Carriage Ready For Power

Standing in the shop this morning, looking at the hoist on the mill, I realized I had not added a triangulated strengthening strap to the main boom. Probably not needed for it's intended purpose, but for the amount of extra weight added, it does stiffen the boom and takes some of the bounce out of it. It was a quick job to add the 1 1/2" X 1/8" strap.

So back to the carriage, I first prepared the sockets and 2 dogs for the back of the bunks. I cut the sockets from 2 1/2" tubing 3" long. I then drilled 3/8" holes and welded 3/8 nuts to line up with the holes, these accepted 1 1/2" X 3/8" bolts to lock the dogs in place.

Here I have 2 dogs installed in the socket. I will be making 2 more of theses 6" dogs and 4 more 12" dogs for handling larger logs. For now these 2 will do.

Here I have the sockets welded to the bunks and the bunks welded to the carriage, but the main focus is the two eye bolts near the bottom of the picture. I cut two lengths of 1 1/2" X 3/16" angle iron, and center drilled them to accept the 1/2" eye bolts. I welded the angle 2.5' from both ends of the carriage, at the bottom edge of the carriage. The cable feed for the carriage will be attached to these 2 eye bolts.

So I pulled back and got this picture. The carriage is pretty well complete. It still needs front dogs, but these need to be depth and height adjustable for different diameter logs. I'll visit that later. The bunk spacing will allow a log as short as 2' to be sawed, without any special jigs.

So I'm ready to start on the carriage feed.