This was designed in Blender and I spent about a year playing with different ideas and designs. It’s not a new concept and there are other products like this for sale out there like the Alaskan shown here:
And here is the real thing welded upand bolted to the chainsaw blade
Here’s how it works; first a board or plank is nailed to the log to give a flat surface for the guide to run on:
Then the Guide (lower of the two rectangles in the Blender pic) is moved up or down to set the width of the cut like so
Once the first cut has been made the board can be discarded
and you now have a nice flat surface for the guide to run along
You reset the depth of the guide for the thickness of the board you want to cut
And at the end of a day of rinse and repeat you end up with a stack of lumber. These are red oak, a tree that blew down, twelve foot long and four inches thick. They will now be cut into 4X4’s.
Cool idea & design, Fligh. Do you find that the metal frame slides sufficiently well on the wood surface, or would a plastic layer, acting as a bearing surface, be necessary? The safety of the unit would also be a concern - kickback & the unguarded saw-tip. I guess it requires at least two people to operate, eh? Is this your invention, or did you borrow the idea?
Sorry this is so late, but I’ve been living in the RV while cutting so no computer.
Plastic bearing, no, the metal works fine. An earlier rendition had rollers but they climbed up and over any sawdust left behind leaving a thinner cut below so I went for 1/2" square tubing which scrapes the sawdust ahead of it. There’s so much vibration going on that bearing surfaces are a moot point (but most woodworking tools use metal to wood anyway).
Unguarded saw-tip, hehe… it’s unguarded when you use it as just a plain ol’ chainsaw too you know. There’s so much sawdust that comes out that end (raker teeth) that I suspect any guard there would clog up. There’s no kickback as the point of the blade never meets the wood. So far I’ve only opperated it alone and the only safty precaution not mentioned in the Stihl manual is to tuck my shirt in.
Like I said the concept of putting a guide on a chainsaw has already been exploited, but this was purpose built for my needs; it doubles as a stand (2nd pic); the guide is much longer than anything available commercially (front to back) so if it runs over anything uneven it evens it up instead of just repeating it in the following cuts; it’s balanced so it’s easier to lugg into and out of the woods even if it is a little heavier.
Correct. The outside frame bolts to the cutter-bar, the inside frame is mounted to that with four hinged ‘legs’ so it can be adjusted up and down and then held by that locknut. How far up or down determines how thick the board is going to be cut.
And yes, the log lays on the ground and you cut along it with the saw. One of my main aims with this is being able to avoid dragging logs thru the mud with a tractor because that mud is hell on any saw blade and to be able to fell trees on the steepest slopes (mountains of West Virginia) and only have to carry out the the timber I’m going to use.
