Cook's AC36 Hydraulic Sawmill Demo

hi I'm Tim Cook with Cooks saww manufacturing and I want to show you our latest ac36 thin curf Sawmill and I want to show you the details of this Sawmill so that you can understand why it makes it such an excellent meal we've been building the ac36 for 25 years uh just to give you a little my background I've been uh sharpening saw blades for 38 years my dad was a saw filer my granddad was a s fer so we've got saw filin in our blood we got sawdust in our blood and we like Sawmills so we we have studied the intricate things that need to be done on a sawmill to make them saw good make them saw straight make them saw fast and build it heavy duty so that it can withstand the logs hammering on the mill uh Lo pick up heavy logs handle heavy logs and you'll see that as we go through this meal how heavy our Turner is how heavy the log loader is and uh and just what makes this meal function so easily it's easy to maintain easy to saw straight Lumber and that's what I want to show you as we go through the details one of the things I like to think about when I when I look at a saw meal the very first thing that comes to my mind is what is the heart of this Sawmill well naturally it's the saw blade well how do we treat this saw blade good is very very important so when you look at a sawmill it's got a band wheel that drives it it's got a band wheel that idles on the other side to maintain the tension on the blade we've got the blade on the wheels the wheels have to be crowned and true that's very important to us we want wheels that are absolutely true we have a wheel grinder that grinds this wheel just like a crankshaft is grounding an automobile engine and so we put a the crown just like we want it with this grinding machine so that the band tracks properly then once we hold that that tension correct we've got it tensioned properly we need adjustment on these wheels so that they'll tilt these this machine is made so we can get the right tilt adjustment so that that blade can s its Optimum speed forward now you got guides what kind of guides are you going to put on the saw is the question we choose roller guides because it is absolutely the best now we don't just throw a roller guide on a lot of technology in these guides we uh we spin that roller guide and true it up so it has zero tolerance after it's heat treated that's very very important we want this guide to be very true when I look down at this blade and it's saw an across when you're inspecting the meal to decide what you want to buy look down while that Blade's running if that thing looks like it's an eighth of an inch thick it's got a problem and and it can be the BAM wheel see a bam wheel out around is going up and down up and down bam wheel out rounds going in and out so it's going doing both things it puts a whip in this blade and it shouldn't be a whipping blade that blade should look like a pencil Line running across and when it looks like a pencil line those wheels are doing their job the guides are doing their job now if that guid's out around it's beating this guide will spend like 11,000 RPMs so it will beat that blade and Hammer it like a hammer we have greasable guid we have the bearing so that we can flush the grease in and it and it and it keeps that bearing at its best and cool th that'll give the best life when you look at the adjustment system that we have here we have four adjustment bolts here inside of this receiver there's a square bar that fits in a receiver and so we can tilt this thing any direction we want so I can get up or down side to side and uh and get this guy just like I want it then I have adjustment from top to bottom we want a quarter in down pressure minimum on this blade then I can use my down pressure to to adjust and get this blade perfectly parallel with this bunk when I'm perfectly parallel with that bunk now I'm going to be sawing a uniform Lumber and then my squaring arms if they're squared up properly I'm going to saw a square C and that's what everybody's after is a good Square can good Square Lumber here is a real important part of of the saw meal this this blade needs lubrication it don't need water to cool it we prevent heat lubrication prevents heat so I want diesel fuel biodiesel something with oil in it you can put I love automatic transmission fluid it's got great properties for for impregnating into the steel of the bandile blade and preserving that blade a little oil coating on this wheel keeps it from rusting rust is things that break down metal and we don't want this wheel rusting so always keep the wheel oil and and this is a drip system you can't see it from where you at but it's got a filter a a valve and then a drip to a dripper that's the old timey sight glass window drip I mean it's got the window and you can see the drop form and it drops down and and so it comes down and we usually use about one drop a second now this is on the exit side this does two things it is a blocker it is blocking this spray of sawdust that is happening over here and going between this wheel this blocks it so it stops that plus we can lubricate the blade there if we want to we have another one on this side I'm going to walk around we have another dripper that is here and and it gets oil or or diesel fuel a solvent uh oil base onto the blade and it enters the log so if you if you prevent heat then you don't have to eliminate it by cooling it so our drip system is to eliminate friction not to cool it after it gets hot the other thing you'll see here is we have our we call it debarker blade mud saw whatever ever you want it swings in with hydraulic pressure hydraulic motor here and it spins this blade and what it does is it cuts a path in through the bark in through the mud right where that saw blade is going to go and so this saw blade is coming into the cut right in this area right here and so it goes through clean it comes out clean your blade is preserved from from getting all that mud on it and eating those teeth off it don't take much mud to eat the teeth teth off of Blade so the debarker can be a very handy tool it's not an absolute must that you have a debarker it's more important to have a sharpener and a Setter and and a band roller so that you can maintain the blade but secondary to that i' then have the mud saw because it keeps that mud out of your way one of the things you'll notice probably from this angle is we have the chains here we've got two chains in the front we have two chains in the back they're in unison they let this head down uniformly and pick it up uniformly you'll notice these Chrome rods they ride on a bushing on both sides they ride on a bushing and it slides up and down that keeps this head going up and down uniform it's not letting it sway side to side it's not letting it move side to side this way it is very stable a band saw blade that that we want to cut we want it to be stable one other thing that I'll bring to your attention while we're right here is you'll notice when we cut the log we saw the slab off the top and we rotate that log this direction now we're entering at least for the for a part of the time we can enter the Clean Cut part of the round part of the log will enter the dirty side that's where the mud saw comes in it cuts that off but as soon as we get down just a little bit into it we're entering this clean face if I can enter that clean face my Blade's going to stay sharp for a longer period of time now this is very important some of the meals have this side over here they have a can of levered head over here they're painted orange if you if you know what I'm talking about it's Canter levered and this is the most unstable side of the meal then then they have the actually the log clamps up over here on on that particular meal and and this side is kind of unstable well what we do is the opposite this this is the most stable side of the meal this is a rigid guide system and so I'm going to enter that log on the most stable side of the meal now the reason I'll call this one the unstable side if there is an unstable side on this meal is because this movable guide it slides in and out this is not as stable I can wiggle it a little bit I can push hard enough it has to have enough tolerance so that it can slide in and out but I'm entering it very stable is it's very easy to to accept it coming off from this side on what I'll refer to as the the most unstable side so I'm saying this is the most stable that's the most unstable and this is where we want to enter it notice the other thing the log will be right here we're coming out from this real stable side and it comes into the log there we are not going to move this head by shaking on it so when you're looking at a sawmill you get over there and see if you can shake that thing if you can shake it it's going to bounce when it's trying to saw Lumber a blade that's not stable is not sawing as good as one that is stable and that's just the fact of the matter from this angle we can look up and see that we have a hydraulic motor with a gearbox that is lifting these chains that lifts our head up and down uniform and when we get around and start sawing we're going to focus on the fact that I can saw without a computer I can saw accurately I can stop right on the number that I want to stop on and we can do that because of the way we have our hydraulic set up I've got a fast and slow speed on the up and the down and I can go right to the number I want with my hand control box we also have the computer that you can put on board it makes things just a little bit faster some people really like the computer and this world today some people hate a computer we've got you covered either way this meal don't need a computer to run a computer will make it just a hair faster not much faster I've actually had people watch me saw and they couldn't believe that there wasn't a computer on there and I'm not even sa every day people who saw every day they can outperform what I can do but it's easy to saw it's very uh user friendly when it comes to setting the thickness of the board by sight on this side of the the saw head as we call it I want to show you the tensioning device a tensioning device is a very very important part of a band saw blade here's why it is the band saw steel is spring steel all of the blades to made it doesn't matter who the Manu Factory is it is some type of spring steel that means when you hit the wood it stretches and when you come out of the wood it wants to come back the blades that have been made all the way back to the early 1800s did exactly this it is the same thing today whether that blade is 12 in wide or whether that blade is 1 in wide it expands and stretches when the horsepower is delivered to the blade and the blade is pulled through the cut doing its job and the more horsepower you put in the harder it's stretched and so as this blade stretches we've got to give it back and that's very important now if you have a a rigid system that doesn't give it back then that's what I call a dead tensioner it's not alive it's dead so you have to Jack all the stretch out of the blade and you hold it there and that's the only way to saw this tensioner here stretches and gives it back that extends the life of the blade because we're not having to stretch that blade all of the stretch out of it and and I want to show you why that does that if you can look in this area if he zooming in right here is a hinge point this hinge Point allows this to swing out and back in out and in then we have a spring right here that is loaded to the right amount of tension for that blade and as I as you'll notice I'll Jack this hydraulic this is basically a hydraulic jack laying on its side it's a a high quality Jack that will allow that and as I jack this out you can see this start to move it's going to be hard because it's not moving much and once it reaches a tight spot then I'm putting my tension by compression of this spring and I've got a lined up marker here that I can bring it exactly there you may see this tool hanging here this tool goes in in between the spring gaps and I can tell if I've got the right compression th this tool thickness is the right amount of Gap that I want in the spring with this system I can run a blade that that's an inch short to an inch long and it won't matter I'll get the same amount of tension when I compress the spring the same amount but this hinge Point allows that thing to open and close open and close and it's at free in other words it's free to do that it's what I call live tension that it can give and take at will whenever it needs to I think that's very very important now we also have a hinge point that runs vertical we have two bolts in this area that allows us to I call it open like a book if we allow that to open then what it does with our bearing system mounted here it allows the tracking to change so this is how we track if I open it out this way the blade tracks toward the log if I close the book The Blade tracks back toward the operator or back toward the back side of the blade and so it's very easy and it's very very precise that we can track it we have this system on the idle side we have the exact system on the drive side there's no tension on the drive side we have a drive bearing assembly it's got tapered roller bearings it's a very strong assembly but it has the same uh tracking device on there so this is very important I mentioned it while we're on the front side it's very important to get the top of your your blade I'm sorry the band wheel from top to bottom that's vertical L it's very important to get that align correctly when we get that line correctly so that it agrees with our guides and the flatness of our blade those three things go hand in hand when those three three things agree that blade will saw straight through the hardest knots that you've ever seen some of you have seen meals that come along to a knot and it rises up and settles back down that is a that is a tensioning system that's not right it may be band Wheels that's not right and it it is a alignment on that meal that is not right there are meals out there that do not have vertical alignment on them and when they don't have vertical alignment if you want to saw straight Lumber you better steer clear of those meals because you're going to have problems with them we use the Perkins engine that Perkins engine has just been fabulous for us same type engine as you have in the old masty Ferguson tractors and I think even some of the caterpillar uh tractors that are made or made with the same same industrial engine but um this set up easy to maintain it is easy to adjust you'll notice our frame is nice and heavy we have a nice heavy 2x4 framing here uh it's stable on the bottom uh all the way across this Mill it's stable very important I want to show you the magnetic scales the reason we call them magnetic scales is because we have them on a magnetic strip I can I can take this and pop this one off put another one on just magnetize it like that we haul that up and down the road with that magnet never comes off I even sometimes put a spare one over here on the side of the frame this one also moves now I can adjust the magnet scale up and down I can I can take it and loosen it and slide it up to get my alignment correct we also have a pointer here that is a stiff wire and we want a fine line pointer so that we can uh get a fine adjustment and see what we're doing this is adjustable with slots there as well you probably can see as he zooms in this is a very accurate system it's very uniform now this this scale is the 1in scale this one is the 44 54 and 64 that's what we usually send out as standard but we have other scales we have cross tie skill so that it starts at uh uh a a 9 in it'll start there and travel start at a 7 in started a 6 in and an 8 in so you can you can have your cross tie scale involved with this and it will have the 44 Lumber scale on the cross ties so some people saw cross ties with these meals and sight saw the scales make it really easy to sight saw on on the cross ties on this portion of the Sawmill I'll start with the wheels we' we've got heavyduty axles um these these axles are easy to carry the weight of this Sawmill both axles are electric brakes we want to have a good stopping power this is a heavy me so we want to have that extra braking to stop this meal when it's going forward 3/4 ton truck will pull it even if it didn't have brakes but that makes it much safer to have both axles with electric brakes we notice the next thing is our log loader this is a heavy built log loader we've had a lot of people say I've never seen a log that it wouldn't load I'm certain you can finally find one but but it'll take U it'll take a 30in log 16 to 20 foot long and load it up I've loaded logs that that were massive with this thing and it never even stalls out it'll just load it right up we have little catches here that some people choose to cut off after later but we have that so that when it's down on the ground level you roll the log in it don't roll back but uh I like to put a 6x6 down and put it inside of here on both sides and I put my logs and it'll just roll right in and then that keeps a little stop that that keeps that log rolling forward always all logs are not smooth round and and straight so you need a little help sometimes we make a real strong Fender so you can put pressure on it you can bang it around a little bit uh it's it's a nice Fender we have the Sandpaper anti slip right here because you're always going to step up here and do things to the head so we don't want you slipping on that this is a very strong log Turner if you'll notice the the side plates are made out of half2 inch steel we've got a nice big 120 roller chain we've got steel blocks with bushings inside of them uh a lot of people are putting pillow block bearings down here on the log Turners pillow block bearings will crack they will break and when one of them breaks you're down disassembling this whole system with our bearings made out of solid steel with bushings pressed into them fitting the inch and a half shaft that's there you won't break those bearings I've never seen one of those broke takes a long time of wear to wear the bushings down to where you have to do a repair on this so it gives very good service it's very Stout I've seen these log Turners made out of very lightweight Ste you know in the eighth through a quarter inch category and they will bend in this area because what happens you get a big log that's swell buted on one end and you think you well you have to kind of Center it to load it up and then you you lift it up and it slides and it'll bend that that log Turner we went with 1/2 in plate I've never seen that get bent since we've gone to/ in plate and uh and that that's the last thing I want to do and that's what takes more torture than anything else on this meal is the log Turner and that's why we have the big heavy chain we have the big stoutness and and the nice strong bearings this is what we call our log dog or log clamp some people refer to them as you'll notice we have two of them this will go up and down it will stop anywhere that you want to we use a hydraulic manual lever to adjust that up and down it's on a joystick control we'll show you later it is a hydraulic motor that moves it up and down they move up and down in unison they will they will go up and down together then we have a hydraulic cylinder on a scissor clamp that runs our slide across the clamp now what this does is it it it they don't work in unison together one can outrun the other actually the one that has the least amount of resistance will slide first but it let's just say this is a bail end it'll clamp here and then that's a little end that one to come on in and clamp it there that's why they're not tied up in exact Unison because I want it to fit that log no matter what shape the log is and so these log clamps do very well now in conjunction with the log clamps of course you can see here we've got the stainless steel beds uh that that gives you a wear strip it keeps from staining your Lumber with iron stain iron stain is not a degrade but sometimes Lumber buyers will do that to people and they shouldn't do it but they do it some anyway and on this side we have what we call a bird beak just because it's pointed like the bird's beak and when that can is here and you clamp it in it will Spike onto this bird beak and that holds that can down so that it can't rise up in Bow because one of the things that happens when you got a square Timber is as you're sawing it wants to Bow up in the center and it'll start giving you thick and thin Lumber but if it's clamped properly and holding it properly it'll give you the same thickness of lumber from the top to the bottom then we have squaring arms these squaring arms are made uh out of strong steel they are in unison one lever will make both of these work and uh they're adjustable so that we can get square we want to be square with this bunk and if we get that face up here square that log Turner is easy to make it square up with the face of this then we get a square Timber every time one of the things I'll make note of is sometimes in production sawing people are sawing maybe a extra long cross tide sometimes they want a second log Turner maybe they got big Timbers we can Put Another Log Turner down in this area anywhere we want to along I have put as many as three in one long it was a 40ft saw mail we put three log Turners in to turn the bigger logs it makes things a lot faster and more uniform but even if you were trying to get high production sometimes that second log Turner pays off in the benefits also we can put more of these square and arms we can put what we call a short squaring arm in here and and that will keep the short logs or if you saw a lot of 8ot I recommend putting the short square and arm just so you don't have to hunt and keep that log exactly in the right place but outside of that these do a good job but if you had an extra long meal then you put more squaring arms down they are one cylinder operates all the squaring arms not at this point the energy chain that we use to as a carrier for the hydraulic lines for the electrical lines that go in and control the electric valves if it were a AC Mill with uh with an electric motor three-phase motor then this is the carrier that we carry the electricity up to the motor but it carries that hydraulic power back down to the to the lower bed and does a good job with that all right I want to show you the manual hydraulic that we use to turn the log handle the log we try to make things work in a flow and in this case it starts on the right side which is where I'm going to load the log is on the right side so my log lift is the first thing now I've got this motor idle down so you can hear it and this is on the slow side you'll see that speed up when we rev the engine up and go ahead to a sawing speed but as I hold that up my log is loaded and I push down then the log clamp comes down that's real easy and real simple my squaring arms they come up they go down this is my log Turner next and they come up I can turn the log up I can push my chain down now the chain coming down is not for turning the log down but is for scooting that log in to make sure it squares up against my squaring arm so I've got control of that with the joystick and I can do that with one hand then my clamps come up and across if you notice everything flows in the direction so if I push it to the right they go to the right I push it to the left they go to the left if I pull it to me they go down I push it they go up so simple the the tapers up is up down is down and so that works out real nice so all of these things are made for the Simplicity of the operation all right here is the hand control box now you'll notice I've got a place I can put this hand control box here and it stays I've got a place that I can put this box over here if I'm on if and I can walk back and forth I've got plenty core to do that I kind of like holding it and a lot of people get used to it and just leave it in one place and I operate it from there now I want to zoom in on it and show you some of the functions the first thing is power we have to have power on to make this this whole box light up there's the fuse this is my fast and slow for the up and down I have that on my right hand so that I can flip that up and down it whe then I move to the left side with my left thumb that's up that's down you can see that head going down as I hold it that's up if I switch it to slow then it slows down if I switch it to the fast it takes off fast while I hold it down I can switch that forward and reverse this is reverse that's forward throttle to throttle it up throttle back down if I want to kill it I have a kill switch that I can press and kill it my guide goes out my guide goes in and this is my my debarker blade engaging when I pull it to in when I push it out the debarker blade leg comes back out very simple to operate very simple to use I want to show you the lining of our bed there so that the lumber as we drag it back if you'll think about it the log is up here this High where we're saw the board comes back it wants to kind of take a nose dive it might dive in here it's according to the length might dive in here it'll slide right across and just slide right on out the end on the end we have a dead roller so that when it hits here you can take a pretty big big heavy Timber and and balance the weight on that roller and it'll just slide right back into your stack or uh onto a forklift however you have that set up to uh receive that Lumber but this is important for the drag back the drag back is a very good feature and I haven't shown you that on the meal but I I'm going to carry and show you the drag back fingers and the function that they do uh the drag back saves a lot of time it makes this meal truly a onean operation I saw a lot of lumber right by myself however I can't bring this meal to its full potential by myself but I can saw by myself if I add one man I can bring it to a higher level if I had two men that I can carry this thing on up to a higher level I sometimes make the comment I can kill two people back here with with the speed that this thing will saw if I've got a good flow of logs coming in I can put a flow of lumber coming out the back somebody better be ready to catch some Lumber the way this thing kicks the Lumber out but I'll carry to the to the uh drag back fingers and show you the importance of them the drag back fingers are up inside of here they can swing forward drop down over we raise the head up anywhere from 3/4 to an inch the fingers will catch the board Slide the board back out you notice this little odd shape on this and what that is is when the board tries to kick up because the weight of it when it comes off the in the log it wants to kick up this stops it from kicking up and it'll it'll just slide right on out the back end just making the drag back work much more easily and freely now when we're sawing with these drag back fingers I don't like to slam them because this head moves fast when things move fast you have to be cautious about how you do it so I bump that head you'll notice when I'm sawing I'll bump the head back and when I pick the board up then I press the button hold it down and it'll slide back out very rapidly I just don't want to slam it if you slam things long enough you can tear something up but uh but that's the function of the drag back [Music] fingers [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music]

Channel: CooksSawmills

Views: 356,803

Keywords: portable sawmill, sawmills, bandsaw mill, band saw mill, lumber, rough cut lumber, hydraulic sawmill, woodmizer, timberking, baker sawmill, norwood, cook saw, cooks saw

Id: 5u73MNTPnWg

Length: 36min 11sec (2171 seconds)

Published: Wed Feb 10 2016