Learned a lesson last weekend the easy way

[marc rosen]

This could also be titled "Trying to bite off more than I can chew" I have several hundred feet of half log siding leftover from our combined log home/log garage accomodations and now that I have a thickness planer I started to make these boards into 6 inch wide 3/4 red pine boards to trim out between the rafters where they pass over the log walls. My finished peices need to be 9 or 12 inches tall. In my haste I began to resaw the 6 foot boards and then pass them through the planer (jointing the backside if necessary). Well, my lack of expertise in resawing created a lot of uneven boards so then I thought about crosscutting the siding to 20 or 26 inches (twice the required length plus waste) and then resawing and planing. That approach worked very well as I could handle the shorter length on the bandsaw and I just "assembly lined" the shorter boards through the planer. My wasted wood was reduced to alsmost nothing and I had all of my pieces in the near finished size. Still, I'll have to create a sled or table to allow me to resaw longer boards because I don't see how I could slide anything oversized across the current saw table. (It's a

14inch Delta) Anyway, I had a lot of fun making mass producing those short boards.

Marc

[Art Greenberg]

I have the same bandsaw (with riser), and used it to resaw an 8-fot long board. I built a resaw fence and extension tables for the purpose. See a photo of that setup at

extension tables mount to the same screws that the original rails for the rip fence use. Each table is are six feet long. I used aluminum angle, and cut keyhole slots in it to match the pattern of the fence rails. I built adjustable length legs, and mounted them with hinges about a foot from the far end of the extension so the table store relatively flat when I don't need them.

[marc rosen]

Hello Art, Thanks for sharing your setup. Although the fence I had was wide/tall enough, I did not have anything mechanical to apply pressure to the boards except my hands. Maybe I should also work or some type of roller to maintain tension againnst the fence. Thanks again, Marc

[Swingman]

tension the blade high enough? What blade did you use?

[Art Greenberg]

Thank you! I appreciate the compliment.

Its possible that insufficient tension was at least part of the cause. I've also read a paper on the topic on the Highland Hardware website that indicates that bowing may also be due to improper alignment of the work with blade drift angle.

I do have one of the "high tension" springs installed. I simply tensioned the blade using the flutter method. I have very little experience with resawing, and I have not spent as much time experimenting with it as I should.

Highland Hardware's "Wood Slicer". I bought two for the purpose, a 3/4-inch and a 1/2-inch, after reading a few posts here from people who really liked them. I started out with the 3/4-inch blade, but during the first cut, it jumped off the upper wheel and the teeth smacked into the upper portion of the guard (I think it happend when I tried backing up the work when I noticed the saw bogging down). That forced me to switch to the 1/2-inch blade, and that worked very well for the remainder of the work.

[Art Greenberg]

As you see, I used shop-made featherboards. I simply glued up a stack of small sections of plywood, and cut them on my table saw. A roller setup might be better in that it would present less resistance to pushing the work into the blade.

This was my first ever attempt ad doing this sort of thing, and I learned quite a bit in the process (and I'm sure I'll learn even more next time).

A longer fence, positioned mostly ahead of the blade, would have permitted me to use multiple featherboards ahead of the blade, and would have stabilized the work much better than the setup I used.

[Swingman]

I'd say you're "experienced" at this point ... a lot of folks wouldn't attempt it, much less with such success.

I was just wondering ... I recently put a new tension spring on my older Delta 14 and was surprised at the improvement in resawing thicker stock. And, with the new spring, the tension indicator marks on the Delta are measurably (with a bandsaw blade tension gauge) more accurate.