Seasons Greetings,

On a bike ride with my wife I stumbled onto a LT40 with 260 hours on it, sitting in my neighborhood covered with blackberry branches. Long story short, I watched the owner saw up some Doug Fir, made an offer and drove off with it a few weeks later. I got a chance to play with it this past weekend on some short logs I have around and realized that there's a steep learning curve to correct usage. Maybe some Mizer owners can help. The local Woodmizer dealer want's $75/hr and minimum of 4 hours to train on it. Thought I'd reach out to the community first.

1) How do you tell if the blade is alignment? I couldn't get a straight cut and the blade was coming off more then waht seemed normal. The good news is I've quickly become pretty good at replacing the blade back on the wheels without taking my knuckles off. Also, what's the proper amount of pressure on the blade? there are yellow and orange areas in the pressure gauge that I assume that is where you want it to be?

2) On an old unit like this how do you keep the log from moving on the bed, without the clamper plate in the upright position? The logs I was practicing on were short, 4-6' and max 18-20" in diameter so having the clamper plate upright prevented any cuts below the height of the plate? Also without the clamper plate pushing the log into the side braces the log was moving as soon as the blade made contact and especially when hitting a knot. Local Mizer dealer described an update and how the newer models were modified. Any owners of older units come up with your own solution(s)?

3) What's the deal with lifting the loader arms when your done. Is the only way to lift them entail dropping the loader arms onto the support stands and lifting manually? For an older wood geek like me that's a hell of a lot of weight. I'm a chiropractor in my daytime job and don't want to end up like the majority of my patients. I resorted to lifting it to bed height with my forklift but thought there must be a better way?

Thanks for any all input.

David Mealey
Milwaukie Hardwoods, LLC