Woodhaven Planing Sled - Reviews?

[Al Launier]

You can always build your own out of wood, or metal. Mine uses 80/20 extrusions and Harbor Freight trailer jacks. I move the whole thing onto the driveway, level it off using the trailer jacks and go to town. It also doubles as a chainsaw mill. Presently good for 28" x 7'. Clean up using the leaf blower
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Ted, what a great set-up! Very thoughtful design indeed!
A couple things that I was concerned about when I read the OP's post, and which you have taken care of, was whether the OP was going to joint the wooden rails and how he would set-up the slap to optimize the minimum amount of material to remove to flatten the surface. You've obviously taken both into account.
Well done.

[Tony Shea]

Ted, great setup. My only question is about the long unsupported length of extrusion. Do you not end up with any sag in that extrusion when in use, especially when the chainsaw is hooked up? I love the idea.

[Ted Calver]

Thanks guys, and apologies to Andrew for the thread drift, but I guess the sled info is still relevant. I agree with Jim on keeping the bit diameter in the 2" range. The carbide insert type is on my list when my present bit gets too beat up.

This sled is a continuing evolution of one I built back in 2015. Recent changes added the trailer jacks and the chain saw mill (CSM) capability. The 80/20 extrusions are pricey but pretty versatile. The thought process wasn't totally smooth. Neighbors were offering me yard tree sections for bowl turning and some of it, like the cherry crotch pieces shown above, was beautiful. Another neighbor has a firewood business and a lot of the free logs were going to him. I hate to see beautiful wood turned into firewood, so I ordered a Granberg 36" Alaskan mill to see if I could take advantage of some of the free wood and create some lumber on a small scale for personal use.

The Granberg mill needs a straight platform on top of the log to make the first cut and then the mill rides on the flat surface created by the first cut and the platform is removed. Many people use an aluminum ladder for this purpose, but not having one, I remembered the 80/20 extrusions from the router sled. This is the first iteration of the CSM. Adding the trailer jacks from Harbor Freight give it mobility and about 10" of vertical adjustment. The mill itself has about a foot of vertical adjustment. This means the CSM continues to ride the extrusions for every cut rather than riding on the surface of the log, so accidental waves in the surface of the log don't get duplicated. I really hadn't thought the process through and was only trying to replicate the straight line the aluminum ladder would create, so I made the frame narrow. The first few slabs were cut with this narrow rig:

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Then the light bulb came on and I realized they still needed flattening, so I widened the rig back to original router planer sled width. Future plans call for adding extensions to make the rig even wider and longer. That means putting a 42 inch bar on the Stihl MS661 (or getting a dual headed bar and adding my Stihl MS460 on the other end). I would also configure the router sled to work on the wider rig...maybe add some linear bearings to smooth the ride.

The coolest application I've seen of the aluminum extrusion based router planer sled is from this British company. No affiliation.