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Posted by D Sherman [72.47.9.228] on Saturday, September 03, 2011 at 12:14:02 :
In Reply to: Re: band saw posted by clueless [201.202.29.210] on Saturday, September 03, 2011 at 10:56:42 :
50 hp is plenty for an old-fashioned 2-man circular saw mill, of the sort that would cut about 10,000 bd ft per day from logs up to 3ft dia with about a 50" blade. I suspect the older semi-portable steam-powered mills (sometimes called "cant mills") didn't produce much more than 20 hp. When running off a flat belt, an old bald tire on a suitable rim makes a fine pulley at the sawmill end, and will gear down the motor speed about right.
Remember with sawmills in terms of speed all that matters is how deep of a cut each tooth makes. If you don't have much power, you can just gear down so it takes those cuts slower, but so long as the "bite" is correct depth it will cut just the same as if you ran it at high speed with high power. What you don't want to do is keep the blade spinning fast but slow down the feed. If you do that you'll make very fine sawdust and will burn the teeth. What some guys do when they don't have enough power to run at the speed the mill was designed for is take out every other tooth, assuming you have an inserted-tooth saw blade, so they can slow down the feed and still have each tooth take the correct bite.
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