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Idywool

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    Fort William

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  1. Still looking? I could possibly help. Ivan 07790007979
  2. Alright guys... I'm a building surveyor when I'm not playing with my Magnum MS880, and today I came across a nice big straight Oak that the customer wants rid of from his garden. It's in Godalming in Surrey, GU7, with good access to the adjacent field and an amenable farmer by all accounts. It's over 3' diameter and about 40' tall, having originally been much bigger, but lost a bough or two in the '87 storm. If I lived locally I'd have it myself but I'm 600 miles from home. Any use to anyone? Seems a shame to burn it! Photos available by email. Ivan. 07790007979.
  3. Hi John, I can't really offer you any advice about the weight of the rack mill without seeing it, but I would advise strongly against using a caravan chassis for anything other than a caravan! So many people make trailers out of caravan chassis, but they're just not stiff enough. Go to Bateson Trailers in Stockport; they'll make you a strong chassis only at a realistic price, with brakes that'll actually stop you when you need to! Caravan brakes are not up to the job of stopping a trailer that's probably going to end up weighing nigh on 3 tonnes, and you'll get shunted into a ditch or someone else at the bottom of a long hill, with your wheels red hot and your brakes on fire! Just a thought...
  4. Remember you can get a bit more length with the small log mill by removing the teeth or spikes on the saw...
  5. It's a well known fact that any wood can be very difficult to mill with a blunt chain...
  6. Thanks for this Simon, very helpful. I guess the electric option is not something many have tried then? When you consider the power/torque curves for electric motors vs those for petrol engines, you can't help thinking that electric would be better suited, maximum torque at zero revs, when you most need it...
  7. Hi Guys, Just wondered if anyone could add their thoughts to this: I moved to the West Coast of Scotland 5 years ago and so logs are in plentiful supply. Much of the fast grown Sitka goes for pulping to make paper, but there's loads of Larch available too, ostensibly for firewood. I had 25 tonnes delivered a year ago and it was dry when I got it, so thought it too good to just burn. Looked into getting it milled locally, but this wasn't possible at reasonable cost so I decided to get into milling myself. Read a ton of stuff online and in other places and decided that I'd start small and make my mistakes on a small scale before working up to a "big rig". Having used chainsaws since I was a teenager, I felt confident in the use of them, but always thought they were underpowered for the job they had to do. Even more so with electric ones, which seemed to me to be glorified toys. So when I saw a 2400W electric one I thought that, with an equivalent power to a small to medium sized petrol saw, it should be a good choice for small scale milling of logs up to say, 9", with a small log mill attachment. The results? Brilliant! Very smooth cuts with Oregon chains and 16" bar, and made some lovely bench planks for my garden benches, with no planing required. So far, so good. I screwed it all up when I "buried" the blade in a 15" log. This was just too much and although the motor had ample power, the gearbox gave out. So the question is, has anyone out there managed to make an electrically powered chainsaw mill, can you use a direct drive off the motor shaft, what sort of rpm are you likely to need at the sprocket, etc? I went the whole hog and got a Stihl Magnum MS880, with a standard 30" bar, coupled to a PantherPro mill made by Kim in Florida, which has proved to be an awesomely powerful bit of kit. I ripped a seawater-logged very wet 18" diameter driftwood Sitka log 5m long, through the centre line, end to end in just 3 minutes with it the other day and the result was 10m of bench good enough to sit on with just the edges chamfered off. Well pleased! The chain was a standard full complement Oregon 10 degree ripper. Fuel used was less than a quarter of a tank, surprisingly. All 122cc of the engine seemed to make light work of it. So the question is, has anyone used a large saw like this with say, a 59" or 72" bar with a similar milling kit? The construction of the mill is so simple that I reckon I could simply buy some longer 1" square SHS steel and replace the 30" set with it, and presto! I have a bigger milling capacity. What think ye all? Any musings gratefully received! Thanks all... Ivan

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