How Wallace Farm and Sawmill blows sawdust off their Wood-Mizer controls with BLOWZER
At their family sawmill, Brittany of Wallace Farm and Sawmill used a BLOWZER X6 to blow sawdust off the Wood-Mizer LT40's control panel and levers, then fitted a needle nozzle to clear the tight gaps on the carriage while Tyler changed the blade.
A family sawmill with a list on the wall
Wallace Farm and Sawmill is Tyler and Brittany's channel from their family farm, where the days split between custom sawing on a Wood-Mizer LT40, the horses, and bringing old iron back to work. This episode opens with an idea from the comments: a cheap magnetic dry-erase board stuck to the mill with the week's custom orders on it. Mr. Dennis's two-by-twos come first, then a trailer load of quarter-sawn lumber for Mr. Jesse, who makes furniture, a log-for-parts swap with Mr. Mark, and the one-post jobs that keep slipping in between.
When the blade starts to drag
The job of the day is 2x12 lumber, 16 feet long, stacked, stickered and banded in packs of about 500 board feet, the most their Kubota M6060 tractor is happy to carry. Partway through the log, Tyler notices the blade dragging. They stop, and he goes over the saw head with an air hose to get the fine pieces out before the blade comes off for sharpening.
A small tool for the sawdust in the controls
While Tyler takes the blade off, Brittany brings out what she calls "another cool tool that he needed out here at the sawmill": a BLOWZER X6, standing on top of the red control console with its nozzles lined up beside it.
She picks it up, turns it on and holds it close to the control panel, where a film of sawdust has settled over the buttons, the toggle switches and the hour meter. The dust lifts off as she moves across it. "Look at that," she says. She carries on down to the row of control levers below the panel, where the sawdust sits in every slot.
Then she changes heads. "This one looks like it would get in little cracks," she says, and fits a slim needle nozzle. She pushes it into the tight gaps on the mill's carriage, where the cables feed into the frame, the kind of corner where sawdust waits until somebody digs it out by hand.
Why it earns a spot on a working mill
A sawmill makes sawdust all day, and it settles into everything: switch plates, lever slots, the gaps around cables. On this mill the air hose still does the big clean when the blade comes off. The X6 is for the quick pass in between, cordless and charged over USB-C, and between jobs it simply sits on the console, as it does in this episode.
Brittany's verdict to camera is short: "That's a pretty neat little tool." Picking up small tools like this for Tyler, she adds, has become "one of my fun things that I do now".
If you run a mill, or any machine in a dusty shop, the lesson is the one she shows on camera: blow the sawdust off the controls and out of the cracks as you go, not once a season. The rest of the episode, a forgotten headache rack dug out of the bushes for their Ford F800 farm truck build, is worth a watch too.
Related
Questions readers ask
Can a cordless air duster clean sawdust off sawmill controls?
Yes. The BLOWZER X6 moves air at up to 45 m/s from a 130,000 RPM motor, which lifts loose sawdust off buttons, switches and levers without a compressor or hose.
Which nozzle reaches into tight gaps on a machine?
The X6 comes with five interchangeable nozzles. A slim needle nozzle reaches into cracks and around cable entries; the open outlet covers flat panels faster.
How do you keep it charged in a shop or barn?
The X6 runs on a 4000 mAh battery that charges over USB-C, and it has auto-shutoff. Three modes, 40K, 80K and 130K RPM, let you start gentle on electronics.
About the creator
Wallace Farm and Sawmill @wallacefarmandsawmill
Wallace Farm and Sawmill is Tyler and Brittany, who run a family farm and custom sawmill and share the sawmilling, customer orders, truck builds and horses on YouTube.