CDMR

It can be due to hammering the wedges in too far. It lifts the middle of the slab you are cutting and points the mill down at the end and, as you say compounds with successive slabs.

I use a 48" Lo Pro on the 661 form milling. It starts to struggle on harder woods, particularly if they have been down for a while but is a useful setup if you are meticulous with your sharpening. Larger than that I switch to the 880. I would have thought for general tree work it would be too slow. 

17 hours ago, Woodworks said:

It can be a beautiful creamy white in colour. As said very close grain and dense. Make great inlay and detailing. It's tricky to dry as you need to dry any boards quickly or the lovely colour is lost and goes a bit green if dried slowly. 

It's a sod though because if you do dry it quickly (or slowly actually) it warps like a bastard and it's generally too small to be easy to get weight on to to keep it flat. Bloody good fire wood, just wish I hadn't spent quite so long preparing it.

1 hour ago, trigger_andy said:

And the beam is usually snug, not gripping, but snug to the beam. At least mine where. This helps helps everything on track. There was very little chance the saw could go off vertical. 

 

I certainly would not be relying on three grub screw tracks that cause undue friction/drag to tell me Im milling off of vertical. By then its too late anyway. 

The steel section is smooth and has rounded corners so fairly easy for it to roll without something that engages with the guide beam. You can always flip the beam so at least you get two uses. I'm not saying its a good design (in fact I said it wasn't) just what I think they are intended for.

They leave marks on the beam you use as a guide so you can tell if you start to go off vertical as the track from one of the pips disappears.

Personally, never use mine for anything but the roughest jobs.

Only air drying slowly then finishing in the kiln slowly works for everything. The big commercial set-ups are about putting big batches through quickly so they can hone in on an optimum balance between speed and quality. If you are producing specialist timber you can't realistically go through this process.

The other issue that gets forgotten is that kiln dried timber is only kiln dried when  it comes out of the kiln. If you store it anywhere other than in house like conditions it will soon go back to an air died moisture content again. If you have a large stock that could get pretty pricey. 

You could be better off offering all your timber air dried and then offering a 'finishing' service of kiln drying it where required.

Chaps,

Had an enquiry from a lady in Wolverhampton that has a Hornbeam down in this weekends winds. She's looking to have something made from it. It's a bit off my patch so DM if interested and I shall pass details on to her.

Could the works be delayed for a while? Could be worth seeing if Network Rail have any scheduled closures in the future e.g. for track renewal. If you can jump in on someone else's closure it may not cost and you may not have to work within 45 minute windows. Doesn't look like there are overheads or third rail so could be fairly simple.

1 hour ago, Dave V said:

At the moment im doing it for stock for future works. but would love to do it as a side line job. i was just wondering if it makes that much of a difference? the fuel used?? 

 

To the timber, no. To the saw, maybe. To your lungs, definitely.

That's going to be some heavy work!

7 hours ago, trigger_andy said:

I know! Who knew white rot and splits right up the middle where desirable? Not me anyway.  

Better?

and I cannot Lie. You other fellas can't deny..

This log was pretty rotten but got some 1.5m x 1m slabs at 50mm

The other was very similar, covered in really deep burrs and about .75m x 3m

I also got a load of big burrs up to 30" diameter. Any ideas as to the best thing to do with them? I am assuming, seal and dry very slowly then find a turner with a really big lathe?

I believe they are silver maple.

It looks awesome but doesn't it turn it into a thief magnet?

The other problem with a trad planer is workshop space. You need a lot of infeed and out feed space as opposed to moving the head over the work.

Definitely interesting, what's the likely price?

3 hours ago, Jamespepperpot said:

A dining table made out of London Plane that I finished today - for myself! I milled this tree a couple of years ago for Jo at Hardy Tree Surgeons and he kindly let me keep a few of the quartersawn boards I had cut.

The rails of the frame are held together with a haunched mortise and tenon on the long sides and with festool domino connectors on the short sides so it can be disassembled for storage/transportation.

The top is made from quartersawn boards for stability and also to show off the "lacewood" grain patterns. It's held to the base with table buttons which allow for seasonal movement but also hold it down tight.

The grain might not be to everyone's taste but I think it's quite memorising and makes a change from looking at Oak.

Lovely work. Great details, the bead on the bottom of the rail, chamfer on the buttons etc.

I wouldn't worry too much about starting lo-pro. I have and have had very few teething problems. There's not a lot of point in going for a bigger rig than you need. You just use more consumables and have more large gear to tote around. If you mill away from home as it were, you can also have the problem of not being able to get your rig in where the log is which is one of the big advantages of an Alaskan. I run a 36 most of the time, 48 occasionally and the 72 hardly ever.

As for paint, cheapo bitumastic roofing paint works well for me.

A little spot of spalted Sycamore from a local pub garden.

Did occur to me as well that linking it to a panic function on your phone would be useful. Automatically texting 'I have fallen out of a tree / chopped my leg off with a MS880 at the following location: Flange-Otter-Bedsock  Blood Group: Rebellion IPA'

It's an ingenious system. I don't think there is a single house in our postcode that has a number so I wish delivery drivers and minicabs would start using it. Great if you want to meet your mates at a non-urban location too, just text them the three words.

17 hours ago, J Holtby said:

It steadily gets worse along the length

 

Panther looks very solid, although the same fundamental design

 

I'm thinking I might knock up a basic purpose built mill just for deep/first cuts, with triangulated bar supports rather than just unsupported legs

Getting worse would imply it's the cut. So either the chain or chain/bar interaction. Is the bar out of parallel to the frame front to back perhaps?

Does the dip get more pronounced further along the cut or is it constant?

You could find a shallower first cut would help. The deeper the cut the more leverage a sagging bar can put on the upper mount of the vertical pillars.

Big J's idea re tensioning could be worth a try too. How about a ratchet strap around the tops of the vertical pillars? As the bar sags they will want to move outward so it might prevent them from doing so.

Whether the mill frame will be happy to accept all these opposing forces, who knows.

Lime for the table top and seat bases and backs milled by me. Sweet Chestnut for the frames by @Forest2Furniture

(All built by me.)

Oh and some English Walnut for the keys that I milled too. The Lime stood outside a farriers and had a fair bit of metal in it that I extracted and then set back in the slab in resin to keep the story of the tree complete and visible.

Hard to have have more issue with the arborist than the architect.