That isn't what they are taking about, they said the saw is moving away from the wood on the cutting stroke (downstroke) and into the wood on the up stroke@@theomelchior2739
@@theomelchior2739 it's the slight play in the channel of the saw. His saw is on fact cutting on the down stroke because of the teeth but as the saw moves down it gets pulled just a bit away from the wood and when it comes back up it gets shoved back into the wood. If you were cutting by hand you would do the opposite instinctively. If he flipped the direction of feed 180 degrees he would get the blade reaching into the wood to cut it and pull away from it on the way up.
It would probably help a lot if you could make the blade move significantly faster, while keeping the log moving at the same rate. Another upgrade to make the motion more stable would probably be a different mechanism converting rotational motion to reciprocating. That single rod looks like it can't hold alignment, possibly adding a lot of friction to the "bearing" connecting it to the water wheel.
That cam linkage is looking rough, it does need smoothing. I think its actually a little short. When it came to the older mechanisms, they did use longer strokes.
You might try adding a heavy flywheel to the design where the weight is on the down stroke during cutting to help preserve some of the wheels momentum.
I think the main issue is just that the connection between the wheel and the blade has enough slop in it that it can jerk back and forth, which loses a good bit of the energy
There are lots of suggestions and thoughts people are sharing, and I hope some of it is helpful and I applaud you for being receptive to the ideas people are sharing - but it should be perfectly clear that it's so easy for us in the comments to share ideas and it is so much more difficult to do what you have done - built a working saw mill from scratch. It's clearly a lot of work you are putting in to this and it shows! Great job!
yea absolutely agree, I have some ideas for possible improvements, but I'm definitely no expert. Plus it's way easier to draw up an idea than it is to figure out a mechanism to implement that! Especially if working within historical constraints
I feel like you should try to get sponsored by a tool company. Something along the lines of, "Here's a Ryobi battery powered pump. Now, let's build one from scratch." That gives you a whole series with an end goal.
I actually second this. Out of all the sponsorships they've had, the only one that seemed really worth it or interesting to me was the air filter they had when they had to do a bunch of work in an enclosed space. I would actually really like more practical advertisements that focus on the tools you use for things you make, or things that help out with ease of access, and work toward making home-made versions of those!
progress, ingenuity, "the company knows", the company has "the money", talk about them, we love how they solved our problems, I like the company! I don't like having problems with my flaccid... that got a little to personal, I don't like "my bent power mill".
Another YT channel (WranglerStar) did a video about a wind powered sawmill in the Netherlands. Before the logs were sawed, they were soaked in sea water for a year or two. Also, the log you were sawing was very knotty. In other words, you were working with the worse case scenario with respect to materials. You did a great job with a very ambitious project.
yeah, as it is pretty much half of the wheels rotation is wasted energy. when the axel is pushing the saw up, it's working. when the saw is pushing down, it's not. adding a sort of off-balance flywheel could fix this, by adding weight it must lift during the downstroke, which falls during the upstroke. this would also make downstroke binding more likely though.
@@arcanealchemist3190 my initial thought would be like some sort of gate to vary the water flow, but it's probably way too convoluted to work lmao, and it's the kind of issue that goes away when you scale up due to just general inertia
@@arcanealchemist3190Instead of directly driving the blade, they could add enough weight to the blade to pull the blade down and have a waterwheel-driven ratcheting mechanism to lift it.
All of his projects suffer from really really poor woodworking he needs to go back improve his hand tools and actually learn woodworking. The main reason this saw sucked is because of the amount of energy loss in the system.
The design of the cutting edge has alot to play in how the machine performs. You need a Rip Saw (flat chisel like tip to the blade points) for cutting with the grain of the wood. Cross cutting the grain needs a sharp leading edge to slice through the wood fibers. Try each type of blade on hand saws and you will be amazed. Keep up the good work 😊
Same applies to a chainsaw, too. A crosscut chain has a sharp leading edge, which makes extremely rough boards. A rip chain has almost flat leading edges, which greatly speeds the cut and smooths out the boards.
Beyond the creativity required for these projects, I am equally impressed by your sheer perseverance and stick-to-itive-ness. I recognize the challenges and frustration a creator must feel at the sight of imperfections and failure, but I admire your ability to maintain the course regardless. Well done.
Your woodworking has really come a long way from the start of the series, I’m honestly pretty blown away by how far you jumped from day one to now! Try adding weight to the wheel, so when it starts going it carries more momentum through the resistance, make sure the wheel axel is as frictionless as possible, think about increasing the capacity of the flaps in the wheel so more water can fill them, you can get more torque out of less water that way. The axel that drives the saw is crooked, so you’re losing a lot of force there and it’s what’s stressing those joints so much. Also if it was a little longer your could get more out of each cut of the saw. As it is you’re only using about 20% of the blade area for each repetition.
I think the blade switch success can best be understood like bandsaw blades: any blade has a max number of teeth they want engaged with the wood at once, they all also have different gullet sizes, the gap/spacing between the teeth. For thicker cuts you need more gullet room to sweep away the dust. Otherwise they get clogged and just rub.
Maybe it woul dbe a good idea to work on projects bits at a time, like take out the water and replace it with a motor, to get the saw mechanism perfected, and then reintroduce the water to work on other parts.
as others have said, the linkage between the wheel and saw frame needs to be longer to reduce the binding loading on the frame. this could be done with like a see-saw linkage near the bottom and then one doing back up to the top.
the movement of your connecting rod is still pushing the saw into the wood on the bottom of the stroke which is the point where you need the most amount of torque to overcome friction from the blade while not actually cutting and also pushing the log up and away. I'm glad you figured out the constant pressure thing that I left a comment about last time (kinda wish I had a shoutout but whatever) same deal for adding a kerf to your sawblade although you don't have enough power for the amount of rake you put. adding some tallow or wax everywhere would be good for friction too.
I know that isn't the point of this project at all, but it is a master class in energy availability: While you were tweaking and improving the saw mill, the only thing you didn't have to worry about at all was primary energy. Yes you had the pumps to deal with, but that is just to get it period accurate. In the end, you used electricity. When water power was the name of the game, building a damn and channeling the water (unless you were lucky location wise) would have been the primary cost and labor sink. This should give you an idea just how big a deal access to affordable electricity is.
You mentioned the age of steam at the end; if I may suggest, you should try building a Sterling engine before a steam engine. From my understanding, a steam engine requires all kinds of little parts like valves that can be difficult to nail, and it can even be dangerous because of the high pressure of the steam. A Sterling engine can be much simpler in design (I've seen people make DIY gamma-type Sterling engines with tin cans), and doesn't require the same high pressure to run. I think it would be a good way to experiment with heat engines before getting to steam. (Or maybe that was already part of your plans, idk)
Sweet machine of technology! I know that someone has probably suggested this already, BUT: since your machine is limited in torque output it would be a better use of its available effort to have a saw blade with 50 % more teeth and 75% smaller ones in the same thickness and with the same adjustability as this one. I know that easy to say and hella difficult to do but that would make best use of the power wheel, the throw of the saw blade and available torque of the wooden framing! Thanks for the coolest series on TH-cam!!
If you are interested in improving this more, consider casting bronze plates for holding your axle & anywhere else that the wood doesn't seem to be strong enough for. If you want to stick with wooden components, get much denser hardwoods. You might even go to rarer species of wood such as the hornbeam species or the ironwood species.
im starting to realize that a lot of old buildings served the purpose of an immovable anchor for structures. a lot of errors made in the outdoor design is the slight play in movement due to not having a more solid foundation or less supported bodily structure. the ability to make this in your back yard is still astounding overall, even with the amount of difficulty you place on yourself with handicaps like only using self made nails and such, this is still a great achievement and very fun to watch.
I am late to the comments and so many to read so I apologize if so items were mentioned. Some simple suggestions from what I have seen that could help. - Add a bow to the top like your shop saw, a lot of your binding is upward. - Rerun your pull cable under the blade housing using a secound block, so the housing doesn't add pressure on the line. - Change the wheels on the cart to run a track, between 2x4s, this would avoid the lifting issue. - Animal fat as grease, bacon works - A flow guide or slider for the water (simple flap or slider), sould give additional control and direct the waters power better. Over all good build, got my ADHD hooked for a bit at the least
i really love this new addition, i always felt like a second video would be nice. you great at making a frist concept but you rarely show the difficult part of making you invention actually pravtical useable. tis is shown here and i love it. now you ACTUALLY can saw lumber, not just make a tiny cut.
You definitely need a different rectilinear movement on that crankshaft; Either increase the length of your connecting rod (which means you'll need to increase spacing between the crankshaft and the cutting frame). This would keep forces more in-line with the crank and the blade, and would probably fix a lot of your inconsistent blade motion issues.
Another option is to increase the theeth on the rachet mechanism (slow down how much the mechanism pulls the log agents the blade) or increase the size of the pulley wheel (same effect) I feel like trying to go fast is actually making it slower and requeres more torque (that's why so many pumps are needed)
From the comfort of my own couch I can see two relatively easy ways for imrovements: 1. Reduce slack in the system: Figure out a way to take all the dead space and rattling out of the kinetic chain. Maybe try it with a solidly forged one piece steel axle. Also a tighter connection between axle and saw frame. 2. Reduce friction in the system: Every bit of friction that doesn't come directly from the cutting action, but from the machine itself (i.e. the saw frame rubbing against it's bearing surface) should be minimized. Polishing, sealing and lubricating the wood might work. That's my 2 cents, but I'm sure you've already thought of these! Awesome project!
Thus industrialization continues. Very good! I cannot wait for when you get more into the industrial revolution, and automation. I really want to see you make cotton milling!
I think maybe stiffening the timber sled will help as youre losing energy to the flex on the log in the sled causing the saw to bounce, you want all that energy transfered into cutting rather than moving the log.
You can increase the power of your wheel by increasing the angles of the water flow. When water needs to make a 45 degree turn, you can lose up to 80% of it's force so using gradual rounded curves is preferable to sharp turns. Adding a quarter round ramp on the outlet of your tank where it meets the trough will easily triple the power output of the water. It's all fluid dynamics.
Use a slow dripper onto the top of the cutting section that lubricates the blade with chlorinated or sulfonated waxes or soap mixtures that you can make from natural resources, and make sure the blade has less resistance and clears material well. This is why saws have slightly offset teeth.
First off, I'd like to say, awesome! Second off, it looks like having the join between the sawframe and the linear power input from the crankshaft be springy might help you get a big effeciency boost. Every time that frame hits the bottom with a smack, that's energy that could have been in the cut! Additionally, the neutral position of the saw frame should be in the middle of the downswing, so that the crank is pulling it down against the spring, which helps lift it on the upswing. You could probably use some wood springs (like bow limbs) on either side of the sawframe to accomplish this.
Ratchet would be helpful to only pull log forward on down stroke of saw. Should help with friction. Could potentially have an offset cam that would exert different pressire depending on stroke position.
Really cool. Got to see a couple of these at an open-air museum in the Black Forest in Germany this summer. Fantastic machines, amazing engineering for the time they were built!
I own a copy of The Young Mill-Wright and Millers Guide. It is an amazing source of knowledge, so much so that you only need to know how to read and it will teach you everything from addition and subtraction to trigonometry and how the screw works. It is a great thing to own.
I’ve watched your videos for a long time. And it’s been really neat to see this all culminate. This was a really awesome video. Thank you for all that you do.
When I lived in Guatemala I rented a room at a sawmill. They had a modern setup but they would keep the logs on in place with wedge poles on either side of the log. They would have a guy putting them in place at the beginning of the conveyor belt and another guy dangerously close to the saw that would take them out. I think you could use something like that to keep everything tight. Especially with this being a much smaller mill.
What an awesome project. The wood getting wet will significantly increase your binding issues, if you could prevent that you may find some improvements.
when you do the wretched to keep the pressure of the log on the blade i would think the kind of wood might matter. since a denser wood would need to advance slower then a less dens wood
My favorite ancient Roman machines. I have never seen ancient machines before. It's "The Hierapolis sawmill" was a Roman water-powered stone sawmill at Hierapolis, Asia Minor.
Every step forward in precision for the cutting mechanism has helped so far... I think that's the direction to keep going in. When cutting, a directional saw's teeth should not ever grind away or hammer away wood. The teeth should act like perfect little wood-plane irons, removing a controlled bite from the wood with each stroke, and only cutting with the edge at the tip of the tooth, like a chainsaw cutter. Compressing the saw frame back into rigid supports should make the cut profile more consistent between draws of the blade, which will help with jamming even if it introduces more overall friction. Taking the chainsaw cutter idea to an extreme, you could achieve a consistent kerf by making a modern style chainsaw tooth sideways with a separate rake (pushing the wood back) and cutter (pulling chips in): fold over each cutter in the saw blade 90 degrees a short distance from the tip, then add a shallow bend to the whole tooth in the opposite direction of the fold so the alternating direction teeth are mutually centered on the blade itself.
Adding a flywheel, having a shorter stroke so the wheel speed is higher will help with binding, did you guys use some type of oily substance on all of the friction points ? Making sure the teeth on your blade are slightly thicker than the spine is crucial to keep friction down as well. And maybe adding a bit more free fall between the water and wheel, adding thin light material to keep water in buckets too...thank you for your time and effort!
I think you would be better off using an electric motor geared to your water wheel while exploring different angles and lengths for connecting rod until you come up with better positioning. If you look at a metal shaper from 1890's~1950's you'll see the fast retract mechanism is just the link position pivot points moved, as it is at 11:00 mins in, the saw blade is pushing into the log on upstroke and possibly pushing away on the down-stroke? When it's sorted out, then run with water to prove it works
Good steps in the right directions. Improvements that can be made is: 1)Smaller and more teeth on the advancing wheel. 2)grind the saw teeth the same height so all the teeth can cut 3) A lot of the teeth have to great of an angle and so don't dig into the wood and just slid/drag. Like dragging your finger tip or knuckle across bread instead of digging your fingernail in.
If you want a consistent flow what you do is you have the pumps overfill it have the runoff goes back down to the basin. that way you have a margin of error that’s how the first water clocks worked.
The biggest learning curve with a project like this is always going to be just the basic stuff. Making good tools. Learning how to sharpen and lubricate your saw, cutting geometries, improving your joinery so there's less flex. Just generally improving your worksmanship. You should really practice with some smaller stuff first, it would make these big projects much easier. That being said, this is pretty damn impressive, and I'm sure you guys learned a lot.
Sure people as pointed it out to you, but some sawmills used to have a pre-spam which the water flow to a smaller will to speed up the main will. Then they were engaged clutch system, which then activate with a saw blade, and transferred all forced to the main we’ll.
more efficient to use a slotted link, a beefy rod on the edge fly wheel, rides in a slot of stiff cross member link with a fixed pivot on one end (non working end) then a stiff link connecting from the saw blade frame to the end of the motion link. The extra link on the working end takes up the angular variation in the motion link. Allows you to vary the length of the stroke on the blade with different fixed pivot points and flywheel diameters. I am sure there is a name for it but it escapes me lol. Looked it up common name is a scotch yoke.
What an amazing machine! I do hope you do a third video on it with even more improvements, if you get it to run really well it could really help with future projects. Might have to wait for springtime though...
I don't know much, but would it work if you build a tall windmill and use a system of pulleys and weights to store that rotational energy generated by the wind in some sort of a mix of a crane and that old spring so when you want to use it, you just kick the gear from put in to give out and "plug" it into the sawmill? would that work?
very interesting, though I think you are missed looking at a couple of areas that should improve efficiency, the 'bearings' that the shafts spin in and framing that the sawblade holder sides in. If you check, most surfaces like that were made from hard woods(oak, hard maple and such) and you seem to be using pine which would create more friction and have greater tendency to bind, stealing power from the wheel. Also I didn't see any type of lubrication being used at those areas either. Tallow was a common lubricant during that time, basically just glob it on when assembling and in the case of the shafts, have a hole (1/2 inch at most) drilled in above the shaft hole and force tallow into as needed. Doing both those should reduce friction and allow more energy to the blade.
You need a lubrication system for the blade. Some oily cloths rubbing against the blade or drip system. That will greatly reduce binding and improve speed.
Perhaps a longer stroke on the blade will make it easier with the ratchet system. Then you could have a better ratio between the feed and stroke to avoid binding. A skirt for the funnel would minimize splash from the water wheel and preserve more water. Keep it up!
Are you using _any_ lubricant? Wax will help lube all the sliding areas (pretty much everything) including the blade itself. It will also waterproof it so you don't have to worry about swelling or warping.
Awesome can you make the water wheel widder? use cogs/gears to reduce the gear ratio that drives the crank. replace crank with an axle that has two cam lobs that push the saw blade down.
You have so much slop in and around things like your crank which will be sapping a scary amount of torque from this system. In a few shots you could see the assembly twisting especially when the saw bit deeply
The obvious improvement to DaVinci’s saw would be to oscillate the blade back and forward so the upstroke is has less friction and the downstroke bites into the wood for the whole stroke. Flywheel would help too.
Keep in mind these are all little tweaks that people in the 1500s would have made as they experimented with the machine after building it. So as far as I'm concerned this is perfectly in line with what Davinci imagined even if you guys did have to make some modifications as you went along.
That's always part of building something like this. There will always be something that doesn't work the way you imagined and needs to be adjusted, changed or rebuilt. And in the rost case scenario you have to rebuild the whole thing.
Something like a vertical featherboard to hold the logs down? Short skinny logs pinned only on one end, "any" size log could pass through but when pushed back would hold fast. Perhaps a second point on the shaft to push the log back off the blade when it does its upstroke?
How much tension was on the outfeed of lumber? WEDGES take the pressure off the blade, or in your case, open the ratchets a little more on the out feed to allow the wood to split. .
Cosidering it *looks* like it speeds up and down during one cycle, it might be worth adding a flywheel to capture some of the force when it speeds up so that it's less light to come to a complete stop.
Andy, if you ever visit Massachusetts, A) We gladly welcome you! B) Please visit Old Sturbridge Village. It is a place that has all sorts of 1700s technology, as well as accurate and working replications such as a working sawmill using a waterwheel.
Look at an actual saw blade, not only are the teeth shark fins but they kick at different angles which helps it clear the sawdust out limiting how much it binds. If you go over to a fine tooth blade it'll have far less drag on the wood and while it won't take as big of a bite per pass, it should continue cutting far easier. When you have little water flow you need to reduce drag wherever possible.
I might be missing the point here, but it feels like, when it comes to the waterwheel, you've proven that it works and a limiting factor is that you don't have a river running through your yard to give you the power and consistency that the pumps don't seem to manage. Would it work to just simulate the river with something that has similar power and consistency so you can focus on getting everything else ironed out?
I think if you had a little bit of a lip on the paddles it could reduce some of the splashback and would make it easier to start when you actually do start it because some of the water will get collected because of the lips of the paddles, poolling in the buckets adding weight which would pull the wheel down making it so it can start on its own without you having to pull the wheel and when the water gets dropped off it'll get dropped off a little bit closer to the ground so it's less water would get wasted
what an effort! how much lubricant is used here? i have a sawmill and the blade is lubricated by soapy water. for the moving parts of the mill that are wood on wood or wood on metal, is there a lubricant there? most oils could be used. lanolin from washing sheep’s wool is an excellent grease. i’ve watched your channel for years and you’re really taking on some awesome projects.
It would be interesting if you could get some mechanism to help siphon or preserve power from the downstroke to keep the speed more consistent. It seems like the blade largely cuts just under gravity and moves a bit more jerkily from slop in the connection to the wheel, maybe just tightening that up somehow would help it retain some of that momentum to lift the blade back up? Very impressive tho! I think the trick with the ratchet would be to make sure it only applies force during the downstroke, and maybe have something like a spring with some give to let it back off during the upstroke? I'm not honestly sure if there would be a good way to design this, esp with materials of the time, but it's an idea!
would weights on the water wheel help with the binding? my thought is it making it heavier so the water gets it up to speed then feed the log in. i think the added weight might help the blade bind up less.
I think the largest improvement is the blade, you finally have something looking like a rip blade rather tah a cross cut blade. There is a much larger difference betwean cross cuts and rip cuts than you might imagine. The angle of the blade is also important, the more agressive the angle the faster it will cut but the more force is needed, so if you have a limited power you might want to try cutting a little bit along the angle of the log rather than in to the angle of the log.
binding is usually from too high feed (lowering feed usually means lower forces but more time) the wood springing back (easily dealt with using thin wedges hammered in) or teeth not set wide enough forming too little cut relief.
Well either make the saw moving faster, or the log moving slower. Easier said than done, but just imagining using a regular saw, it seems kind of obvious that one variable might be off. Keep going! Happy to see the next iteration :)
feel like it is all down to the low resistance on the water wheel... the volume of water a flowing river would be many times greater. I have seen an old Amish sawmill powered by wind, might be the best option if you aren't on a river
Definately next time you need to play with the smoothness of the mechanism. A lot of what I am seeing is jerky motion which causes excess wear. Try adding a counterweight to the other end of the shaft to smooth the rotational motion out. Then change out the linkage to the frame with one that has less slop, add an enclosed track so there is no upward movement on the sled. Finally i would run the saw at a faster rate than the sled, that way it will cut less per stroke but you also will encounter less friction.
This is a really impressive project. Great job on this!
Yoo 😂 I mean I'm not too surprised but it's awesome to know you watch this channel too man. Love your videos 😊❤
Thanks for the vinegar tip, yo.
You want to off set the blade teeth so the cutting edge is thicker than the trailing edge, minimizing blade friction
he did but he is still dragging the saw away from the wood on the downstroke and pushing it into the wood on the upstroke
@@jimysk8ersee now I'm confused cause the comments on part one said to force down...and that's the way the saw mill in Michigan works
That isn't what they are taking about, they said the saw is moving away from the wood on the cutting stroke (downstroke) and into the wood on the up stroke@@theomelchior2739
11:43 you can see that they have already done that
@@theomelchior2739 it's the slight play in the channel of the saw. His saw is on fact cutting on the down stroke because of the teeth but as the saw moves down it gets pulled just a bit away from the wood and when it comes back up it gets shoved back into the wood. If you were cutting by hand you would do the opposite instinctively. If he flipped the direction of feed 180 degrees he would get the blade reaching into the wood to cut it and pull away from it on the way up.
It would probably help a lot if you could make the blade move significantly faster, while keeping the log moving at the same rate.
Another upgrade to make the motion more stable would probably be a different mechanism converting rotational motion to reciprocating. That single rod looks like it can't hold alignment, possibly adding a lot of friction to the "bearing" connecting it to the water wheel.
Only way to make it faster would be gearing, or a cam shaft with two, or more, bumps. Then you have the issue of the down stroke and it getting stuck
@@Volt64bolt down stroke can be adressed by adding weights on the frame and greasing it with bees wax.
Gearing and adding a fly wheel you could bump up the speed and smooth out the down stroke
That cam linkage is looking rough, it does need smoothing. I think its actually a little short. When it came to the older mechanisms, they did use longer strokes.
@@Volt64bolt sadly he doesn't have enough power for gearing, he would either need a two person hamster wheel or a strong river to make it work.
You might try adding a heavy flywheel to the design where the weight is on the down stroke during cutting to help preserve some of the wheels momentum.
was thinking the same thing. could also add weight to the saw sled to make the downward cut more consistent.
I think the main issue is just that the connection between the wheel and the blade has enough slop in it that it can jerk back and forth, which loses a good bit of the energy
that might be why the other sawmill he showed had rounded teeth, to rely on the downstroke instead of both
Hard to believe Leonardo designed this all while filming for Titanic. Truly inspiring!
And fighting crime with his three turtle brothers
sad that he took a break on describing his documents but hay jango unchained took time
Oh i get it. Because they have the same first name...
@@jerbear7952 no? What do you mean?
There are lots of suggestions and thoughts people are sharing, and I hope some of it is helpful and I applaud you for being receptive to the ideas people are sharing - but it should be perfectly clear that it's so easy for us in the comments to share ideas and it is so much more difficult to do what you have done - built a working saw mill from scratch. It's clearly a lot of work you are putting in to this and it shows! Great job!
This needs to be a more common mindset...
yea absolutely agree, I have some ideas for possible improvements, but I'm definitely no expert. Plus it's way easier to draw up an idea than it is to figure out a mechanism to implement that! Especially if working within historical constraints
You are 100% correct, it's so easy to watch and make comments while someone else is doing the work. 1% inspiration, 99% perspiration.
Yeah these comments kill me. Keyboard engineers
I feel like you should try to get sponsored by a tool company. Something along the lines of, "Here's a Ryobi battery powered pump. Now, let's build one from scratch." That gives you a whole series with an end goal.
Haha this is a great idea. He can compare the prices at the end
I actually second this. Out of all the sponsorships they've had, the only one that seemed really worth it or interesting to me was the air filter they had when they had to do a bunch of work in an enclosed space. I would actually really like more practical advertisements that focus on the tools you use for things you make, or things that help out with ease of access, and work toward making home-made versions of those!
progress, ingenuity, "the company knows", the company has "the money", talk about them, we love how they solved our problems, I like the company! I don't like having problems with my flaccid...
that got a little to personal, I don't like "my bent power mill".
@@ElectricSquidEntertainmentthe life insurance one also made sense, since he literally risks life and limb doing this series
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Another YT channel (WranglerStar) did a video about a wind powered sawmill in the Netherlands. Before the logs were sawed, they were soaked in sea water for a year or two. Also, the log you were sawing was very knotty. In other words, you were working with the worse case scenario with respect to materials. You did a great job with a very ambitious project.
I wonder if adding more weight to the waterwheel or adding a flywheel would help. Get more mass moving to prevent binding issues.
Probably.
yeah, as it is pretty much half of the wheels rotation is wasted energy. when the axel is pushing the saw up, it's working. when the saw is pushing down, it's not. adding a sort of off-balance flywheel could fix this, by adding weight it must lift during the downstroke, which falls during the upstroke. this would also make downstroke binding more likely though.
@@arcanealchemist3190 my initial thought would be like some sort of gate to vary the water flow, but it's probably way too convoluted to work lmao, and it's the kind of issue that goes away when you scale up due to just general inertia
@@arcanealchemist3190Instead of directly driving the blade, they could add enough weight to the blade to pull the blade down and have a waterwheel-driven ratcheting mechanism to lift it.
This a impressive. Progression is really taking off now as you can see how much more complicated these projects are getting. Great work. 👍
All of his projects suffer from really really poor woodworking he needs to go back improve his hand tools and actually learn woodworking. The main reason this saw sucked is because of the amount of energy loss in the system.
@@ewanfinlayson3520 True, but for their knowledge I'd say they've done a decent job.
@@jakedingwall7688 purely from cheating and using modern tools and modern wood and still somehow doing a pretty terrible job
The design of the cutting edge has alot to play in how the machine performs. You need a Rip Saw (flat chisel like tip to the blade points) for cutting with the grain of the wood. Cross cutting the grain needs a sharp leading edge to slice through the wood fibers. Try each type of blade on hand saws and you will be amazed. Keep up the good work 😊
I think the difference in cross cut and rip cut is one of the main struggles with this build.
Same applies to a chainsaw, too. A crosscut chain has a sharp leading edge, which makes extremely rough boards. A rip chain has almost flat leading edges, which greatly speeds the cut and smooths out the boards.
Beyond the creativity required for these projects, I am equally impressed by your sheer perseverance and stick-to-itive-ness.
I recognize the challenges and frustration a creator must feel at the sight of imperfections and failure, but I admire your ability to maintain the course regardless.
Well done.
Your woodworking has really come a long way from the start of the series, I’m honestly pretty blown away by how far you jumped from day one to now!
Try adding weight to the wheel, so when it starts going it carries more momentum through the resistance, make sure the wheel axel is as frictionless as possible, think about increasing the capacity of the flaps in the wheel so more water can fill them, you can get more torque out of less water that way.
The axel that drives the saw is crooked, so you’re losing a lot of force there and it’s what’s stressing those joints so much. Also if it was a little longer your could get more out of each cut of the saw. As it is you’re only using about 20% of the blade area for each repetition.
I think the blade switch success can best be understood like bandsaw blades: any blade has a max number of teeth they want engaged with the wood at once, they all also have different gullet sizes, the gap/spacing between the teeth. For thicker cuts you need more gullet room to sweep away the dust. Otherwise they get clogged and just rub.
Maybe it woul dbe a good idea to work on projects bits at a time, like take out the water and replace it with a motor, to get the saw mechanism perfected, and then reintroduce the water to work on other parts.
as others have said, the linkage between the wheel and saw frame needs to be longer to reduce the binding loading on the frame. this could be done with like a see-saw linkage near the bottom and then one doing back up to the top.
the movement of your connecting rod is still pushing the saw into the wood on the bottom of the stroke which is the point where you need the most amount of torque to overcome friction from the blade while not actually cutting and also pushing the log up and away. I'm glad you figured out the constant pressure thing that I left a comment about last time (kinda wish I had a shoutout but whatever) same deal for adding a kerf to your sawblade although you don't have enough power for the amount of rake you put. adding some tallow or wax everywhere would be good for friction too.
I know that isn't the point of this project at all, but it is a master class in energy availability:
While you were tweaking and improving the saw mill, the only thing you didn't have to worry about at all was primary energy. Yes you had the pumps to deal with, but that is just to get it period accurate. In the end, you used electricity.
When water power was the name of the game, building a damn and channeling the water (unless you were lucky location wise) would have been the primary cost and labor sink.
This should give you an idea just how big a deal access to affordable electricity is.
Seeing the seasons change in these videos is pretty satisfying.
You mentioned the age of steam at the end; if I may suggest, you should try building a Sterling engine before a steam engine. From my understanding, a steam engine requires all kinds of little parts like valves that can be difficult to nail, and it can even be dangerous because of the high pressure of the steam. A Sterling engine can be much simpler in design (I've seen people make DIY gamma-type Sterling engines with tin cans), and doesn't require the same high pressure to run. I think it would be a good way to experiment with heat engines before getting to steam.
(Or maybe that was already part of your plans, idk)
Sweet machine of technology! I know that someone has probably suggested this already, BUT: since your machine is limited in torque output it would be a better use of its available effort to have a saw blade with 50 % more teeth and 75% smaller ones in the same thickness and with the same adjustability as this one. I know that easy to say and hella difficult to do but that would make best use of the power wheel, the throw of the saw blade and available torque of the wooden framing! Thanks for the coolest series on TH-cam!!
If you are interested in improving this more, consider casting bronze plates for holding your axle & anywhere else that the wood doesn't seem to be strong enough for. If you want to stick with wooden components, get much denser hardwoods. You might even go to rarer species of wood such as the hornbeam species or the ironwood species.
im starting to realize that a lot of old buildings served the purpose of an immovable anchor for structures. a lot of errors made in the outdoor design is the slight play in movement due to not having a more solid foundation or less supported bodily structure. the ability to make this in your back yard is still astounding overall, even with the amount of difficulty you place on yourself with handicaps like only using self made nails and such, this is still a great achievement and very fun to watch.
I am late to the comments and so many to read so I apologize if so items were mentioned. Some simple suggestions from what I have seen that could help.
- Add a bow to the top like your shop saw, a lot of your binding is upward.
- Rerun your pull cable under the blade housing using a secound block, so the housing doesn't add pressure on the line.
- Change the wheels on the cart to run a track, between 2x4s, this would avoid the lifting issue.
- Animal fat as grease, bacon works
- A flow guide or slider for the water (simple flap or slider), sould give additional control and direct the waters power better.
Over all good build, got my ADHD hooked for a bit at the least
i really love this new addition, i always felt like a second video would be nice.
you great at making a frist concept but you rarely show the difficult part of making you invention actually pravtical useable.
tis is shown here and i love it. now you ACTUALLY can saw lumber, not just make a tiny cut.
You definitely need a different rectilinear movement on that crankshaft; Either increase the length of your connecting rod (which means you'll need to increase spacing between the crankshaft and the cutting frame). This would keep forces more in-line with the crank and the blade, and would probably fix a lot of your inconsistent blade motion issues.
Another option is to increase the theeth on the rachet mechanism (slow down how much the mechanism pulls the log agents the blade) or increase the size of the pulley wheel (same effect) I feel like trying to go fast is actually making it slower and requeres more torque (that's why so many pumps are needed)
From the comfort of my own couch I can see two relatively easy ways for imrovements:
1. Reduce slack in the system: Figure out a way to take all the dead space and rattling out of the kinetic chain. Maybe try it with a solidly forged one piece steel axle. Also a tighter connection between axle and saw frame.
2. Reduce friction in the system: Every bit of friction that doesn't come directly from the cutting action, but from the machine itself (i.e. the saw frame rubbing against it's bearing surface) should be minimized. Polishing, sealing and lubricating the wood might work.
That's my 2 cents, but I'm sure you've already thought of these! Awesome project!
Passable, plausible, works well enough... about par for the course. I'm glad to see you took feedback and improved the initial design.
Thus industrialization continues. Very good! I cannot wait for when you get more into the industrial revolution, and automation. I really want to see you make cotton milling!
I think maybe stiffening the timber sled will help as youre losing energy to the flex on the log in the sled causing the saw to bounce, you want all that energy transfered into cutting rather than moving the log.
You can increase the power of your wheel by increasing the angles of the water flow. When water needs to make a 45 degree turn, you can lose up to 80% of it's force so using gradual rounded curves is preferable to sharp turns. Adding a quarter round ramp on the outlet of your tank where it meets the trough will easily triple the power output of the water. It's all fluid dynamics.
Use a slow dripper onto the top of the cutting section that lubricates the blade with chlorinated or sulfonated waxes or soap mixtures that you can make from natural resources, and make sure the blade has less resistance and clears material well. This is why saws have slightly offset teeth.
I'm happy. I stopped to watch this series because what you made felt a bit "too low quality" but now I'm so excited for you and what you accomplished.
First off, I'd like to say, awesome!
Second off, it looks like having the join between the sawframe and the linear power input from the crankshaft be springy might help you get a big effeciency boost. Every time that frame hits the bottom with a smack, that's energy that could have been in the cut! Additionally, the neutral position of the saw frame should be in the middle of the downswing, so that the crank is pulling it down against the spring, which helps lift it on the upswing. You could probably use some wood springs (like bow limbs) on either side of the sawframe to accomplish this.
You may also find this to be useful for an alternative drive mechanism, where the spring here could be attached to a linkage driving the sawframe.
Glad you had a fun time in Michigan, I’ve been to the sawmill before and had a blast
Ratchet would be helpful to only pull log forward on down stroke of saw. Should help with friction. Could potentially have an offset cam that would exert different pressire depending on stroke position.
Really cool. Got to see a couple of these at an open-air museum in the Black Forest in Germany this summer. Fantastic machines, amazing engineering for the time they were built!
I own a copy of The Young Mill-Wright and Millers Guide. It is an amazing source of knowledge, so much so that you only need to know how to read and it will teach you everything from addition and subtraction to trigonometry and how the screw works. It is a great thing to own.
Using a log that's been hewed around the edges might make it easier on the saw due to consistency
Man, what a huge step! Early automation like this is a precursor to the start of the industrial revolution, this it's great to see!
Once people combined it with steam engine it changed the world.
I’ve watched your videos for a long time. And it’s been really neat to see this all culminate. This was a really awesome video. Thank you for all that you do.
You should try making a violin from scratch
When I lived in Guatemala I rented a room at a sawmill. They had a modern setup but they would keep the logs on in place with wedge poles on either side of the log. They would have a guy putting them in place at the beginning of the conveyor belt and another guy dangerously close to the saw that would take them out. I think you could use something like that to keep everything tight. Especially with this being a much smaller mill.
What an awesome project. The wood getting wet will significantly increase your binding issues, if you could prevent that you may find some improvements.
when you do the wretched to keep the pressure of the log on the blade i would think the kind of wood might matter. since a denser wood would need to advance slower then a less dens wood
My favorite ancient Roman machines. I have never seen ancient machines before. It's "The Hierapolis sawmill" was a Roman water-powered stone sawmill at Hierapolis, Asia Minor.
Every step forward in precision for the cutting mechanism has helped so far... I think that's the direction to keep going in. When cutting, a directional saw's teeth should not ever grind away or hammer away wood. The teeth should act like perfect little wood-plane irons, removing a controlled bite from the wood with each stroke, and only cutting with the edge at the tip of the tooth, like a chainsaw cutter. Compressing the saw frame back into rigid supports should make the cut profile more consistent between draws of the blade, which will help with jamming even if it introduces more overall friction.
Taking the chainsaw cutter idea to an extreme, you could achieve a consistent kerf by making a modern style chainsaw tooth sideways with a separate rake (pushing the wood back) and cutter (pulling chips in): fold over each cutter in the saw blade 90 degrees a short distance from the tip, then add a shallow bend to the whole tooth in the opposite direction of the fold so the alternating direction teeth are mutually centered on the blade itself.
Adding a flywheel, having a shorter stroke so the wheel speed is higher will help with binding, did you guys use some type of oily substance on all of the friction points ? Making sure the teeth on your blade are slightly thicker than the spine is crucial to keep friction down as well. And maybe adding a bit more free fall between the water and wheel, adding thin light material to keep water in buckets too...thank you for your time and effort!
I think you would be better off using an electric motor geared to your water wheel while exploring different angles and lengths for connecting rod until you come up with better positioning.
If you look at a metal shaper from 1890's~1950's you'll see the fast retract mechanism is just the link position pivot points moved, as it is at 11:00 mins in, the saw blade is pushing into the log on upstroke and possibly pushing away on the down-stroke?
When it's sorted out, then run with water to prove it works
Good steps in the right directions.
Improvements that can be made is:
1)Smaller and more teeth on the advancing wheel.
2)grind the saw teeth the same height so all the teeth can cut
3) A lot of the teeth have to great of an angle and so don't dig into the wood and just slid/drag. Like dragging your finger tip or knuckle across bread instead of digging your fingernail in.
If you want a consistent flow what you do is you have the pumps overfill it have the runoff goes back down to the basin. that way you have a margin of error that’s how the first water clocks worked.
This is so Cool!!
The biggest learning curve with a project like this is always going to be just the basic stuff. Making good tools. Learning how to sharpen and lubricate your saw, cutting geometries, improving your joinery so there's less flex. Just generally improving your worksmanship. You should really practice with some smaller stuff first, it would make these big projects much easier. That being said, this is pretty damn impressive, and I'm sure you guys learned a lot.
Sure people as pointed it out to you, but some sawmills used to have a pre-spam which the water flow to a smaller will to speed up the main will. Then they were engaged clutch system, which then activate with a saw blade, and transferred all forced to the main we’ll.
Wow this is incredible
Babe wake up, a new HTME video dropped
Liked the: "turn the river on and see what happens". Nice project.
more efficient to use a slotted link, a beefy rod on the edge fly wheel, rides in a slot of stiff cross member link with a fixed pivot on one end (non working end) then a stiff link connecting from the saw blade frame to the end of the motion link. The extra link on the working end takes up the angular variation in the motion link. Allows you to vary the length of the stroke on the blade with different fixed pivot points and flywheel diameters. I am sure there is a name for it but it escapes me lol. Looked it up common name is a scotch yoke.
What an amazing machine! I do hope you do a third video on it with even more improvements, if you get it to run really well it could really help with future projects. Might have to wait for springtime though...
I don't know much, but would it work if you build a tall windmill and use a system of pulleys and weights to store that rotational energy generated by the wind in some sort of a mix of a crane and that old spring so when you want to use it, you just kick the gear from put in to give out and "plug" it into the sawmill? would that work?
Lubrication is your friend. Slather all moving parts with lard, including the blade, and everything will move a lot better.
Man I love going to mill creek. It's such a cool place and look into historical technology
very interesting, though I think you are missed looking at a couple of areas that should improve efficiency, the 'bearings' that the shafts spin in and framing that the sawblade holder sides in. If you check, most surfaces like that were made from hard woods(oak, hard maple and such) and you seem to be using pine which would create more friction and have greater tendency to bind, stealing power from the wheel. Also I didn't see any type of lubrication being used at those areas either. Tallow was a common lubricant during that time, basically just glob it on when assembling and in the case of the shafts, have a hole (1/2 inch at most) drilled in above the shaft hole and force tallow into as needed. Doing both those should reduce friction and allow more energy to the blade.
You need a lubrication system for the blade. Some oily cloths rubbing against the blade or drip system. That will greatly reduce binding and improve speed.
That is awesome progress!
Perhaps a longer stroke on the blade will make it easier with the ratchet system. Then you could have a better ratio between the feed and stroke to avoid binding. A skirt for the funnel would minimize splash from the water wheel and preserve more water.
Keep it up!
Are you using _any_ lubricant?
Wax will help lube all the sliding areas (pretty much everything) including the blade itself.
It will also waterproof it so you don't have to worry about swelling or warping.
Awesome
can you make the water wheel widder?
use cogs/gears to reduce the gear ratio that drives the crank.
replace crank with an axle that has two cam lobs that push the saw blade down.
Great work as always!
You have so much slop in and around things like your crank which will be sapping a scary amount of torque from this system. In a few shots you could see the assembly twisting especially when the saw bit deeply
The obvious improvement to DaVinci’s saw would be to oscillate the blade back and forward so the upstroke is has less friction and the downstroke bites into the wood for the whole stroke. Flywheel would help too.
Absolutely PHENOMINAL! I appreciate your content, massively! Thank You.
Keep in mind these are all little tweaks that people in the 1500s would have made as they experimented with the machine after building it. So as far as I'm concerned this is perfectly in line with what Davinci imagined even if you guys did have to make some modifications as you went along.
That's always part of building something like this. There will always be something that doesn't work the way you imagined and needs to be adjusted, changed or rebuilt. And in the rost case scenario you have to rebuild the whole thing.
Something like a vertical featherboard to hold the logs down? Short skinny logs pinned only on one end, "any" size log could pass through but when pushed back would hold fast.
Perhaps a second point on the shaft to push the log back off the blade when it does its upstroke?
How much tension was on the outfeed of lumber? WEDGES take the pressure off the blade, or in your case, open the ratchets a little more on the out feed to allow the wood to split.
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,,More pumps''
,,MORE PUMPS!''
MOOOOOORRREEE
Cosidering it *looks* like it speeds up and down during one cycle, it might be worth adding a flywheel to capture some of the force when it speeds up so that it's less light to come to a complete stop.
If you soap the side of the saw blade you can reduce binding. Not sure how good or bad this method is for the blade.
Andy, if you ever visit Massachusetts,
A) We gladly welcome you!
B) Please visit Old Sturbridge Village. It is a place that has all sorts of 1700s technology, as well as accurate and working replications such as a working sawmill using a waterwheel.
Man! You guys work hard!
Look at an actual saw blade, not only are the teeth shark fins but they kick at different angles which helps it clear the sawdust out limiting how much it binds. If you go over to a fine tooth blade it'll have far less drag on the wood and while it won't take as big of a bite per pass, it should continue cutting far easier. When you have little water flow you need to reduce drag wherever possible.
you might look at the Dutch windmills escapment mechanisms used for feed speed/tension both of these videos were quite interesting
I love this project, but I also think its hilarious that you keep persevering with it when your biggest issue is lack of river.
I might be missing the point here, but it feels like, when it comes to the waterwheel, you've proven that it works and a limiting factor is that you don't have a river running through your yard to give you the power and consistency that the pumps don't seem to manage. Would it work to just simulate the river with something that has similar power and consistency so you can focus on getting everything else ironed out?
I think if you had a little bit of a lip on the paddles it could reduce some of the splashback and would make it easier to start when you actually do start it because some of the water will get collected because of the lips of the paddles, poolling in the buckets adding weight which would pull the wheel down making it so it can start on its own without you having to pull the wheel and when the water gets dropped off it'll get dropped off a little bit closer to the ground so it's less water would get wasted
what an effort!
how much lubricant is used here?
i have a sawmill and the blade is lubricated by soapy water.
for the moving parts of the mill that are wood on wood or wood on metal, is there a lubricant there? most oils could be used. lanolin from washing sheep’s wool is an excellent grease.
i’ve watched your channel for years and you’re really taking on some awesome projects.
OK, This is incredibly impressive, But I shudder at the thought of how much money he spent to buy all that lumber...
What an Impressive work of engineering
Super cool seeing that working Sawmil in Michigan. Cant be easy to maintain those and really impressed by the power of that thing.
It would be interesting if you could get some mechanism to help siphon or preserve power from the downstroke to keep the speed more consistent. It seems like the blade largely cuts just under gravity and moves a bit more jerkily from slop in the connection to the wheel, maybe just tightening that up somehow would help it retain some of that momentum to lift the blade back up?
Very impressive tho!
I think the trick with the ratchet would be to make sure it only applies force during the downstroke, and maybe have something like a spring with some give to let it back off during the upstroke? I'm not honestly sure if there would be a good way to design this, esp with materials of the time, but it's an idea!
would weights on the water wheel help with the binding? my thought is it making it heavier so the water gets it up to speed then feed the log in. i think the added weight might help the blade bind up less.
I think the largest improvement is the blade, you finally have something looking like a rip blade rather tah a cross cut blade. There is a much larger difference betwean cross cuts and rip cuts than you might imagine. The angle of the blade is also important, the more agressive the angle the faster it will cut but the more force is needed, so if you have a limited power you might want to try cutting a little bit along the angle of the log rather than in to the angle of the log.
Crazy to think how in the last 200 years we evolved from this to basically a tool you can hold in your hand
Show me a sawmill you hand hold in your hand.
binding is usually from too high feed (lowering feed usually means lower forces but more time) the wood springing back (easily dealt with using thin wedges hammered in) or teeth not set wide enough forming too little cut relief.
Don't you just love when we have Snow on Halloween, lol.
Well either make the saw moving faster, or the log moving slower. Easier said than done, but just imagining using a regular saw, it seems kind of obvious that one variable might be off. Keep going! Happy to see the next iteration :)
Centrifugal clutch to let go when the system starts to bind up maybe
feel like it is all down to the low resistance on the water wheel... the volume of water a flowing river would be many times greater. I have seen an old Amish sawmill powered by wind, might be the best option if you aren't on a river
This is by far your best project . I can't belive how much you have improved !
The waterwheel needs to be slightly bigger and use wax lubricant in the joints
Definately next time you need to play with the smoothness of the mechanism. A lot of what I am seeing is jerky motion which causes excess wear. Try adding a counterweight to the other end of the shaft to smooth the rotational motion out. Then change out the linkage to the frame with one that has less slop, add an enclosed track so there is no upward movement on the sled. Finally i would run the saw at a faster rate than the sled, that way it will cut less per stroke but you also will encounter less friction.