Author Topic: Buzz Saw  (Read 24407 times)

Offline Brian Rupnow

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Buzz Saw
« on: February 10, 2015, 12:12:11 AM »
In days of old, when knights were bold--and chainsaws hadn't been invented----People still had to saw logs up into 16" lengths for "stove-wood" to burn in the kitchen stove, or the box-stove for heating. Although this could be done with a cross-cut saw (I sweat even thinking about it), to get enough wood cut up to last all winter, most people used a tractor driven "buzz saw". This was generally a 36" or so diameter circular saw, fitted to one end of a shaft which had a flat faced pulley on the other end. The saw was driven by a flat belt from the tractors power take off. The saw and bearing supports stayed stationary, but a "swing cradle" attached to the same supporting frame had a place to lay a six foot length of log on, and was pivoted near the bottom so the cradle and log could be  swung into the saw blade to cut off a 16" length of "firewood", then the log was advanced by hand and swung in again to cut off another length. I know from experience that you could cut a prodigious amount of wood in a day, and if you didn't keep damned good awarenes of where your hands were at all times, it would cut a hand off just as quickly as a piece of log. Since I have already designed and built a sawmill and a wood splitter (and even though they were separated in time by about a century) I am thinking of building a "buzz saw" to add to my collection of engine driven models. I just did a bit of internet searching, and there are commercially available circular saw blades 3 3/8" diameter with a 15mm center hole, which would just be about right for sawing up 1" diameter broom trees into 1 1/2" lengths---for the wood splitter, of course. I don't want to build anything for a while now, but you do have to admit, it would fit right in with my other "forestry" themed models.---Brian
« Last Edit: February 10, 2015, 01:29:38 AM by Brian Rupnow »

Offline ths

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Re: Buzz Saw
« Reply #1 on: February 10, 2015, 01:54:46 AM »
The broom tree won't stand a chance now. Hugh.

Offline Art K

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Re: Buzz Saw
« Reply #2 on: February 10, 2015, 02:26:18 AM »
Brian,
I'm with you on this one. Back on the old days, when I was a teenager dad had a saw rig on the back of the Ferguson T20 tractor. I remember cutting lots of wood with that thing. Unlike your fancy log splitter my dad had two log splitters, me and my brother and a splitting mall. Wood splits better in the winter!  He had an electric clock set up so he knew if the boiler ran, 15 minutes in five years. I couldn't do that now. If you want I can get pictures of dad's saw rig.
Art
"The beautiful thing about learning is that no one can take it away from you" B.B. King

Offline philjoe5

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Re: Buzz Saw
« Reply #3 on: February 10, 2015, 03:42:18 AM »
As a young and foolish lad I often thought about taking my McCoy 0.35 model airplane engine and running a buzz saw with it.  Thankfully I didn't have the means,  opportunity or encouragement to do it.  Otherwise, I believe I wouldn't have the digits necessary to post this message :ShakeHead:

Cheers,
Phil
If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite you. This is the principal difference between a dog and a man.  - Mark Twain

Offline Jasonb

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Re: Buzz Saw
« Reply #4 on: February 10, 2015, 07:26:25 AM »
Didn't the cross cut rigs run by hit & miss engines come before the tractor driven ones. I had thought of doing one for my galloway bit it would have come out about 42" long, should be more managable in your scales. Best also add a drag saw to your list of implenents.

J

Offline Ian S C

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Re: Buzz Saw
« Reply #5 on: February 10, 2015, 11:58:33 AM »
Or driven from a pulley on the jacked up back wheel of a model T Ford.  Next you'll have to build a tractor to drive the saw ::)
Ian S C

Offline Brian Rupnow

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Re: Buzz Saw
« Reply #6 on: February 10, 2015, 01:08:54 PM »
Ian---A perfect lead in t tell my "Leonard" story again---
Leanard story
I grew up in the kinder, gentler, far more poverty stricken world of the 1950's. I have a firm belief that it wasn't necessity that was the mother of invention---poverty was. The lack of money created a world of tinkerers and inventors, simply because there was no money to buy the proper tool or machine. An older friend of mine, named Leonard had built a portable buzz saw for cutting firewood. This was basically a 48" diameter circular saw mounted on the chassis of a model A Ford, circa 1930 or 1931. The lengths of wood were lifted onto a tilting carriage, and the carriage was tilted into the saw to cut up lengths of firewood. The saw was driven by a flat belt and pulley arrangement that came from the rear of the old Fords transmission. Now, Leonard had a problem----The old 4 cylinder Ford engine had babbit bearings, so it did not take kindly to prolonged high speed revving. However, if someone didn't open the throttle and give it some gas when the log engaged the saw, the engine would stall. Leonard was a veteran tinkerer, and somehow come into the possession of a set of flyball governors off an old steam engine. He mounted them with a belt drive from the Ford engine, and hooked them up to the carburetor with a system of levers and pulleys. The theory was quite simple---under no load conditions the old Ford would set there idling, but as soon as the log engaged the buzz saw, the rpm's would drop off, and the flyball governors would open the throttle automatically. This was a perfectly good working theory!!! The problem was that Leonard somehow got one of his lever arrangements bass ackwards. When the last bolt was tightened, and the last brace welded in place, Leonard went to test his creation. He started the Ford---that part worked perfect. As soon as it started however, the flyballs began to fly outward from centrifugal force, and the farther out they flew, the more the lever mechanism opened the throttle. The engine went from zero to a zillion rpm's in the blink of an eye. Leonard leaped from the drivers seat and raced around the car to pull off the coil wire and shut down the engine---and at the same time the flyball governor self-destructed (it too was by then doing a zillion rpm's). One of the steel balls flew  and hit poor Leonard directly in the kneecap and broke it into a dozen pieces--then the old Ford engine self-destructed in a scream of tortured babbit bearings and shattered castings!! Leonard eventually recovered, though he walked with a limp ever afterwards. We all survived the 1950's, but it certainly was a time that gave rise to a lot of interesting stories.---Brian.

Offline Alan Haisley

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Re: Buzz Saw
« Reply #7 on: February 10, 2015, 04:29:06 PM »
I can't find a "speachless" smiley.

As a computer programmer, I was safer. Positive feedback in a math program just causes an exception and stuff stops.

Offline Alan Haisley

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Re: Buzz Saw
« Reply #8 on: February 10, 2015, 04:30:49 PM »
Maybe need a donkey engine to haul the broom trees from the closet to the sawmill?  O:-)

Offline Jasonb

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Re: Buzz Saw
« Reply #9 on: February 10, 2015, 04:51:55 PM »
Maybe need a donkey engine to haul the broom trees from the closet to the sawmill?  O:-)

Brian has already built one of those :)

Offline rleete

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Re: Buzz Saw
« Reply #10 on: February 10, 2015, 05:57:52 PM »
I used one of those with my uncle back when I was a teenager.  Some time in the mid 1970's.  I help load logs, and he operated the thing.  It had some sort of lever arrangement on it so it could operate with little effort.  As I remember, my brother was there as well.  I know we worked for hours, and cut up a huge pile of wood.  Lucky for me, we went back home before I got "volunteered" to help split the logs.

If I remembering correctly, the blade was quite a bit larger than that one.  Seemed like it was as tall as a man, but that's certainly an exaggeration brought on by time.

Offline ShopShoe

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Re: Buzz Saw
« Reply #11 on: February 11, 2015, 02:10:17 PM »
I remember sometime in the 1960s seeing some farm boys using a buzz saw to cut firewood for heating their house. (Powered by a two-cylinder John Deere tractor: Once you hear it you know it forever.) They had the cut-off pieces fall into a running square-bale hay elevator which carried it over to dump in a wagon hitched to another tractor to pull it the quarter mile to the house. At the house, they had a chute set up to throw logs off the wagon and send it into the basement of the house, where it fueled a furnace instead of a stove. They could get several weeks of house-heating cut in a morning.

--ShopShoe

Offline chucketn

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Re: Buzz Saw
« Reply #12 on: February 11, 2015, 03:24:01 PM »
When I retired from the military , my wife and I returned to my home state of New York and bought a house in a rural community near Ithaca. We soon met a retired farmer who lived nearby. We would share wood cutting labor as we both heated our homes with wood. Burt would cut storm felled oak and ash logs into 8 foot lengths, and split them lengthwise with mall and wedge. We would then cut the splits to stove length on a pto driven buzz saw mounted on the back of a Ford 9N tractor. One load for him, one load for us. Fond memories...

Chuck

Offline Brian Rupnow

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Re: Buzz Saw
« Reply #13 on: February 11, 2015, 09:16:24 PM »
Here we go!!! That's a 3 3/8" diameter Makita wood-saw blade, with 3/8" diameter shaft and all frames made from 1/4" aluminum plate, the cross ties between end-frames are 1/4" diameter round. and the log tray angle is 1 1/4" x 1 1/4" x 1/8" aluminum. The "log" shown is 1" diameter. There is no welding anywhere.



Offline Brian Rupnow

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Re: Buzz Saw
« Reply #14 on: February 12, 2015, 04:03:27 PM »
Surely, someone-somewhere has built a model buzz saw!!! I can't find a link to one on google. Does anybody else know of one?

 

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