The title of this article might be a bit strong, but there are times when sawmills immediately jump to blaming the saw blade manufacturer first. Don’t get me wrong, there are saw blade manufacturers out there who do not manufacture a good product and even for the good manufacturers, a batch of unsatisfactory saws slip through the cracks every once in awhile. I know of many sawmills that have been the unfortunate recipients of faulty blades and all the havoc that this causes. The saw is an important point of contact in the manufacture of lumber and is a very critical element in the entire process. That being said, you cannot always make the saw blade manufacturer the bad guy when a production problem occurs, although I admit they are probably the easiest to target.
The real question is what piece of the puzzle causes the most common production problems that mills have. This is a short list of the usual culprits:
- Alignment
- Cooling and Lubrication of Saws and Systems
- Sawguides
- Saw blades
This is only a short list, and there are many other factors but I don’t want to bore you by writing a book. I put saw blades last on my list on purpose because it seems to be first on the list for many others.
I want to give you a few examples of why I think saw blades belong at the bottom of the list.
I was in an east coast mill a few years back with a fellow salesperson who happened to be selling saw blades. While we were visiting the mill, the saw blade salesman got into quite the intense conversation with the people in the filing room. They had him cornered and were basically going at him about his saw quality. They complained loudly about how the quality of the saws was getting worse and worse over time, especially over the last 18 months. The poor salesman was at a loss and looked frantic and hopeless, like he was fighting to save the Alamo in a western film.
As I listened intently to the ongoing storm and the impending demise of this salesperson’s contract, I looked around the filing room and focused on their sawguides which were being prepped on a nearby bench. I was extremely disturbed by their condition. They looked like they had spent a few years at the bottom of the ocean with saltwater corrosion turning them into rusty relics. These were as bad as I had ever seen in terms of sawguides in extremely terrible condition. I decided to ask the people in the room a question; both to maybe save the salesperson’s contract, and also hopefully to add another reason why the saw blades’ function was decreasing over time. My question was, “How long have the sawguides been in this condition?” The answer: they had been bad to start with, but they were getting worse over the past few years. When I explained that the cause of their problems might be from their sawguides and not their saw blades, they reluctantly said they would consider it. In the end there was a stay of execution for the salesperson at this particular Alamo.
The other example I want to mention occurred shortly thereafter at another mill with the very same sales guy. In this case, the sawmill complained that their blades were losing tension all the time and blamed the saws. Although we did not know this at the time, this was also happening with the competitor’s products. The real problem turned out to be that the babbitt pockets on the sawguides were too shallow and the amount of babbitt pad touching the saw blade was much higher than it should be. When the babbitt pocket is too shallow, you do not get proper cooling. When you have a high amount of babbitt touching the saw, you get more friction causing more heat. Poor cooling and higher heat can lead to the loss of saw blade tension.
I must report that the saw blade salesman is still alive and no one was hurt in this article. As I mentioned, there are numerous instances where the saw blades may not be the cause of your problem at all. All I ask is that you do not execute your saw blade salesperson until all other factors have been taken into consideration. Don’t just chase the first thing that can be blamed – the saw blades. Explore other possibilities to determine the true cause of your production issues. You will end up saving your mill both time and money in the process by getting to the real issue sooner rather than later.
Author: Udo Jahn
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