Alaskan mill mods and test

huskywilson · April 29, 2017

Myself and 2 pals got asked from an neighbourly 75 year old guy who has a fair size patch of ground in a gully and has 5 dead elm trees in there, after the elms were taken down with no issues and firewood started some of the wood was lovely and a shame to make it into firewood so we decided to find an Alaskan mill , which we did locally , after reading up about it and watching U tube vids i did some mods to it and am chuffed with it

i got a wee winch off ebay for about a tenner ,15m of 6 mm polyester rope from B&Q for 7 quid . 8mm and 6mm ( 110mm long) coach bolts to modify the fitting of the winch to the rail , a petzel oscillante swing pully for 12 quid and a couple of keyring carabinas i had in a drawer .

So ..to start with the winch handle was shortened by 2 inches as it was unneccassarily long , i might take another inch off as its easy to operate . coach bolt were slotted into the rails which have a square part that stops them turning for tightening , a small amount was removed from the square to shorten as it protruded through the rail which would been loose , the 6 mm square was too small and would spin so mig welded a washer to it and ground a bit off the sides to slot in , works perfect , winch done :-)

cut down another 8mm coach bolt and fitted a wing nut to it and a old lifting eye to attach the rope end to so the winch angle can be adjusted to make the saw run even without pivoting ,not that it did it anyway but a simple thing to move along the rail if needed

had a small issue when he rope twice went under the pulley near the end of the 12 foot plank as it piled up on the drum so will make a wee ring for the support rail to keep it cemtral on the winch , over the top of the rail is ok but it piled up there too so will go for the centre setting , , temporaily used a piece of paling wire which worked fine but looked rough

Made a ripping chain from a full house 3/8 0.58 full chisel , made every pair cutters to 5deg and next pair top face were were ground on a bench grinder to half the width to be scoring cutters also 5 deg and rakers set to 25 thou , so all round the chain , L&R .L&R scoring and so on previously before the winch install i used a skip chain which i had anyway but it was a bit rough but the home made ripping chain was great