How do you deal with metal?

[firewood]

slight derail but has anyone found anything unusual in the wood while milling e.g gold sovereigns, bullets, musket balls?

[wills-mill]

slight derail but has anyone found anything unusual in the wood while milling e.g gold sovereigns, bullets, musket balls?

 

I think that deserves a separate thread

[treebloke]

slight derail but has anyone found anything unusual in the wood while milling e.g gold sovereigns, bullets, musket balls?

 

A mate of mine erects wooden buildings such as garages, workshops and smoking shelters mainly from Oak. One saturday night him and his mrs shut the front door on their way out to the pub and as they walked down the garden path they heard an explosion from the house. He went back in to find the doors blown off the log burner and the lounge covered in bits of embers from the fire.

 

He had put some Oak off cuts on the fire which had origionally come from Belgium. Some how a WW2 shell must have become lodged in the fork of a tree which grew around it.

 

The amazing thing is it had been felled and gone through the sawmill yet still ended up as the off cut that went on his fire.

 

The insurance took a bit of convincing but did pay up.

[Bob Slade]

do you know anyone local to me whos does this type of work? based in south wales

 

i dont make a normally make a habit of chopping through nails and its not something i would recommend.

sorry, couldnt resist that.

 

no i dont know anyone in south wales who uses an alaskan mill but you could give Rod D a ring (alaskan mill) if all else fails pm me. you are only about 1 1/2 hours from me. i have been to Sollihul and Newcastle under Lyme to mill, plus a week in Scotland. so distance isnt a problem.

[twmarriott]

we've an ancient stenner and gunn with a 20ft table, hydraulic feed and a 6foot 6 insert tooth blade. great bit of kit but not as fast as a band saw.

i've a cheap metal detector but its not much cop, tend to be more picky about what i mill nowerdays.

[John Hughes]

TW

That looks like some great old kit. I bet there is no daydreaming when you are using it.

[twmarriott]

nope it wouldn't give you a 2nd chance, but as with all kit you treat it with some respect and your fine.

we also have a steamer to drive it but i haven't any photos of that as she's just had a new boiler and not been in action for 3 years.

[arbwork]

Posted this before and add it to this thread, found by using metal detector and saved us at least 1 blade, used in build of green oak timber framed workshop with wood and ‘find’ incorporated into building , our milling but wood supplied another for build. V. interesting post with fowler tractor, I started in the mid 60’s working weekends with a man who had 3 fowlers with American inserted tooth rack bench sawing mining and shipping dunnage blocks , brings back memories! Good luck sawing wood not metal!

[Brushcutter]

we've an ancient stenner and gunn with a 20ft table, hydraulic feed and a 6foot 6 insert tooth blade. great bit of kit but not as fast as a band saw.

i've a cheap metal detector but its not much cop, tend to be more picky about what i mill nowerdays.

 

Very nice. Do you find it pinches and throws stuff back at you, especially when doing soft woods.

[twmarriott]

no not really, we had the blade smithed in sheffield as it was loosing tension, and it now cuts 200% better than before and as good as new, we use simonds blue chip teeth, which i try to keep it sharp, even filing between say 10 cuts, you can soon tell when she's getting dull as the marshall will struggle on a deep cut. steamer chuffs instead. and i try to debark and keep most the grit out of it, we use diesel on the blade over night or old engine oil for longer, we have some dogs to hold timber on the table but don't really use them, much of its about how the timber is sat on the bed, ie once cut is it going to drop onto the blade. here's me on holiday at dorset steam fair running a friends bench... we ran out of timber by friday!