Old Iron at the Sawmill

[JD1137]

Spent about 5 hours at a local sawmill today. I was there with boards too wide (16” + ) for the homeowner planers and had some boards (and burls) that needed surface sanding.

The sawmill has a 30” planer and 36” belt sander.

The planer is an old Yates, pre- WWII (?). Has to be at least 10 HP.



They also had an old straight line rip saw. 10hp.



Also took a pic of their saw. Big wide belt driven and Double stacked blades. (Did not get a pic of their belt sander. It was industrial, but not too old)

 

[Nature Man]

Spent about 5 hours at a local sawmill today. I was there with boards too wide (16” + ) for the homeowner planers and had some boards (and burls) that needed surface sanding.

The sawmill has a 30” planer and 36” belt sander.

The planer is an old Yates, pre- WWII (?). Has to be at least 10 HP.

View attachment 280471View attachment 280472

They also had an old straight line rip saw. 10hp.

View attachment 280473View attachment 280474

Also took a pic of their saw. Big wide belt driven and Double stacked blades. (Did not get a pic of their belt sander. It was industrial, but not too old)

View attachment 280475

Tremendous workhorses! Don't make them like that any more! Chuck

 

[daniscool]

Tremendous workhorses! Don't make them like that any more! Chuck

They really don’t. There are some exceptions, mainly in handtools but machinery really isn’t what it used to be.

If you get an old planer and replace the blades and the motor with modern ones it will outclass every high end modern machine. Though on table saws I draw the line with a sawstop. Safety first. Always safety first.

 

[sprucegum]

There's a one man sawmill near me, he runs mostly antique machines. He told me that there are companies that rebuild those old planers to better than new condition with many modern components. His stuff is all babbit bearing and flat belts, actually pretty scary to watch him run the stuff.

 

[Phil.H]

Nice to see this old stuff still working! New isn't always better! Great pics! Thanks!

 

[Mike1950]

Ran a giant 4 side planer at mill. I think the side motors were 5 and 10 top 30 HP, it did the work. as the boards came up you flipped them to take wood off were needed. Job required use of both feet on pedals to feed chain deck in front of you. Both eyes to grade wood and both hands to flip boards. To keep boards butt to butt you had to be into the job.
It was a pre war machine. ran 2 8 hr shifts a day and never broke down.
when running western cedar or white fir, the coarseness of the grain would create enough friction and heat to start shoving smoking wood out on grader chain side. He would turn on red light - clean up mess and go again. The yates was biggest of the 3 planers they had- had 2 stitson ross- one set up like Yates and one for specialty planing like tongue and groove. It was puny compared to other 2 but I bet it weighed close to 10,000 lbs.