the great mill off of 09 (kind of)

[mikeb1079]

so i finally got the 075 ready to roll. showed up at the woods i'm helping to thin and the homeowner says he's got a 22" diameter oak that had died and that he felled for me to mill. cool says i, and we got busy. took about 5 slabs out of the oak to get it down to around 1/2 it's diameter, then flipped it sideways and continued to quarter it. glad we did too, cause it revealed some beautiful ray flecks. we used the 75 for the first 5 slabs, then switched to the 66. both saws running new woodland pro milling chain, the 75 with a 24" bar, and the 66 with a 32".
the result:

the 66 wins hands down. i would say that it was about a 1/3 to 1/2 faster than it's big brother, with a longer bar even. not only was it faster, it was better on fuel, and much less vibey. about the only thing that the 75 had going for it was that it's exhaust is much better (down and away). i had heard that the 75 really starts shining in the really big stuff, and that may be true, but in this oak it got beat handily.

anyways, it was a great milling day. we put in about 5 hrs of mill time, and i bet we got close to 100 bf. some really nice wide oak slabs.

i can't seem to be able to copy and paste nice big pics right now, so here's my photobucket link:

http://s774.photobucket.com/albums/yy26/mikeb1079/

there's also some butternut photos in there that we did last weekend. it had been dead for a few years, but apparently it's pretty rot resistant. it just has some "character" issues.



anyways, thanks for all the tips and advice guys. i thought you might enjoy some pics and a side by side comparison between two popular milling saws.

http://s774.photobucket.com/albums/yy26/mikeb1079/?action=view&current=IMG_2009.jpg

 

[mtngun]

Looks like you copied the wrong photo tag. I rearranged it for you.

Nice wood ! ! ! I'm way jealous.

 

[mikeb1079]

thanks mtngun, that's what i was tryin to do! i should rep ya for that. how do i do that btw?

 

[1947wdx]

so i finally got the 075 ready to roll. showed up at the woods i'm helping to thin and the homeowner says he's got a 22" diameter oak that had died and that he felled for me to mill. cool says i, and we got busy. took about 5 slabs out of the oak to get it down to around 1/2 it's diameter, then flipped it sideways and continued to quarter it. glad we did too, cause it revealed some beautiful ray flecks. we used the 75 for the first 5 slabs, then switched to the 66. both saws running new woodland pro milling chain, the 75 with a 24" bar, and the 66 with a 32".
the result:

the 66 wins hands down. i would say that it was about a 1/3 to 1/2 faster than it's big brother, with a longer bar even. not only was it faster, it was better on fuel, and much less vibey. about the only thing that the 75 had going for it was that it's exhaust is much better (down and away). i had heard that the 75 really starts shining in the really big stuff, and that may be true, but in this oak it got beat handily.

anyways, it was a great milling day. we put in about 5 hrs of mill time, and i bet we got close to 100 bf. some really nice wide oak slabs.

i can't seem to be able to copy and paste nice big pics right now, so here's my photobucket link:

http://s774.photobucket.com/albums/yy26/mikeb1079/

there's also some butternut photos in there that we did last weekend. it had been dead for a few years, but apparently it's pretty rot resistant. it just has some "character" issues.

anyways, thanks for all the tips and advice guys. i thought you might enjoy some pics and a side by side comparison between two popular milling saws.

http://s774.photobucket.com/albums/yy26/mikeb1079/?action=view&current=IMG_2009.jpg

Nice slabs Mike!

For the images, I followed your link, clicked on one of the pictures, then selected the "share" menu above the image. From there I clicked "more" and on the popup selected the "Get Link code" Tab. (Whew! lot's of clicking to get this far!!!)

Look part way down and find the area marked:
IMG for bulletin boards & forums

Selecting that and pasting into the posting gives you:

Hope this helps. Thanks again for the posts great pictures...

 

[mtngun]

To rep -- in the lower left corner of each post are three icons. Click on the middle icon and a little box will pop up at the bottom of your screen. Sometimes you have to scroll down to see the pop-up box.

To paste an image from photobucket -- there are several ways to do it, but here is my way. In one browser tab, I am editing my Arborsite post. In a another browser tab, I open my photobucket account, the page that shows a thumbnail of each photo. When you mouse over a thumbnail. several tags should pop up below the thumbnail. The last tag is labeled IMG CODE. Select and COPY the IMG CODE tag. Now, go back to the Arborsite tab and just PASTE the IMG CODE directly into the post. PREVIEW the post to make sure it worked right.

Your butternut boards do look appealing.

 

[1947wdx]

Looks like you copied the wrong photo tag. I rearranged it for you.[...]

Nice wood ! ! ! I'm way jealous.

DOH! you're faster then I am... Thanks...

 

[Brmorgan]

Very nice wood. Are you running an 8-pin sprocket on that 075? Because if not, then that's why it's slower. It could probably handle a 9-pin in 22" wood, though they're hard to find. Those old beasts need a bigger sprocket to get the chain speed up to the neighborhood of the modern screamer saws, and they generally have the torque to spare for them too. However, as a faster improvement, you could probably stand to drop the rakers down about .010 farther than with the 066, and it'll just keep chugging along where the 066 would bog right out. In 32" wood, I think the 075 would win hands-down, especially in hard Oak. I too would be willing to give up a bit of speed in exchange for the superior antivibe of the 066 anyway though.

there's also some butternut photos in there that we did last weekend. it had been dead for a few years, but apparently it's pretty rot resistant. it just has some "character" issues.

Wow, I wanna see how you went about milling a Squash... :monkey: Just kiddin'.

 

[mikeb1079]

Wow, I wanna see how you went about milling a Squash...

nice. it actually mills smoothly, as it's pretty soft compared to its' cousin walnut. funky grain too.

Are you running an 8-pin sprocket on that 075?

yep. i converted it over from a 7 pin (i think) .404 gauge sprocket. picked it up off ebay.

Very nice wood

thanks. i was pretty stoked since it's the first time i've milled any oak. i think i'll try to weld up some sort of stands to hold the pie pieces for easier quarter sawing. the homeowner has another large dead oak for me to mil at some point and i'd like to quarter saw that one too.

 

[BobL]

Very nice wood. Are you running an 8-pin sprocket on that 075? Because if not, then that's why it's slower. It could probably handle a 9-pin in 22" wood, though they're hard to find. Those old beasts need a bigger sprocket to get the chain speed up to the neighborhood of the modern screamer saws, and they generally have the torque to spare for them too. However, as a faster improvement, you could probably stand to drop the rakers down about .010 farther than with the 066, and it'll just keep chugging along where the 066 would bog right out. In 32" wood, I think the 075 would win hands-down, especially in hard Oak. I too would be willing to give up a bit of speed in exchange for the superior antivibe of the 066 anyway though.

I agree about the sprocket and the vibe on any saw but especially on something like the 075. I was close to getting white finger with my 076 until I switched to a remote throttle and a nice soft mountain bike handle like this.

Full thread is at http://www.arboristsite.com/showthread.php?t=53126
The one on my 880 is even nicer.

I find the old saws really benefit from using progressive raker depth, (so do the higher RPMers as well) but changing the cutting angle to about 7 degrees so that is a gullet width to raker depth ratio of about 8:1 (normal saws use 10:1 or ~6º)

Thus when the gullet is
0.25" the raker depth should be 0.030"
0.30" 0.037"
0.35" 0.042"
etc

BTW - this is what I mean by cutter angle.

 

[Brmorgan]

Well, if you want to take the time to weld up brackets for quartersawing, be my guest, but it doesn't take anything terribly fancy to hold a quarter round:

All you need is to screw a small block (maybe 1" high, or a bit more for really big pieces - it doesn't take much) of wood to whatever you're supporting your log quarter on. Put the sharp corner of the quarter up against it, and shim/wedge/otherwise support the round backside, and the piece can't roll or move. I prefer this setup because I don't have to worry about hitting some stray steel while milling. And, you can almost always find some scraps of wood or branches lying around to support the backside with, which means less gear to carry into the bush. Just my 2¢.

 

[BobL]

When setting up for Q sawing as per brad's setup the operator should make sure the contact point C should be a reasonable distance away from the COG vector otherwise a slight distribution of the load may tip the log. Certainly the CS head should be on the side with the long vertical so that if it does tip the powerhead is not smashed into the dirt. Overall stability can be improved by adding extra contact points as shown with the added triangle here

However, if the log is lifted off the ground no special support is needed, but if the log is big it is definitely more awkward.

 

[mikeb1079]

funny you guys should post about quarter sawing supports. i was just daydreaming today at work about the easiest way to set one up. i like both of your ideas, maybe i'll try both and see what happens when i get a chance to finish milling that oak.

i'll try to post some pics of it in action.

 

[Brmorgan]

Bob's cradle-type support is more ideal if you're going to use the alternate-sawing method as illustrated before. And it doesn't work very well with small logs, but is great for big pieces. On the other hand the one I drew isn't ideal at all for alternate sawing since the piece has to be rotated and re-secured for each cut.