Oh, boy ! Steam-powered sawmill !

[230RN]

Double acting steam engine !

Huge Ponderosa pine log !

Five feet (1.52 m) diameter !

Double circular saw blades !

Flat belt and sheaves power transmission !

Wide, wide boards !

Huge steam powered planer !

Firing boiler with wood chips !

Chunkchunkchunk engine and bzzzzbzzzzbzzzz sawblade noises !

https://youtu.be/M57eCpaJuX4 (19:51)

What more could a guy ask for?

Terry, 230RN

REF:
Published on Aug 16, 2013
Sawing the largest segment from a Ponderosa Pine at the Historic Mill and Box Factory. The tree suffered extensive storm damage last winter making it necessary to harvest the tree before all the useful wood was lost. It measured 60" at the widest part at the base. It was mostly cut into large planks for builders of specialty furniture and luxury homes.

Video © 2013 Charley Williams

[RoadKingLarry]

Cool stuff, here's some more.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zAvurSjBVW8

[Hawkmoon]

YIKES!

All those blades and belts and pulleys and gears, not to mention HOT steam pipes ... and not a single guard anywhere on the site. Can you imagine the fun an OSHA inspector would have in there?

That sawmill must be at least 100 or 150 years old. And it works. I wonder if any of our engineering school graduates of today could have designed and built something like that.

[230RN]

Funny, I was going to mention the lack of safety equipment in the OP.

I reckon in those days they couldn't trim design parameters down as tightly as they can today, so they "built for strong."

Which reminds me of "The Parson's Carriage" story.  The carriage was so well-designed that every part wore out at the same time. So all of a sudden one day there he was in the middle of nowhere, stranded on a useless pile of wood and leather and steel parts, reins in hand.  (The story has many variations.)

Terry

[dogmush]

Funny, I was going to mention the lack of safety equipment in the OP.

I reckon in those days they couldn't trim design parameters down as tightly as they can today, so they "built for strong."

Which reminds me of "The Parson's Carriage" story.  The carriage was so well-designed that every part wore out at the same time. So all of a sudden one day there he was in the middle of nowhere, stranded on a useless pile of wood and leather and steel parts, reins in hand.  (The story has many variations.)

Terry

This, exactly.  There was less precision in the math, so bigger safety factors.  So everything was way over-engineered for the designed work and lifespan. From this angle, it seems pretty cool, but it's worth remembering that it was also way more expensive than it "had" to be.  Part of the reason all us poor folks have cool working things is they can be engineered tighter to spec and therefore cheaper.

[Hawkmoon]

This, exactly.  There was less precision in the math, so bigger safety factors.  So everything was way over-engineered for the designed work and lifespan. From this angle, it seems pretty cool, but it's worth remembering that it was also way more expensive than it "had" to be.  Part of the reason all us poor folks have cool working things is they can be engineered tighter to spec and therefore cheaper.

A mixed blessing.

Back in the heyday of muscle cars, once you got into that type of car the running gear was pretty much all the same. My nrother and I happened to be "into" the AMC AMX. It originally came with three engine options: 290 cubic inch, 343, or 390. In 1970, those changed slightly to 304, 360, and 401, and I don't think the 304 was offered in the AMX.

The cool thing was, the axles and transmissions were strong enough that you could remove the engine from a 290 and plug in a highly modified 390, and nothing broke.

The way cars are engineered today, there's every possibility that if you do anything to add ten percent more horsepower to your engine, you're at serious risk of blowing a transmission or differential. I understand the economics, but I'd rather pay a bit more and feel comfortable knowing that the drive train that's carrying me and my family down the road isn't using 99 percent of its capacity just to keep us rolling at the speed limit on the interstate.

[p12]

OPs original video was cool.

OSHA?  The red shirt dude was wearing safety glasses. What the hell?

The dude running the feed table needs to pull his damn pants up.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[RoadKingLarry]

OPs original video was cool.

OSHA?  The red shirt dude was wearing safety glasses. What the hell?

The dude running the feed table needs to pull his damn pants up.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I'm betting all of the operators have at least some hearing deficit as well.

[Hawkmoon]

I'm betting all of the operators have at least some hearing deficit as well.

WHAT?

[230RN]

I reckon that guy in the red shirt has no need to buy any fancy-delancy exercise machines, huh?

I burned up 4-500 calories just watching him while sittin' on my couch.

Question.  Scantling.  I thought scantling was the chips and pieces and cut off ends of other lumber, or even the bark and branches off freshly felled trees in the field.  "Offal," in that sense.

However, I don't see that meaning reflected directly in on-line dictionaries.  The ones I've seen just seem to refer to scantling as thin pieces of wood, implying deliberately cut that way.  Thin, as in the words "scant" and "scanty."

I originally wrote in the OP about feeding the furnace with "scantling," but then changed it to "wood chips."

Anyone else have the word-flavor of "scrap pieces of wood" in the term "scantling?"

p12: "The dude running the feed table needs to pull his damn pants up."
He's obviously a former plumber.

Terry

[dogmush]

The way cars are engineered today, there's every possibility that if you do anything to add ten percent more horsepower to your engine, you're at serious risk of blowing a transmission or differential. I understand the economics, but I'd rather pay a bit more and feel comfortable knowing that the drive train that's carrying me and my family down the road isn't using 99 percent of its capacity just to keep us rolling at the speed limit on the interstate.

 
When was the last time you tried to modify a car? That's not true at all. I doubled the HP on my '96 Mustang before the trains started giving me problems. My '03 Cobra came from the factory with 390hp and I drove it around as a daily driver with 540hp for a decade with no real drivetrain issues. My current ride, a 335, comes stock with 300HP, and you can add more than 10% with a factory approved kit and keep your warranty. Folks are getting well into the mid 400s with no issues from the ZF transmission.

The EcoBoost Mustangs and F150's can get almost 100hp from a tune and cranking up boost with no real drivability issues.

There are a few performance cars known for being kinda fragile (the STI and GTR most notably) but for the most part, unless you are dropping a 100shot of Nitrous in a Kia Optima there's a ton of mods out there, and drivetrain supporting mods generally aren't needed until you get way more than 10% increase in power.


I'm also pretty sure that the shared parts you refer to were less of the overengineered because of lack of precision and more of a cheaper to manufacture if all variants use the same part. Case in point: all Mustangs today use the same rear end, and all F150's use the same transmission.