Not true, my dad would glue two of the thicker pieces together and then cut it to length and slap it on the lathe and turn it into something. He would do it with pallet wood he got from a business in Oregon before he passed away.
No problem ben, i didnt think of it until i saw my dad do it in 05 at his shop. that 3 foot section, cut it to 1 foot sections and glue all three together. My dad had 3 lathes and even just a section that was four to five feet long, he would turn into canes for the wounded warrior project for wounded solders coming home from the wars. See if you have any wounded warrior carvers in your area, you maybe surprised. My dad made a lot from the pallet wood and they were beautiful. The wood was from pallets made in south east asia.
Turns out you can get new 24 inch buzz blades on eBay for a couple hundred bucks. I’m an arborist and I want to start making lumber. I’m excited to get started.
Ben, I think the target rpm for these old rigs is probably 600 to 700 rpm on the blade arbor. I gave you an idea of a way to figure ratios on a previous video, but on this jack shaft set up let me be a little more specific. Now I cannot tell exactly the diameter of the pullys you are using, so my figures are just an estimation, but you can plug the correct diameters into the equation and figure really close to the end rpm. At full throttle, your Predator is probably hitting 3,450 rpm. It looks like a 3" diameter pully on the centrifugal clutch, so take 3,450 x 3. Thats 10,370. Now divide the 10,350 by the large pully diameter on the jack shaft. I'm going to guess 5" for the heck of it. 10,350/5= 2,070. Now take the 2,070 times the small jackshaft pully diameter...I'm guessing 2 1/2". So then 2,070/2 1/2=5,175. Now divide that number by the diameter of the driven pully on the blade arbor which I'll guess at 4". So 5,175/4= 1,293 final drive rpm. Now if you'd have just used the slick new Milwaukee tape measure on those sheaves.......lol. You can plug in the appropriate numbers to determine how close you are to the targeted 700 rpm if you want to. The way your blade sings such a sweet tune means its probably just a bit over 700. lolol. Not a problem though as before you stated the bearings do not feel more than warm while running a pretty good while. Two Side Notes. Btw I've got several videos ready to upload on one of my old rigs that started out similar to yours. Just ain't got them up on the tube yet. I suffer from the typical old guy technical deficiency. I also have some short sawmill vids to send you for the sawmill shootout but they ain't gonna get there on time. So I figure the ship will sail without me..... Enjoy your videos, and I apologize for the extremely long and possibly redundant comment sir.
Am going to try and find a buzzsaw that has a feed table on both sides of the blade. Makes the job of cutting to exact length from either side a lot easier.
A good tip is to find out what gearing for the flat belt pulley is on a tractor that powered a buzzsaw and the rpm of the engine. A 20hp tractor engine at 1000rpm will have a huge torque advantage over a 20hp v-twin at full rpm.
Good idea to use a centrifugal clutch to make starting easier. That blade is a lot thicker than the blade on ours. Your buzz saw looks a lot like ours. Your set up is really nice. I love my Milwaukee tools.
All these ideas everyone has are really great. The problem is finding a buyer, that's the hard part. Just sell as firewood and keep life simple, unless you really like to have more things to do for an extra 2 bucks ?
The table is up high enough maybe to make a slide for the cut wood into a box of some kind on a skid and pick it up with the loader then dump that into a trailer or whatever. Your belts will get a better bite with some molasses on them. Cheap easy fix.
I think most of it is good for firewood. Personally I am looking for pieces of burl or any thing with a wavy texture (for chaytoyance) for knife handles. I also am looking for straight grained 8/4 wood 36" long for walking canes. The knife handle pieces need to be at least 5-7" long x 1.5" x 1.25". These are put through a stabilizing process. I have paid as much as $60 for one block of stabilized burl wood. Most of the canes I've made are from mahogany, purple heart or padauk which are more expensive than North American woods. Your buzz saw is really looking good now.
Your on the money with making it 16 inch and it will certainly by selling these off cuts and odd shapes wood give you the financial backing as firewood to keep your actual main profitable business of making slabs smooth running by covering maintenance cost. Good on you glad your not wasting potential profits
Firewood or chips for landscaping uses really for the lot. One thing to be mindful of is the smoking woods. Cherry in particular as you seem to get a fair amount of this species. Cherry wood chips for smoking fish and meats in my area sells for $5 a lb. Only problem you'd run into is having to remove the bark. Seems pretty easy enough in 16" lengths though. A bonus to having a chipper to do the smoking woods is you can throw the bark in there afterwards and use this for soil. A pile of this material takes up very little space and in a couple years is a stellar grow medium. You can also throw some of the thinner woods in there(stuff not firewood worthy). Just try not to exceed more than 50% of wood to ensure the material breaks down quickly. Cheers mate.
well if you were local i would be looking through the pile. i had over 2,000 pieces of pen blanks. used to sell a few on ebay. but i buy cocobolo from usa and pay $1 each piece at 6x1x1....inch plus shipping and tax i buy 200 at a time! walnut is a good pen turning wood as is cherry. but it needs to be dry .cheers from uk
defo keep the big pieces m8 id tidy them up oil them and make swing bench out out them got plenty of small logs for arms etc they would fetch decent money too lol.
I'm not sure of the dimensions needed for making them but farmhouse decor is hot right now and some of those pieces might could be made into trays. You could even use rope for some of the handles. If you had some pieces thick enough for bread bowls that is another thing people are using in their decor.tool boxes for planter boxes, kitchen utensils, washcloths in the bathroom. There is so much those pieces could be made into and you could sell or sell them to craftsmen to make them into decor items. Just a few suggestions from a woman's viewpoint. Merry Christmas to you and your family.
I have seen a lot of similar saws hook up to a tractors pto. they cut logs like butter. my little motor makes the saw a little more portable and it seems to cut good so far.
Hey Ben, If you're lookin' to just get rid of those slabs, maybe a woodworking club in your area would be interested. May even trade out stuff or training on a tool that you'd like to learn. Or high school shop class if they even have those any more. Just random thoughts. I like the new buzz saw set up. Now a sliding mechanism so you can adjust the motor.
take another one from the same slab, cover it with glue and stick two of them together making them 7 inches thick. Let it dry and then offer them for sale. That 16 inch slab piece could be turned into a tall bowl, a candlestick who knows.
Ben your doing grate work if you go to the parks in the summer a bag of wood coast twenty bucks hate two say do the math but we shipped pallets of bagged wood all over the place back then we got 250 a bag think they seal for about five bucks its all about the package pre split kindling and you got a fire one cord on pallets got us fifteen hundred a cored need strong bags you need two get out there and seal but the markets there
good video ..... you might want to get in touch with your local Scout Group ....... have them come pick through your cutoffs for projects ...... cost: palate stack what they don't take ..... JRW
I'm guessing that you would run out of room quickly if you tried to salvage all of the wood that you could. Sell it for firewood and get it out of your hair. Hanging on to it may just leave you with stuff that you can never get rid of after the time is invested in it, and selling the scraps for firewood will allow you to pay for blades and maintenance cost that you have today.
Hey ben lets try some math. those three inch peaces are worth 3.00 each from turners for saucers blanks. the one inch thick peaces for pen blanks are like say 16 inch by 1 inch sqaure. if you get 20 out of a board conservitivly . you can get 15-20.00 per board. so that pile of wood has the potincal of being worth 2-400.00 dollars plue the buyers lpay the shipping. not bad for a pile of fire wood. the walnut and cherry thick peases are wroth more but going at bargin prices.
Bens sawmill throw it on ebay, woodbarter .com, call a local woodworking supplyer like rockler store. they love local wood to offer people. they pay all shipping.offer a 10.00 box of scraps on ebay plus shipping . due you have a neaceor nephew who wants extra money. or a good nieghborhood kid. it's easy money for them to make.
Great Video Ben! I really need to make one of those buzz saws. I have lots of slab wood to clean-up. Great explaining your process. I'll try to send you a two minute or less clip of my sawmill. It probably wouldn't be until tomorrow. I will try to make it interesting. Happy holidays Ben
Stephen Campbell, no actually I haven't. I am a pretty small operation and a lot of my cutting is for my own use. I advertise a little wood on the net from time to time but most people don't even know I exist. In time I am sure I will get requests like that though. Thanks for asking.
