What’s this old woodworking machine?

[Jay Aubuchon]

A young friend of mine is stationed in Germany. He recently posted this picture.

491457

Anyone know exactly what it is? Do I need one in my shop? Is there a model from SawStop?

[John Erickson]

Looks like an old vertical multiple blade sawmill. They dimensioned the entire log in one pass into cants. Still some in operation in european countries.

[Bill Dufour]

Are you saying it is a stroke saw? I have only seen those for cutting shingles.
Bill D

[Jim Becker]

Looks like an old vertical multiple blade sawmill. They dimensioned the entire log in one pass into cants. Still some in operation in european countries.

Could be...the guy with the YouTube channel called Lignum has a multi-blade saw in his shop, but it's a lot more "modern" (relatively speaking...) than what is show in the photo above, if that is, in fact a multi-blade saw. Lignum does a lot of bent lamination work and that multi-blade saw plays a starring role in the process.

[Wes Grass]

That's pretty interesting. Looks a fair bit more complicated than pictures of reciprocating sawmills I pulled up. Of course, if it's German, it likely has about 5 times the number of parts required to make it work ;-)

The center wheel at the bottom is maybe for a flat belt drive? Seems like not a great place with sawdust raining down on it all the time. But makes it harder to get an arm or leg caught in it.

Looks like gear racks driven by the crank pins on the outer wheels. That could be a drive for the feed rollers. Or the front is for the feed, the rear cycles the blades?

I spent a lot of hours wearing hearing protection in a small room running hundreds of thousands of parts on a couple small punch presses. They had a similar system for the stock feed rollers. The crank pins were adjustable for offset to adjust the feed per stroke. Sync'd so the stock fed while the ram was going over the top of the stroke. There was a one way roller clutch on the feed.

Ah, the good old days ... I never wish to relive.

This maybe similar so the feed rollers only turn while the blades are on the down stroke.

Send him back for more detailed photo's.

[Bradley Gray]

I think it is a power feed only, probably in front of a reciprocating saw.

[Maurice Mcmurry]

YouTube put this in my up next. It shows a reciprocating saw at around 6:40 minutes in.


https://youtu.be/G0a-jZOkuyk

[Alan Lightstone]

Don't know what it is, but nice photo.

[Tom Bussey]

Video is awesome. I wonder how many BF one could do in a day.

[Mel Fulks]

I think it’s called a “bark peeler” .

[Maurice Mcmurry]

That makes a lot of sense. Bradly Grays observation makes sense too. The log sticking out appears to have been in a reciprocating saw for a few feet.

Regarding the video, I Think Grand Dad is lamenting that 's Jacob's son is not going to run the mill? Jacob is one of those guys who just gracefully moseys around, working, without looking like he is working.

[Tom Bender]

It's a log clamp for carving fake dino bones

[Steve Rozmiarek]

Regarding the video, I Think Grand Dad is lamenting that 's Jacob's son is not going to run the mill? Jacob is one of those guys who just gracefully moseys around, working, without looking like he is working.

Yes he is, no wasted effort expended. Enjoyed the video even though I have no idea what they said.

[Steve Demuth]

Yes he is, no wasted effort expended. Enjoyed the video even though I have no idea what they said.

If you to turn closed captioning on, and then set the language to English translation, you can get a pretty decent read on the narration. The translated English is fractured, but readable.

[Mark Gibney]

I very much enjoyed that video, though I also didn't understand a spoken word.
Here's a translation of some of what the father was saying towards the end -

And now we hope that your son will take the sawmill all over the world.Yes, that's a difficult thing.
He is not married, there are no descendants because the demand for wood is falling,
so what we produce, the architects and carpenters are tricky, they want glued
wood and we cannot set up a plant. Now he'll just do it as long as he can,
after that the sawyer is probably finished. I don't see it any differently.

[Maurice Mcmurry]

Now I know to look for the English selection In the closed caption! Thank you! I got good solid C's in Jr High German but all I remember is silly things like "why are you so pale" and "I am sick"

[Mel Fulks]

I wouldn’t call it a reciprocating saw. Wrote it a letter asking what it does ….and offering to teach it English. But it did NOT reciprocate.

[Dan Schrecongost]

There’s a Wikipedia article that calls it a headsaw or gang saw. I’ve seen floor joists cut by this type of saw in a c1820 house.