I doubt it. I've got an old Stanley miter saw with, IIRC, a 6" tall x
30" long backsaw. That'll do it, if he can find one in decent shape for less than a home mortgage payment. It won't do compounds, but it puts all the fragile multi-use modern stuff to shame. And it will cut flooring to about 9" wide, I believe. Sharpening is not as quick as some handsaws (laminate, of course), but is easily done.
How will you rip the pieces to width along the wall?
Contractors have been getting ripped off for years now by a conspiracy. The only thing that's generally available to us today are devices that spin things like carbide-tipped saw blades with big motors.
But what do you think cuts the saw blade itself? That's right, a laser! Have you seen the kerf on the anti-vibration cut-outs in the Freud? Astoundingly clean, accurate, lightning fast, with a .5mm kerf.
So, take that new miter saw with the laser sight. All they need to do is get rid of the motor and the blade and boost the laser power. How hard can that be? I just did all the design work right there.
The laser could even match the color mark of the manufacturer (e.g. yellow for dewalt, red for milwaukee, green for hitachi)
Well, you can see how this would kill lots of > Hi All,
I'll bite.
Cutting wood by essentially burning it away is a bit different to cutting metal... I guess for studwork a bit of scorching wouldn't matter so much, but for fine furniture? No thanks.
Also, the systems I've looked at in a quick google (up to 450W CO2 Lasers) can only cut a max of 1" thickness. And a 450W laser is a hefty bit of kit with a hefty price tag. Although I see EBay has a 3500W laser setup on Buy-it-now for only $249,995.
Not to mention that saw cutting is only dangerous to people within reach of the blade plus a bit for kickback. A high powered cutting laser would be a danger to anyone in a pretty wide range, even if it was initially contained inside the workshop. Want your dozy neghbour to have one?
Yes, no kickback either! I hadn't thought of that...but I'm sure that will be on the first brochures when they start churning them out.
Scorching? By the time these things come out, all wood will be MDF and need to be painted anyway :-)
Seriously, though, the *pulsed* lasers that do LASIK eye correction DON'T SCORCH (they vaporize the wood before it burns)... they could make a stopped, flat-bottomed hole in wood that looks like that you made it with a forstner bit on your drill press but with 0.0001" accuracy and no brad-point left in the bottom if you add a modicum of CNC technology.
And, if you wanted to thru-drill, that's another good thing... ZERO TEAR OUT!
One of the best uses is making those damned square mortise holes -- nobody's every pefected that satisfactorily. And even if you do have the el-cheapo scorching version of the laser, we don't care a lot inside a joint.
The price of anything initially (in "prototype" quantities) is quite costly... but you can go to the dollar store and get a laser pointer now for a buck... when they first came out they were a hundred bucks! And don't forget, with a pulsed laser, the power is concentrated in a short burst resulting in *much* lower wattage.
It might seem dangerous by today's standards, but again, look at the LASIK lasers... they're a foot from your eyeball pointed directly at your eyeball!
Brad nailers and Hilti guns have quite a "range" too, and probably seemed scary when they were first >> Well, you can see how this would kill lots of industries overnight, so
Sure it can. A saw is only as good as the guy using it, true- but a good handsaw can cut just as straight as any power tool, and better than some. Couple of things make it easier to get a good cut, in fact- first, it's a lot easier to follow a line, because the saw cuts at your pace, not at the pace of the motor, and you can adjust your stance *before* the entire piece is cut. Second, a dozuki has a ton of tiny little teeth that leave an edge like a good diablo blade.
You've got to remember that people have been doing woodworking for thousands of years, and they didn't all have DeWalt and Delta. Some of that stuff they built was even sort of ok. :)
I'll take your word for it, but I'll hat to see it to believe it. Yup, they've been building wooden floors for hundreds of years, but repeatable
90° cuts with a handsaw, (I don't care what type) without further edge treatment? Sorry, but it's just one of those things I'll have to see done to accept. Shearing an edge afterwards, plaining it and a few other ways I can think of, without them, I can't envision it. Maybe my woodworking experience has been too sheltered.
I thought the same thing until I got and used a Japanese pull saw. Floored me, it did!
At the Northeastern Woodworker's Association's Showcase this year I did demonstrations on using shooting boards. I kept cutting pieces off the end of the same board and then trued them up with the plane. What was kind of amusing was that after a while I had to intentionally make bad saw cuts. I started getting perfect miter cuts with the hand saw while supporting the work with the shooting board. Mind you I was using an L-N crosscut backsaw but still, it was a handsaw. I've been using my crosscut panel saw quite a bit lately and making square and plumb cuts isn't that difficult. It's a matter of paying attention and developing skill...
John
I guess I've got something to learn then. Much of my woodworking is done in an apartment where noise is of a concern and my biggest difficulty by far is getting straight, parallel cuts to my satisfaction.
Yeah, give a nice handsaw a try- you can't really get a good one at the local borg these days, but you can order them from any of the mail-order companies that cater to woodworkers. Using hand tools only seems hard until you get a good one, and then it's a real eye-opener.
Got a brand recommendation? Whatever I consider buying will have to be available somewhere in the Canadian market.
Maybe I'm missing something, look in your LV catalog. Last I heard, Robin was in the GWN.
Dave in Fairfax
We're talking about hand saws right? I've got a 10 tpi Pax panel saw purchased from LV. Cutting an 8" board shows visible imperfections. Mating two boards end to end no matter how carefully I cut does *not* produce something that would be considered usable for flooring. I'm not clumsy using a hand saw nor am I inexperienced. So, either there's something I don't know about cutting boards, I'm not handling the saw properly or I'm missing something here.
The only saw apparatus that I've seen on the LV site that might produce cuts suitable for flooring is the mitre trimmer. It doesn't exactly say, but viewing it online suggests to me that it's capable of 90° cuts.
inexperienced. I also wasn't saying that you'd get a sawcut that was smooth as a baby's butt. You asked about the availablity of high quality saws in Canada and I was suggesting LV. I don't think that saws give perfect finishes, even the Japanese ones. If you take a look at that shelf-O-planes I posted a while back you'll see a bunch of saws. You'll also see a bunch of planes. I believe in planes. They give you a smooth finish, so do the scapers you prolly can't see in the picture.
Dave in Fairfax
Third, DAGS on "shooting board". This is a jig (or is it a fixture?) that holds the board while guiding a plane is to shave off the end grain cleaning up the saw cut. Typically a single pass is all that is needed.
Hmm, since the shooting board holds the workpiece AND guides the tool at the same time I guess a shooting board is both a jig and a fixture.
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FF
It's ok, I'm not upset. I'm just keeping in mind the OP's request for a quiet way to produce cuts (night time operation) that are suitable for laying laminate flooring. Aside from the shearing method, or the edge planing method (which I feel is much too slow for production speed professional work) I can't envision anything else that would meet his noise concerns. Even if a Dozuki saw and some specialized usage can produce the type of 90° cuts obtained by a properly set up chop saw, I refuse to believe that it can be done nearly fast enough to be worthwhile using for production work.
If there's something else out there that I don't know about, then hey, I'm all for it. I like woodworking in the middle of the night as long as I'm comfortable knowing that an angry neighbour isn't going to be pounding on my door demanding why I'm making all that noise.
I don't know if the pax saws are high quality or not. The Independence saws, now made by Lie Nielsen and the Adria saws both have a great reputation. Possibly these are as good as the best antiques you could find.
I don't see why shearing or edge planing would be too slow. It is one additonal step after cutting, but a quick one. Of course there is time needed to hone the blade once every night or so that's a quick job with the plane, don't know about the shear.
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FF
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