Preparing rough sawn timber
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Tagged: rough lumber
- This topic has 17 replies, 13 voices, and was last updated 1 year, 5 months ago by
Blaine Hill.
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AuthorPosts
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18 July 2018 at 4:46 pm #549497
robdavies
ParticipantAfternoon gents
I am in the fortunate position of having access to trees (mostly ash, some elm, some cherry) through my work which I have milled into rough sawn boards using my Alaskan mill. I have noticed paul has mentioned using machines to prepare rough stock to the correct size and ready for joinery work. I am wandering what machines he uses for this and what people would recommend, machines and brands etc. I am only looking at machines for stock prep and not actual shaping and joinery.
Regards Rob Davies18 July 2018 at 5:15 pm #549498Clifford
ParticipantI use a small Delta benchtop joiner (6 inch wide) to flatten a face or straighten and square an edge. A new Porter Cable joiner, which is nearly identical, costs ~$270 new. In truth I would like a larger joiner but this one works for most furniture projects.
For a planer I use a Dewalt DW734 ($400 new) to dimension wood to the desired thickness. I considered the Dewalt DW735 but could not justify the additional $150. The DW734 is excellent for me. I hope this helps.
Both of these throw a lot of wood chips and dust. I bought a dust collector from Harbor Freight for $200 which works great.
19 July 2018 at 5:12 pm #549510robdavies
ParticipantThanks for replying Clifford, it’s good to get an idea of what other people are using. It would be interesting to hear from anyone who’s in the same boat as me with regards to rough sawn timber but who does all prep work and dimensioning using only hand tools and if so what hand tools they would consider essential.
19 July 2018 at 5:25 pm #549511btyreman
Participantif you go to a timber merchant with the wood they’ll very likely machine it for you for a small fee, I would rather have them do it than do it myself, it’s worth trying.
19 July 2018 at 7:19 pm #549512Tom Davies
ParticipantRip saw, hand planes (4, 5.5/6, 7), straight edge, winding sticks, marking gauge, simple shooting board, workbench. Should be enough I’d have thought?
19 July 2018 at 9:37 pm #549513Ed
ParticipantYou said, “access to trees.” If this is wet lumber, there’s much to do and a fair bit of waiting, but I can’t advise. However, if you’re talking about wood that is already dry, my current approach is to get “fence flat” with a hand plane, resaw on my bandsaw to get the other face, and then clean up with a hand plane. If the wood is not very out of true, I might skip the band saw and just clean up with a plane. In this case, and often even when resawing, I do not pay much attention to the final thickness in most cases. I use traditional methods for layout relative to a reference face/edge so that it doesn’t matter what the thickness is, whenever possible. I try to make the “fence flat” face not be the reference face. That means I do a quick clean up of the band sawn face, get it out of twist, and I’m good to go. I don’t refine the “fence flat” face further, whenever possible.
19 July 2018 at 10:44 pm #549514Ecky H
ParticipantRip saw, hand planes (4, 5.5/6, 7), straight edge, winding sticks, marking gauge, simple shooting board, workbench. Should be enough I’d have thought?
I definitely would add a scrub plane.
And time.
And stamina.
And time.
And perseverance.
And time.
And persistence.
Did I mention time yet?At the “moment” I prepare the rough sawn wood for my workbench with hand tools only. With about 2 hours on 3 of 5 workdays in the shop and about 5 hours hours on one day at the weekend, such big amount of wood and faces and edges (roughly 50 metres ripping and about 7 square metres flattening and straightening) that moment is rather a monthsment…
On the other hand it is a lot of practise – not only in ripping and planing, but also in sharpening and perseverance.
And at the end waits the the reward of understanding what Mr. Sellers means with “This is YOUR workbench.”E.
Veni, vidi, serravi.
Münster, Germany
20 July 2018 at 9:04 am #549526