Is there a better way to hog out these massive half laps?

The tool you're looking for is a **Mafell ZK 115 Ec** or a similar notch cutter. It’s basially a portable handheld shaper designed specifically for cutting laps and notches in heavy timber. It avoids the whole 'score and chunk' routine and leaves a finish that’s light-years ahead of a circular saw. But since those machines cost more than some used trucks, most of us stick to a heavy-duty router with a dedicated jig. A solid workaround is to build a large **router sled** out of 3/4-inch Baltic birch or aluminum extrusions. Use a 1/2-inch shank plunge router with a 1-1/2 or 2-inch bottom-cleaning bit. Once you’ve cut your shoulders with the beam saw, you just bridge the sled over the timber and hog out the waste. It keeps the depth perfectly consistent across the whole 4-inch width, which is where most guys struggle when they start leaning on a sander or a chisel. You won't need to touch 60-grit if you dial in the depth on the first pass. Another trick if you want to keep using the circular saw is to swap to a dedicated **dado stack** if you have a saw that can take one, like the old Big Foot setups. If not, just keep your kerfs much tighter—maybe every 1/4 inch. It makes the wood brittle enough to pop out cleanly with a wide slick. A 3-inch timber slick is way more efficient than a standard construction chisel for this becuase the long handle gives you the leverage to parry the surface flat in one or two motions.

And honestly, if you're doing 15 of these, it’s worth making a physical template for your router to follow. It takes an hour to build the jig, but it saves you five hours of cleanup and ensures every scissor tie sits dead flush. Those Bosch Get75 sanders are great, but they can easily dish out the middle of a joint if you aren't careful. Stick to the router for the bulk of it and save the hand tools for the very corners.

I just started getting into timber framing and reading about these massive beam saws is making me so hyped! I’m still working on basic sawhorses, but seeing how you guys handle these huge 4x6 ties is awesome. Since you mentioned using Douglas fir, have you ever had issues with the pitch pockets gumming up your sander pads? I'm about to start a small project with some fir 4x4s and I'm wondering if I need to wipe them down with mineral spirits first or if I'm just overthinking it. Also, what’s the best way to keep the wood from checking too much if it's sitting out in the sun?

While the router sled approach remains statistically superior for material removal, one must account for the inevitable grain tear-out inherent to Douglas fir's disparate earlywood and latewood densities, wich frequently results in a ragged shoulder unless you are pre-scoring your layout lines with a deep-etched marking knife or a high-TPI Japanese pull saw to sever the fibers before the power tool makes contact. I've observed that even with a high-end orbital, the longitudinal fibers tend to compress rather than shear if your cutters lack a sufficiently aggressive hook angle, effectively pulverizing the tracheids into a fuzzy surface that necessitates the very 60-grit intervention you're currently attempting to circumvent.

Have you ruled out the stock being out of square before you start the joinery? If those 4x6s have any twist or variance in thickness, a router sled is just going to reference that uneven surface and leave you with gaps anyway. I’ve found that Douglas fir can move a lot once it’s off the pallet, especially in the sun.

Also, are you sure the Sasquatch blade isn't wandering slightly on those shoulder cuts? Even a tiny bit of deflection on a 4-inch depth will make the cleanup a nightmare. It might be less about the power tools and more about whether your reference faces are actually true.