Woodmizer advise

[Fabrimo]

Hi everyone,

I have the following business scenario:

1. Species to be cut: mainly Wenge, Rosewood and Iroko (tropical hardwoods)

1. Logs' dimensions: Length: from 3 meters up to 6 meters Diameter: 50cm up to 80cm

2. Cutting thicknesses: 1''/2''/3''

I want to buy a Woodmizer but I am not sure if the machine will handle the job properly due to the hardness of the woods. One of the points that worries me most is the cutting accuracy. Is it easy to cut exactly

1'' boards? After a while, does the machine need to be calibrated? Furthermore, could anyone tell me how many m3 of hardwoods timber will I cut per each 8 hours shift.

If anyone has got any experience with this machine and hardwoods, please share with me its experiences and its know-how.

Thanks, Michael

[Andy Dingley]

With appropriate choice of blade, then no problem. You need to have a local saw doctor who knows their bandsaws.

I use a friend's woodmiser LT-15 for both timber framing (larch, some oak) and furniture making (English hardwoods: oak, ash & beech). It will cheerfully saw thick veneers! We regularly use it to resaw wide stock like tabletops and it's impressive just how accurate a cut you can make on 2' wide stock. Resawing to 1" is trivial, resawing to 1/8" is a bit trickier and thinner is certainly possible (with a large kerfage loss).

There's a lot of poking at it to be done, whenever you break for a brew. Particularly if, like this one, it's stored outdoors under a tarpaulin and used infrequently. Generally it doesn't need to be calibrated, but your first cut can be a bit tapered. It's not a machine intended for making parallel cuts against a fence from an existing edge, but it's certainly competent for repeated parallel cuts.

It's generally quicker to cut than it is to stack timber, or especially to load round logs. If you're through-and-through sawing on a large log, then the time will be quicker than anything that doesn't cost as much as a house and need a building to put it in. Certainly we can saw a 10' log 2' wide in under a minute. Quarter sawing is much slower, because you're turning the log and often re-arranging the clamps and stops. The LT-15 doesn't have any hydraulics either.

[Wilson]

[Andy Dingley]

OTOH, the single-sided cantilever design of the Woodmiser head is less sensitive to a track that's not perfectly level or might have some twist in it. If you're doing rapid setup on-site, that's an advantage.

The head is also carried on adjustable rollers. If you want a floppy head, let the rollers get out of adjustment. It's not a piece of precision setup by any means, but you do need to maintain the things and keep these runnign snug without excess play.

I've also been unimpressed in the past with the welding quality of Woodmisers. I've seen a lot (like half of the machines I've seen) with cracked welds around the head. I wouldn't be surprised if some of the more flexible machines might have had problems in this area.

[DouginUtah]

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[Ross Hebeisen]

the wood mizer is a great machine, and with sharp blades and clean logs will cut with accuracy. how ever no way will cut a 10' 24" log in less than a minute. perhaps he's speaking of making one pass with the blade in soft wood. i have used a LT40 SH and i Know a quite a few people that use the same in biz

3000 ft of red oak 4/4 a day is a pretty good day. ross