Cutting some slabs, looking for advice

[Mike OMelia]

A friend brought over two well aged and dried walnut slabs. 48 inches long, one is 5-6" thick, the other is 6-9" thick. They are both over 24" wide. There is a back story. The grandfather of my friend planted this tree many years ago. This was all he could salvage from an unexpected downing of the tree. They weigh 150 pounds or more. My friend is a guitar player and wants some for some guitars. The rest, he wants cut into 4/4 slabs. I have a 3hp, 18" bandsaw with a 1" resaw king blade. Was thinking about making a simple (guided) sled using roller stands on either side.

What you think?

Mike

[Jamie Buxton]

You have 24+ inch slabs and an 18 inch saw. You can't make full-width planks, so what's your plan? Maybe rip the slabs along the pith into two 12 inch half-slabs, turn them on edge, and make boards that are 12 inches wide or so?

[John C Bush]

Hi Mike,
I milled a cedar "log" 40+ in. long and ~20 in. in diameter by screwing a piece of 3/4 ply on the flattest side and used the ply straight edge against the fence. Joiner-ed that cut then made a 90 deg, cut, then milled out the rest. I have a 21" BS and 12" joiner so it worked out fine. I'm guessing the piece weighed ~100# initially and it was a bit scary making the 1st cut. but not bad after that. I would suggest you look for someone with a Woodmizer to maximize wood recovery. That walnut has special meaning to your friend and having the full 24 in. width milled stock would be worth the minimal cost of hiring the horizontal BS. My 21 in. saw has a 15" resaw max so I imagine your 18 is a little less. The cedar I milled wasn't special stuff--I was just too cheap to go buy cedar retail and have had the logs on the future projects pile for several years. Good luck, JCB

[Jim Andrew]

I have a Cooks bandmill and could easily resaw those pieces. A neighbor had a thick " cookie" of walnut, it was about 5" thick, but twisted a bit. So I put it on the mill, put a shim under the edge which did not touch down on the bed, then took off enough to flatten the piece, then turned it over and resawed it to the thickness he asked for. Was a nice, flat piece. I returned the scraps with the piece he wanted. He as planning a live edge table.

[Kent A Bathurst]

Not a very organic solution, but still........

Might find a small sawmill, or a guy that has a small horizontal bandsaw for low-volume tree processing, and outsource the service.

Ya kinda gotta get the correct size hammer for this nail.

Sentimental value - a few bucks won't affect the true objective of the project.

[Mike Schuch]

I did a project like that for a friend once on my 5hp 18" Jet bandsaw. It was also a walnut tree the was downed. That project made me a firm believer in buying my stock instead of cutting it myself!

I too would look for a saw mill to saw it for you. Sawing it on your 18" bandsaw will just be an exercise in frustration!

[Danny Hamsley]

I could saw it for you on my woodmizer sawmill. But, I am too far for you. Go to hobbyhardwoodalabama.com. Contact my friend Robert Milton. Tell him that I referred you. He is located in New Market, AL, just northeast of Huntsville. I bet that he will saw it on his woodmizer sawmill. Won't take too long at all.

[Bradley Gray]

+1 on finding a wood miser or similar.

[Chris Padilla]

Peruse my thread (http://www.sawmillcreek.org/showthread.php?92396) where I took a longer-than-yours but not as wide-nor-thick-as yours chuck of walnut and sliced it into veneers. I set up table extensions on both my j/p and bandsaw.

[Jim Matthews]

Might find a small sawmill, or a guy that has a small horizontal bandsaw for low-volume tree processing, and outsource the service. Ya kinda gotta get the correct size hammer for this nail.

+1 on this.
It's worth a little extra to get this right.

There won't be a second chance.

[Jim Wheeler]

What do I think? I think it would be a sin to cut up dry walnut that thick into 4/4 stock - five to nine inch thick walnut doesn't come along everyday. But it isn't my wood.

If your friend wants full width slabs, then the best bet is to find someone with a horizontal band mill, as others have suggested. If they don't have to be full width, then you should be able to mill the pieces on your bandsaw pretty easily. I don't know what brand of saw you own or what its resaw height is, but the first thing you will need to do is saw the pieces to a size that will fit under your machine's upper blade guide. You should be able to do that right on the bandsaw. I would advise you not to fool around with a fence or guided carrier, but to saw free-hand along a drawn line instead - especially for such short but heavy pieces. Be sure to wax your bandsaw's table to reduce the friction - it will make a lot of difference. Why free-hand? Because this will enable you to steer the wood a bit to instantly correct for any tendency the blade has to drift and cause a belly cut. Pieces that thick and even only partially dry will often have stress built up in them, which can cause the wood to warp as you saw. Sawing free-hand allows the wood to move if it likes without moving the blade. Something else: with stock that heavy you might consider clamping some 2x4 legs under your bandsaw's table for bracing and be sure the tilt is securely locked. While sawing you may find it helpful to lift up slightly on the end of the wood farthest from the blade so as to reduce drag.

About the extent of my experience in sawing pieces of wood this large and heavy is cutting up the butt of a huge native pecan tree I was given years ago in exchange for sawing a thick slice off the end for a table. The owner's plan was to soak the slice in a vat of PEG to keep it from cracking open. The tree otherwise would have ended up as barbecue wood, because it was too short and too thick for the carriage of the owner's circular saw mill and he didn't have a chainsaw that would give him a smooth slice off the end; neither did I, but I did have a sharp one man crosscut saw. The butt was full round, just over three feet in diameter at the small end, and a little over five and a half feet long; it was still green after having lain out in a field most of the hot Texas summer and I estimated it easily weighed well over one thousand pounds.

The first thing I did (after cutting off the end for a table) was split the log in half using wedges and sledge hammer, maul and gluts - this literally took me all day to do; the pith of pecan is like hickory, tough and stringy. Over the next several days I ripped the two halves in half by propping up their ends and sawing them by hand with a one-man crosscut saw; then I further reduced those in size until I had pieces small enough to fit under the blade guide of my bandsaw. I had pieces over seven inches thick, thirteen inches wide, and more than five feet long, and weighing over two hundred pounds some of them. It was slow, back-breaking work doing all this by hand and more or less by myself, but I was determined....and about thirty years younger than I am now.

I finally sawed the pieces into two and three inch thick by thirteen inch wide flitches using my shop-built, wood framed, vertical bandsaw, which I had built according to my own design from a Gilliom parts kit. (Some of you may have seen it, if you visit Matthias Wandel's site, www.woodgears.ca ) I used 1/2 and 3/4 inch wide, 3 tpi, hook tooth blades for most of the work and really didn't have all that much tension on them - maybe 12000 psi at most; green wood saws pretty easily. I tried using a fence, but found that the blade wanted to drift and push the stock away from it; if I had tried to hold it in place, the blade would have bellied and cut a cove. I attributed this to a build up of sawdust and sap on the tires affecting blade tracking. I also probably should have used more tension for blades that narrow in such deep cuts. My technique was to set the stock up on sawhorses, slide one end over onto the saw table and hold the other end up as I fed the work. I fed half way, then walked around the still running saw and pulled the piece the rest of the way through. In hindsight I should have had someone standing by the saw's on and off switch, since I would not have been able to reach it in an emergency.

Point is, this kind of work can be done on an 18 inch saw, if you are determined and work with care.

Regards,

Jim Wheeler

He who welds steel with flaming pine cones may accomplish anything!

[Prashun Patel]

Setting up a bandsaw mill to cut those two small slabs would be (I bet) prohibitively expensive.

I'm contrarian here:

Personally, I wouldn't be dogmatic about wanting to preserve thickness for thickness sake. If it were me, I would rift/quarter saw it into 4/4, 6/4 or 8/4 on that nice bandsaw with a 3tpi blade, good outfeed support and a helper. I think you'll end up with more usable, prettier wood that way.

I used to think that just because I had something thick and wide, it had to be used that way. But I think sometimes the wood presents better as a matched (book or slip) glueup.

[Danny Hamsley]

You would have to take your wood to the band sawmill. Would take less than 30 minutes to saw them up.

[Mike OMelia]

I know about that guy in New Market, just miles from me. He was out of business for a while, but I heard he was back. Wouldn't hurt to give him a call

[Danny Hamsley]

Robert is a Pro.

[Cameron Handyside]

I was reading this thread with interest when I realized the OP was in Huntsville. Hobby Hardwood in New Market, AL (just outside of Huntsville) does great work and should be able to handle your project (my only connection is I'm a customer)

[Mike OMelia]

Yup. Live in Huntsville. A friend here locally also suggested I give him a call. I sent him a message on FB. We'll see. We used to have a pretty good hardwood store in Scottsboro, but the manager died and the owners sold it off. :(

[Cameron Handyside]

I live in HSV as well. I used to go out to the Hardwood Center in Scotsboro too, he had some really exotic wood (big boards too!). There are a few sawyers around our area, used to be H&K near Athens but he passed away last year. I don't think you can go wrong with Hobby Hardwood, husband and wife are both engineers at Marshall and really good people. And you'll enjoy seeing his place and looking over the lumber he has for sale.