• Hi all and welcome to TheWoodHaven2 brought into the 21st Century, kicking and screaming! We all have Alasdair to thank for the vast bulk of the heavy lifting to get us here, no more so than me because he's taken away a huge burden of responsibility from my shoulders and brought us to this new shiny home, with all your previous content (hopefully) still intact! Please peruse and feed back. There is still plenty to do, like changing the colour scheme, adding the banner graphic, tweaking the odd setting here and there so I have added a new thread in the 'Technical Issues, Bugs and Feature Requests' forum for you to add any issues you find, any missing settings or just anything you'd like to see added/removed from the feature set that Xenforo offers. We will get to everything over the coming weeks so please be patient, but add anything at all to the thread I mention above and we promise to get to them over the next few days/weeks/months. In the meantime, please enjoy!

Saw Milling Experiment

C

Commander

Sapling
Joined
Apr 29, 2015
Messages
471
Reaction score
0
Location
Pretoria, RSA
I hope starting this tread under the WIP section is the correct place, if not please move it mods. :)

I recovered a small tree stump from a fallen tree behind the beach house and decided to see if I could manage to cut boards from it. Unfortunately I don't have access to a band saw so i was forced to use a hand saw and my table saw where possible.

The first cut was made by hand:
o3nwUw6.png

The aim was just to see what the inside of the stump actually looks like, it turns out I was more curious after doing the first cut :lol:. I cleaned up the one side of the cut with the belt sander just to see what the grain looks like and it seemed rather interesting:

lpWnBdW.png
Those are not cracks but appears to be the grain.

After a lot of head scratching I managed to cut 3 full boards ( I didn't measure but they are probably about 300mm x 90mm x 15mm) as well as a number of off-cuts.

MOvPcXY.png

de1KDPi.png

pl6sPBo.png
The grain looks really interesting, so I'm quite keen to see what I can get out of the other half of the stump!

The big limiting factor is the max cutting depth of the TS, I could also see it was working hard to cut through a log at full depth.

Thanks for looking!
 
Blimey, Erich, that looks like hard work using the tools you did.
 
You have some nice spalted timer there, Erich.
 
Is that ripple effect the same as zebra striped maple, caused by the compression of the trunk? Or are my eyes going off again?! :)
 
Erich, well done. I know how hard it is to rip logs by hand.

You might find it easier with a frame saw. Easy to make.



h
 
Brilliant frame saw Andy! 8-)

Erich, how dense is the wood?

Lovely quilted grain. 8-)
 
Thanks guys, I actually made the first cut while still down by the seaside, I have always wanted to try cutting lumber from a stump and when I saw the tree had fallen over eventually (it was on its way out for some time) I thought it would be the perfect opportunity to try! However I didn't want to try and haul back the stump if it was going to be of no use, so I decided the best course of action was to try and saw it in half length ways (well a portion at least) to see if the insides look worth while.

The saw we have at the beach house is ancient and not in great condition to say the least (a number of teeth are missing) so it did take a bit of time to do, but in the end I'm very happy that I gave it a try!

Roger, I believe you are correct, I had no idea what "spalted" meant so I googled, and the photos that come up look the same, the spalting on my log isn't that heavy but I like the look of it, thanks for teaching me something new! :text-bravo:

Malcolm, I'm not sure, you may be completely right, it wasn't a very big tree and this portion comes from close to the base of the stump, it was however very slanted, so that could account for additional pressure.

Andy, that looks like it would be a very useful tool to have, what blades do you use for it? I think clamping the wood down would be a challenge in my case as it isn't very straight and the cuts aren't square either, I have asked to borrow my brother's reciprocating saw and will try using that as I'm not overly keen on sawing the log in half by hand again! :lol: That being said sawing by hand does leave a pretty straight cut where other methods may not...

Paul, I would say it isn't extremely dense, probably more so than the Pine we have over here, but not properly hard like the Emboya I have worked with before, in fact it feels lighter than expected when you pick up the log. My grandfather always used to say it was a "Manatok" tree, so I googled a bit and the closes I could find was Manatoka, which apparently is an alien invasive species in the Western Cape. The photos don't look quite right though, so I'm not entirely sure if this is even the same type of tree.
 
Thanks Andy, I wonder if they will ship to SA... :eusa-think:
It may be worth while to put a frame saw on my to-do list as it doesn't look super complicated.
 
Thanks! very interesting, I think the only tricky part is the blade tensioners, those would probably have to be bought instead of made.
 
Commander":34xmibyd said:
Thanks! very interesting, I think the only tricky part is the blade tensioners, those would probably have to be bought instead of made.
Click to expand...

Not at all. You just need to cut a slot in a suitably sized bolt. I'll take a close up photo of mine later.
 
Commander":dgwc4ozz said:
I recovered a small tree stump from a fallen tree behind the beach house and decided to see if I could manage to cut boards from it. Unfortunately I don't have access to a band saw so i was forced to use a hand saw and my table saw where possible.
Click to expand...


Erich, some nice looking timber.

You do realise you have destroyed what was potentially some wood turners masterpiece! :shock:
 
:o :oops: well Phil now that you mention it you may be right, unfortunately I don't own a lathe so it didn't even cross my mind! I think it would be challenging since the wood is pretty twisted, but I think it would also look rather good if done properly. Are you keen to try? I do still have a piece left...
 
Commander":9lfmhk8c said:
:o :oops: well Phil now that you mention it you may be right, unfortunately I don't own a lathe so it didn't even cross my mind! I think it would be challenging since the wood is pretty twisted, but I think it would also look rather good if done properly. Are you keen to try? I do still have a piece left...
Click to expand...


Erich, thanks.

My lathe skills are worse than my woodworking skills which are at Grade 1 level. :shock:
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top