One Person Setup
1. I’ve designed a replacement for the carriage stand using two detachable wheel frames that click onto each side of the carriage. This allows one person to wheel the carriage around and push it up a couple of planks into your trailer. You have to make sure you tie the carriage down when driving.
2. Also, I’ve designed a little helper that allows the sawmill to be setup over logs that are wider than the gap between the rails so you don’t have to lift the carriage over the log. When setting up the Lewisaw you insert only the rear rail and then roll the carriage in on its wheel frames and sit it on the rear rail as normal, then using the little helper attach the front of the carriage to the end frame cross slide. The carriage is now supported at 3 points and is stable enough to raise the mill until it clears the log where the front rail can then be inserted.
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Improved Stabilizer (anti-bounce) Mechanism
The Lewisaw like any railed sawmill, can develop bounce or as I prefer to call it, resonance of the rails during cutting as a result of the laterial forces by the applied saw-blade in the log especially in deeper cuts. We did endeavour to reduce this resonance by various devices and methods, but without going to the ridiculous degree of over building the Lewisaw so that it became so heavy as to be un-portable. Generally the bounce can be controlled by operator technique; varying the push rate and applying gentle force against the rails. We had both horizonal and vertical stablizers which forced tghe operator the lean over and use two hands, not that satisfactory if you want to do this while actully cutting a log. The vertical stalizer had the added trouble of the build up of sawdust on the log which was solved to some extent by not using a bearing.
The improved anti-bounce is a one-hand operation using locking handle that allows the operator to both slide the device into and up against the vertical cut face of the log. A wheel then runs along the sawn log face and acts to inhibit bounce both vertically and horizontally. The improved anti-bounce is easily removed.The offshoot advantages are that you can tell if the end slides have been moved the same amount or if the log has moved or bent/cupped due to tension. You then know that the piece of timber being cut is consistent in size. If the end slide has been moved and you don’t know by how much, the improved anti-bounce allows you to realign the rails against the log exactly. Lastly, if the logs wants to move on the last horizontal cut the improved anti-bounce makes sure the flitch maintains the same relative distance because the horizontal blade action pulls the flitch onto the improved anti-bounce wheel.
 PHOTO OF IMPROVED ANTI-BOUNCE |
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 CHANGES REQUIRED TO INSTALL INMPROVED ANTI-BOUNCE |
 CHANGING HANDLE SIDE ENGINE MOUNTING BOLTS |
- The anti-bounce improvement involves some modification of the engine mounting allthreads. I welded pieces of 25mm SHS to the carriage to move the allthread nuts from the top the carriage frame to allow the anti-bounce mechanism to slide along the top and bottom 25mmm SHS of the carriage as per the photos.
- the M12 allthread engine belt tensioning arrangement tends to get clogged with sawdust and rust so that the nuts just won’t move. I therefore cut the bottom section of the allthreads off so the engine ‘hangs’ from the top of the carriage frame and this has worked out well but I’d don’t know how long this arrangement would last as I haven’t cut a mammoth amount of timber. See photos.
- Cutting all 4 of the M12 allthreads means you need to replace one transmission pivot mounting bolt with a M10 allthread. This is because we used the M12 allthread to lift or lower the transmission housing to adjust the longitudinal blade alignment. See photo M10 A/T