Toe boards

[John Fairbairn III]

Hi folks,
My Dad, a friend, and I are still getting used to our mill (Turner bandmill). I have a design floating in my head of using an old car scissor jack as a toe board. Some of the logs we have milled have had significant tapers and I have tried using shims - but they are difficult to place on some logs, especially if I am sawing by myself. I have seen some discussion of using scissor jacks online - but not much in the way of experience or even pictures or designs.

The basic idea I have is to weld a piece of angle iron for the jack to sit on, bolt the jack on (tight or with movement, not sure), weld a longer support onto the top of the jack to catch more log, and then drop it out of the way when not needed.

Anyone here have any ideas or pictures or design ideas or thoughts or "been there, done that, got the t-shirt and will never do it again"s?

thanks,
john

Turner bandmill with 30" throat, 20' max log, 13hp Honda, New Holland 5050 (85hp) with grapple, three Homelite Super XLs, Jonsered 2050.

[Scott T Smith]

John, if you haven't done so already, join the Forestry Forum and then do a search for a thread titled "useful tips around the sawmill", or something similar. I recall that there is some information in there about toe board options.

I don't see any reason why a scissor jack would not work though.

[Danny Hamsley]

Definitely should work. I used a bottle jack, and that worked fine.

[Cody Colston]

I'm currently using a bottle jack but have decided to switch to a scissor jack. I think it will work well.

[Larry Edgerton]

A friend of mine has a hydraulic one he can control from the station that he rigged up with an old snowplow pump and a short cylinder. It works well.

[John Fairbairn III]

Thanks for the info guys. I have not tried to rig anything up yet - I will start, I think, buy rigging up some blocks and set the jack on the blocks, then see if I am happy with that before worrying about welding on, etc.

Got about 400 BF sawed out Saturday - good day.

[Cody Colston]

Got about 400 BF sawed out Saturday - good day.

That's is a good day on a manual mill.