it, and I can always resaw later with the Ripsaw or bandsaw. Alternative is wood I can't use because with a really twisted 4/4 or 5/4 I'm lucky if I get half inch out of it after the jointer/planer.

 

[aggiewoodbutchr]

Some of my guys at work (where the post oak was taken down) wanted to see my CSM in action so I figured what the heck. I freehand ripped the remaining 4' of the log in half and made a few 16/4 slabs. I'll cut some 4" leg stock from them but that's about it. The guys had a good time and I had plenty of help so it was mutually beneficial.

 

[aggiewoodbutchr]

Few more pics.

If you are wondering, the rails on the mill are for my 72" bar. I'm just too cheap to buy another set of rails for the 41" bar.


BTW- This was done after hours (CYA).

 

[woodshop]

Nice sharp looking rig, I envy your 72" ability. Too bad the tree turned out to be so rotten. Happens. See what a crowd a mill can bring when you're doing your thing? Tell people that you can cut your own lumber from a log and they look at you funny. Show them the thing in action and they smile and tell you how cool it is to be able to do that. Soon the questions pour out... where do you get one of those, how much does it cost, can I use any chain saw on it... before ya know it you're an expert

 

[sawn_penn]

Nice haircut!

 

[aggiewoodbutchr]

Thanks. Low maintenance.