I don;t do the milling very often. Did 4 planks for a table I am making.
Milling Picture Thread
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Not recent, but just passing along a lesson learned. If you are using windshield wiper fluid in your lube tank for cold weather milling, i recommend you not use Rain-X wiper fluid. It's a good product for autos, but not sawmill tanks. Best I can tell, the wax congealed. Why it did it in the sawmill tank, and not do it in autos, I dunno. The only other liquid in the lube tank was water.
Never new about using washer fluid as lubricants for winter milling.
Why not just a thinner oil? Like winter bar oil
Thanks for the info. I actually wonder about that. Especially with all the water based poly paints and such now. I don’t know from experience, but apparently the quality of the epoxies and polys are not as good now because they’re water-based?
I dont know. I generally just mineral oil/bees wax things. Somtimes ill use the WATCO danish oil or boiled linseed oil. Never got into the epoxy kinda stuff.
Side note. I got some paint from a local supplier that they had to take off their shelves because we are not allowed to buy oil based any more.
It was an oil based industrial acrylic and it was an AMAZING paint as far as coverage and how durable it is.
Mineral oil/beeswax finishes are timeless. It's my go-to. I do a lot of work with epoxy, filling cracks and holes, but don't much like shiny finishes so never coat the wood with any. I do like water-based poly a lot (Varathane or General Finishes) for light colored hardwood (white oak, ash, etc) because I don't like any tint of yellow that oil based coatings give. Where I want rich saturation in darker woods (kind of a polarized glasses effect) I go with mineral oil/beeswax, when I want no change in wood color in light colored woods I used water based poly.
Cool thanks for the input!
I just ordered another gallon of food grade mineral oil for like $26. Not bad but always looking for a better price.
I will always prefer the mineral oil and bees wax.
Yeah, food grade mineral oil has spiked, I was getting it for like $20 then the same place last I checked was $30. I see all these woodworkers saying I swear by this or that brand of solvent based oil finishes, and hardly any of it gives you anything more than home blended oil and wax does but with extra chemicals at an incredibly high price. Seems obvious, but I like wood that looks like wood. My use of water based poly doesn't so much look like a surface coat as it does natural wood. I use a couple of thin coats, just enough to seal the wood. Even satin finish is shinier than I like so I usually orbital sand the last coat with 600 grit til it just looks like smooth natural wood. I think this white oak waterfall leg coffee table is after I water based polycoated it. Hardly looked any different than fine sanded raw before I did.
Thats beautiful! I hope to have your skills one day.
I'd almost begun to assume a certain amount of washboarding was part of life til I switched to lo pro, I'd seen so much of it and experienced a lot myself. But then I noticed that GeneralKayoss' slabs were awfully smooth for a milling newbie and realized standard 3/8" or .404 can cut really smooth. He's not doing anything special, Archer ripping chain, Oregon bar, clone saw, no winch. I belatedly discovered my rails had gotten so sloppy on my 42" .404 bar after years of pushing dull chains too often on them that there was no chance of getting smooth cuts with them. Rocking back and forth definitely contributes as does stopping and starting in cuts, but I think one of the main overlooked culprits is rail slop. Took me awhile to understand the ultra clean cuts of lo pro aren't so much to do with smaller teeth as they are to do with how low the teeth are above the rail and how little deflection is possible side to side. Plus I had brand new lo pro bars the chain fits super snug in.
The other major culprit of course is uneven sharpening, which most people are guilty of. If the chain wants to dig to one side and the mill guide keeps yanking it back up again to keep going in a straight line, it's going to create that chop chop chop of washboarding all day long. Special grinds like Granberg chain can be uneven out of the box, as I've seen any number of newbies be flummoxed by having new everything and bad results, and almost every time they were using inconsistently ground Granberg chain if it wasn't because they were running .050 chain in .063 rails. With all the ultra cheap Chinese long bars on the market now too, I suspect quality control isn't all that great with tolerances on the rails sometimes and people are getting bars with excess slop from the factory. Took me years to do the simple thing of checking for side to side slop in my chains in the rails, and it would save people so much wasted extra effort milling and bad results if they just keep their rails tight. And freehand cutting a cookie is a good test for any chain to see if it's evenly sharpened and cuts straight.
GeneralKayoss
ArboristSite Operative
Whoa, dude, that joint is nice looking! What did you cut that with, crosscut sled?
Milled 5 Hickory slabs today. 16-20" wide, 80" long, 2" thick. The pile grows again!
Yeah, massive custom sled I built plus had to arrange a roller conveyor outside the table saw to support the slab. Oh yeah, and didn't help it was live edge so a total PITA to keep the slab flush with the edge of the sled. I think with my 16" Makita beam saw with a quality blade on it now cutting along a guide I might be able to do some really nice 45 joints on thick slabs a little more easily. Will have to try it on some scrap pieces. Used a ton of biscuits on the glue up of the joint.
![Image[1].jpeg](https://cdn.imagearchive.com/arboristsite/data/attachments/869/869154-15228739b48bbd9cc22937322679f644.jpg "Image[1].jpeg")
GeneralKayoss
ArboristSite Operative
Oh I see, very nice! I dream of having the space for that one day
The biscuits should actually hold pretty good in a 45 degree angle like that. Did you use any brackets on the inside? I ended up making some up from angle iron, painted them a few coats of glossy black, turned out nice!
Stop every time I wedge. Honestly i never got this result until i switched to archer chains.
Woodland pro never did this.
I don’t rock back-and-forth. But sometimes when the powerhead follows the contour of the side of the log, it does change angles at that point that could be what it is from, but I intentionally avoid rocking back-and-forth and try to keep it as straight as possible.
Starting to think that when it does this, it’s at the point when the chain is really stretching when it’s under the most load. You can see the chain on the top of the bar (non cutting side) when it’s being stretched, it starts to actually wave in and out of the bar a little bit and I think that might be what it’s from. The archer seems to stretch under load a lot on my 3120. And I promise it is tight and sharp.
I use a grinder to hold the proper profiles and touch up with round files in between. Chain is sharpened properly and I follow the manufacturer angle recommendations.
Yeah, the biscuits should work well like that, I use them for picture frame miter joints too on larger frames. Love the alignment simplicity of biscuit joining, but would love much more having the Festool domino joiner for something more akin to mortise and tenon strength. Didn't use any brackets. The glue face is so enormous on those joints that as long as I do really precise joints, between the glue bond and the biscuits the joint should be fairly bomb proof.
Here’s another example of it from today’s cut on some white oak. This one is about 33 inch diameter at the big end and I have another of the same tree to do that is 45 inch diameter.
This chain was just sharpened with a grinder this morning.
Wondering if it is because it’s a full skip ripping chain. this archer chain is the very first full. Skip ripping chain I’ve ever used.
This chain was just sharpened with a grinder this morning.
Wondering if it is because it’s a full skip ripping chain. this archer chain is the very first full. Skip ripping chain I’ve ever used.
Can I ask what glue you use? Tight bond three was recommended to me.
Good chance that could be happening. The cut may be happening clean with the leading edge and the loose flapping chain on the trailing edge is ridging the wood a bit. None of those photos just posted look especially bad, kind of what I grew to expect in 3/8 or .404 milling results, certainly with full skip, though could be better. The only difference in cut quality of WP vs Archer is likely in full comp vs full skip. Archer's easily as good chain as WP. Do check how much play the chain has in the bar rails.
I use pretty much any old wood glue, have some Gorilla wood glue right now, Titebond 3 does sound like excellent stuff. I like the idea of extended working times, because it can take me awhile to get glue on all the biscuits or dowels and everything clamped on a larger project and I don't like glue drying too quickly.
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