Tastes like chicken....

[patriarch]

Well, not really. Here's the question for all of you woodworkers more experienced than I am:

I need to practice resawing some smallish panel stock (10" wide by 22" long). What readily available wood behaves similarly to well-dried cherry for practice cutting?

The final project is the Shaker clock Christian Becksvoort featured in FW #157, in cherry. (actually two of them.) I have very little experience in working cherry, being from California. Most of what I have done is in oak, mostly one of the red oak variants that grows out here.

The solid door panel is supposed to be 3/16" thick when done. What I have is a spectacular piece of old cherry stock, a full 5/4 thick (S3S), given to me by a friend. He's a luthier, and this piece has been in his 'someday stash' for fifteen years or more. In other words, if I screw this up, there is no more.

Available tools: Jet 16" bandsaw, with a thin kerf veneer cutting blade recommended by a College of the Redwoods alumnus at a recent woodclub meeting. Similar to the Woodslicer blade Highland Hardware sells, according to those who have used both. Fence is the Fastrak, with 7" resaw fence attachment. Most importantly, I have access to a number of friends who know how to tune the saw better than I.

5/4 cherry, in 10+" widths, runs over $10/bf out here, and it wouldn't be nearly as well aged.

Yes, I could pay someone to cut the stock. I could pay someone to build the @#$%ing clock, too. But I want to learn to do this myself. (Stubborn fellow that I am...)

So what wood should I practice on?

Patriarch

[Mark Hopkins]

Jummywood!

[RWM]

I have no idea what type of wood is similar to resawing cherry but I had to do a similar project today and had used my bandsaw at that level of accuracy in a while. I went to Home Depot and grabbed some 2 x 12 for out of the cut-off bins. I think that I paid around $8.00 for two pieces about five feet long. When I returned home I prepped them to approximately the same size of my real piece and started resawing them. After a few cuts that I was really happy with I switched to the cherry and everything went great.

I hope that this helps - Bob McBreen - Yarrow Point, WA

[Steve Turner]

If you have the saw well-tuned, a sharp blade similar to the Woodslicer, and your resaw fence adjusted for blade lead, I don't think you're going to have too much trouble sawing that Cherry as clean as a whistle. It's pretty soft as far as hardwoods go, and very close-grained. You might start off with some regular yellow pine (a bit softer than Cherry) just to make sure the saw is cutting accurately, then switch to Yellow Birch to make sure there are no surprises. Birch is not too far removed from Cherry; it's a bit harder and has a nice tight grain structure. All in all, Cherry is a pretty easy wood to tackle on the bandsaw. Good luck!

[TeamCasa]

Loose the Fasttrack Make a high fence, adjust it for blade lead and go for it. I just finished re-sawing some 10/4 x 9" mahogany with my 16" Jet and a 1" 3 tpi resaw blade and it was perfect.

Blade Lead Information

good example.

Dave

[George]

Left coast? Alder is the ringer. I'm a pivot post resawer myself, fences were always just a touch away from proper adjustment or in the way with protruding parts. You have that jazzy resaw addition, might do as well.

[Eric Johnson]

I would just head for the scrap box and make a few practice cuts on anything laying around to get an understanding of drift. Doug fir would be a close bet for cutting characterisics. That said IMO if your not used to resawing you will find it is more technique than wood characteristic albeit there are differences, cherry is rather mild on the what can go wrong scale. There is a reference in an earlier reply to a great article on resawing as well. IIRC there is a past shopnotes article also. I use a pivot post myself and can't comment on the Fasttrack addon. May want to practice with and without the space age spin though. No matter what when you fire up that saw with 10" of band exposed keep you mind on the business at hand... or you could easily lose it.

EJ

[Phisherman]