Having a large bandsaw is great but manhandling big billets and logs over the table
is risky and plain hard work for the saw and the operator. I wanted to be
able to mill any logs I'm capable of bringing home, but didn't want to lose
any floor space to a permanent mill, so I designed and built this simple
rolling-sled arrangement. It is absolutely amazing how much better a bandsaw
works once you eliminate the friction of timber on the table which is added
to by the downward pressure of the blade. Total cost was about $250 including paint and it
can handle anything I can load on it with ease.
The rails are simply 50x50mm angle iron with one edge facing up. I've made
it 4400mm long so it will fit a 2000mm sled and still some working room
around the blade. The rails are supported by 4 sets of fold-up legs and the
saw-table in the middle, the inner legs being on castors for positioning.
To minimize the loss of cutting height, I used 25x25mm angle iron across
the saw-table which left the structure a bit flimsy when it was away from
the saw so I added a simple reinforcement which fits below the table. I only
lost 53mm of my cutting height in the finish - still over 400mm to play
with!
As well as the rails, you also need
something for the boards/waste to land on so this fold-up 'catchall' was
added to the outfeed side. I was very happy with the way it uses so little
space when packed.
The sled is a simple frame of 40x40mm angle iron braced with 20x20RHS. It is
kept in-line with the rails by the ends of 6 bolts which can be adjusted as
needed. To keep the steelwork clear of the blade, I added a strip of
Ironbark which covers the bearings and acts as a zero-clearance support.
The bearings I chose are 8x8x24mm because it just made the maths easy and they were dirt cheap in a pack of 10.
To enable me to load logs on the sled without a mobile crane or gantry, I
devised this tipping arrangement for the sled which allows me to load and
cut logs much larger than I could normally manhandle over the table - though
it does still have it's limitations as you can see in the video! Basically
any log I can get standing on it's end and 'walk' to the sled is fair game.
Because
my bandsaw came with roller guides and I haven't got my head around a way to
convert them to the Euro style guides, gum build up on the blade was a huge
problem to begin with. On very wet, resinous timbers like the Sally wattle I
was using for testing, the build up on the blade can grow so much in just
one cut that it puts the tension and tracking out to the point where the
blade drifts off far enough to snap itself. I've managed to overcome most of
it
by removing the table insert (which becomes obsolete with the sled attached
anyway) and replacing it with a steel brush arrangement I made - the
original was brass but the bristles wore out after just one log's worth of
cutting. The brushes are from the local $2 shop so they're easily replaced
as they wear out but between them and an occasional wipe of the blade with
some diesel, the blade stays fairly clean and cutting straight.
Experimenting with this also showed me that
Sally Wattle MUST be debarked in
future as the copious amount of resin in the bark is the main cause of the
blade build-up.
The rails are designed to fold up to about the size of a standard extension
ladder so I could recover my working space when I'm not milling logs. It
could just as easily be hung on hooks along the side of a building or
similar but my machine was perfectly positioned to just lift the rails up
out of my way with the pulley system pictured here. The video you will find
further down the page shows how simple it is to set-up in a leisurely 3
minutes or so.
Coming up with some clamps to hold round or awkward shaped logs in place but were
easy to move and use proved a challenge but I'm really happy with the
result. The upright is 20x10mm steel as is the movable arm, all of which I
have blackened to avoid rust with out clogging things up with paint.
Operation is simple, slip the bottom fork over the cross-rail of the
sled and slip a pin through, then a half turn of the wing-bolt locks it in
place. Slide the clamping arm on the upright until it touches the log then a
half turn or so of the knob will secure the whole thing really well.
Once a log has had one side flattened so it seats squarely on the sled
it doesn't really need clamping but the clamps come into their own again
when you get down to the last boards when the billet is too thin to balance
properly - basically allows me to split a 40mm board in half with out
holding onto it - nice to have the fingers well away from the bitey bits!
After struggling to hold an awkward shaped log in position while I got the clamps
onto it, I made a couple of these wedges to clamp onto the cross rails -
very simple but very effective! - made setting a log up to get the best
alignment much easier.
...but wait, there's more!!!
I recently had the need to cut some small blanks while I had the mill set up
and needed an easy way to hold the timber safely but didn't want to pack the
mill away - only needed to make a couple of cuts and still had logs to
mill!!! Easy fixed! - removed the mitre-slot guide from the Safety-Sled
(only 2 bolts to undo) and clamped the Safety Sled to the Mill sled -
cutting difficult little pieces has never been so easy!!! If I didn't need
the floor-space the mill uses it would never get packed away again!
Once I bought my big new bandsaw it was obvious it could handle much bigger stuff than I could
manoeuvre across the table so I set about building this sled arrangement for it. Now the sled can handle anything I can get on there and makes resawing a pleasure!
Setup time is a casual 3.5 minutes with no loss of floor space when I don't need it. Total cost was about $220 (before paint!)
While my tilt-loading system works just fine, loading this first
heavy log made me realise it will be my limitations, not the sleds, that
will govern what gets sawn on it - unless I decide to buy a little
shop-crane!
... and then slicing a board from it.
I had some serious blade drift on this log but once I realised the extremely resinous bark on the Sally Wattle log
was causing all the build up on the blade, I debarked what was left and
the rest was a breeze from there.
