Mingo Marker owners, I have a question

Just picked up a complete Mingo kit with all the wheels, 2 cans of paint, and 2 extra triggers for $25 on FB MP. I've been felling a lot of nice straight tree's lately and many more to come. My marking routine was a 16' tape drawn out on the log and putting a small cut mark at 20" on large stuff, 24" on the rest. Tired of messing with the tape and didn't want to add weight hanging off my bar w/ a magnet. Mingo it is.


Has anyone found a method to mark 20"? I'm thinking maybe its possible to manually advance the 24"wheel a line or 2 (on the wheel) each time. Having never used one, I hoped maybe someone w/ experience could give me their thoughts.

Who done it?
If not, guess I'll have to experiment.

 

That’s a killer deal. I use mine with 18” wheel and never thought about or tried advancing the wheel.
My question would be how do operators compensate for the first mark being short?

 

There is a thread over on AS that mentions adding a second cam to the 14 inch wheel, 180 degrees from the original cam. This would fire the marker every 7 inches. Three marks would equal 21 inches.

Or you could make a wheel with a 20 inch circumference. 3D printing might be a good way to do that.

 

Try using a compass to draw a circle 6.392" in diameter on the wheel then attach the trigger on the mark you made. Keep in mind math was never my strongest suit!

 

I use a logger tape if I'm cutting 8', otherwise I just bent some wire coat hangers to length & bolt it under the bar nut. No offense to you guys that use the mingos, I always found them too fiddly or the paint froze.

 

Someone here did mention a 3D printer recently...who was it...wasn't B-rad, was it E?

 

Mingo is all about production. The best thing about it is that you can literally run down the log while marking it. I don’t think that you would want to be changing wheels every time you switched from a big log to a small one. As has been said, maybe you could modify one of the wheels for 20” or possibly find someone to 3d print for you. Heck, you might even be able to make a wheel out of plywood. Keep us posted. I personally have never used any wheel besides the 16”. It works really well once you get the hang of it. The frozen paint is a real thing. I keep the paint in the cab of the truck when it is freezing outside.

 

That’s why I was curious on simply lifting the wheel and advancing an amount to get 20”. Then when I get to the smaller diameter of the log, I can simply use the 24” as intended (no lift).

Interesting, 21” would work. Thanks for the info. Found that thread and read it.

I’ll definitely see how easily I could do that.

 

Any time Eric! It would be easy to cut a serrated 6 3/8" wheel out of 14G or 16G and weld in an arbor shaft and trigger ramp. Would need the dimensions for length and diameter of arbor shaft and size and location of the trigger ramp. A 3D printer would be the way to go if you wanted a lighter part.

 

I’ll definitely try the low hanging fruit first. I can live w/ 21”.

After I give it a try, I’ll report back. Thanks for all the tips everyone!