Slicing up 8/4 red oak--dumb idea?

[Matt Meiser]

I bought a bunch of 8' long, 6" wide 8/4 red oak boards for another project that was canceled. I'm thinking of ripping it into ~7/8" strips (on the bandsaw) to that will be milled into 1-1/2" wide face frame material. Any reason this won't work (like weird wood movement or something like that?) I'm thinking it will yield some interesting figure.

[Carl Beckett]

I have split red oak like this a number of times. No problems (in fact its been very stable to resaw)

[Jeff Duncan]

Not dumb at all, however I might be inclined to leave it in the rack for a future project. Thicker oak is more expensive as it takes so much longer to dry, add to that the time it will take you to re-saw and mill it into the thinner material, and now your faceframe stock is pretty expensive stuff;) As opposed to holding onto it for that project calling for 8/4 which will show up a day or 2 after you've re-sawn your boards:D

good luck,
JeffD

[Peter Quinn]

You will get good rift and quartered grain which IMHO is the best looking red oak. Seems like a fine use of materials to me, especially ripping on the BS. I doubt you will have excessive movement over the lengths for most FF parts, if you have any long rails you might want to leave a little extra thickness for flattening.

[johnny means]

I wouldn't hesitate to split red oak like that. Now if we were talking about teak out black walnut, I'd be incline to save thicker stock

[Keith Hankins]

Rule of thumb, is when u rip it apart it will move but if you control it, it will be fine. Rip them sticker, and band together or clamp and let it set. I recently had to cut some thick cherry down did that and it turned out fine. I generally let it set for a week if i can to stablize

http://flic.kr/p/ctzL7Y

[Curt Harms]

Not dumb at all, however I might be inclined to leave it in the rack for a future project. Thicker oak is more expensive as it takes so much longer to dry, add to that the time it will take you to re-saw and mill it into the thinner material, and now your faceframe stock is pretty expensive stuff;) As opposed to holding onto it for that project calling for 8/4 which will show up a day or 2 after you've re-sawn your boards:D

good luck,
JeffD

That's how my luck runs too.:)

[Frank Drew]

Matt,
Cutting your strips somewhat in advance of need makes sense to let them settle down, but unless you're pretty certain that you're going to have an ongoing need for red oak face frame material I probably wouldn't process the entire stash of 8/4 boards since that's not something you can reverse.

[Matt Meiser]

No, I would definitely only cut up what I need.

I'd bought the stock for a bed I'd planned to make, but we found the exact thing we wanted at an Amish shop in NE Ohio and with the kitchen project we decided to let someone else make the bed.

I'm actually wondering what I'm going to do when the kitchen is done. Its the last room left to remodel/furnish/refurnish in our house. :eek: Actually not entirely true as I have particle board chain office store furniture in my office but I don't really know what I want different about it, or what I'd use.

[Bill Bukovec]

i would try one, then wqait a week before ripping the rest.

I resawed some 8/4 oak only to have it cup like the dickens.

maybe it was case hardened in the kiln?

Bought it off Craig's list and not sure the history of how the wood was dried. At least i didn't pay much.

I agrree, it should be OK.

Bill

[Matt Meiser]

This stuff is very stable when resawn. However I'm really disappointed in it in that there are tons of internal checks. Luckily I didn't use it for the original project as it wouldn't have been usable. As it is I'm wasting probably 30% to defects and that's accepting some minor defects on the inside, hidden part of face frames.

[Mel Fulks]

There is always interest in bench tops.For anyone who has cracked or honey combed oak ,or can save some money buying it,it's good for thick tops since you can safely ignore the defects.

[Matt Meiser]

Well, this was pretty much disasterous. Thankfully I didn't get too far along. The first stuff I cut up I threw away about 30% due to checks and the rest was fine and stable. So I cut up a bunch more, threw away about 30%, and finished milling and made some faceframes. Yesterday at lunch I went out to make a few more and found that checks had opened up in numerous places they hadn't been on the newer stuff. I ended up taking apart what I made and scrapping it all. Instead of making faceframes last night I milled different material in to FF stock. Thankfully I should be caught back up to where I wanted to be in a day or two.

I sent the supplier an email and he's very apologetic and said he'll replace the stock with different material of my choice. The bad part though is that I didn't really have time to get more from him since he's a few hours away or want to spend the money to get it locally so I ended up milling up a bunch of 5/4 stock I had which was very wasteful, but better than milling a bunch of very wide oak I have, and have plans for, into 1-1/2 and 2" strips.