clamping shorter lenghts for milling

[Charlieh]

Just after some pointers as being a newbie with the LT40, I can get on fine with longer timbers but when I try to mill shorter lengths for example 5ft lengths of fruit wood, im struggling to clamp the timber solidly, if I put more pressure on the clamp it ends up not cutting square.

 

Any pointers

[muttley9050]

Just bolt it to a longer bit if wood and clamp that. Just don't hit the bolts

[Dave_Biggs@Wood-Mizer]

once you have moved the clamp in to hold the wood, nudge the clamp down to pull the outer edge of the timber onto the bed rails.

[wills-mill]

There's a bit of a balancing act to get the first boards cut so that your remaining cant has a square enough edge to clamp sensibly without popping up from the bed. It can be useful to drop a sacrificial scrap board behind the log so that the back supports can be lowered a reasonable amount. I was resawing some wide chainsaw milled Yew this week (and the Yew slabwood) and it's an awkward job.

 

 

Do you have the earlier 'flip up' orange clamp, or the later hydraulic ram clamp? The early one really benefits from having a clip on 'shoe' fabricated with a spiked dog for small logs..... It's helpful on the hydraulic clamp as well, but it generally means drilling through the top of the clamp head to bolt something on.

 

I'll see if I've any old photos (not very hopeful)

[wills-mill]

Not brilliant photos, but not bad for 10 years ago.

 

I made up this spiky bar to hold interesting curved and small logs on the old Onan engined LT40. There was a similar spike on an angle iron shoe that slipped onto the clamp (I don't know why it's not fitted in the photo). I found I could get grip and so decent cuts without moving the logs and having to skim cut and re-align, even when there was only curvy bark for the clamp to catch.

 

It's slight overkill, and for most tiddly stuff a hefty board for the clamp to catch and a few Timberlok screws usually does the job. I tend to wind one of the screws up through the board into fresh air in front of the log as a visual reminder of where the tips of the screws are......