Andrew Pitonyak
01-29-2017, 12:06 AM
I heard that our very own Rich Riddle would be in town today (Saturday, 1/28), and he was kind enough to stop by my shop. Chris Hatchet also stopped in with a load of 2" oak and some 1" maple in his VW; it was a site to behold.
After picking Rich's brain, my 8 year old daughter dragged us all out for pizza, well, my daughter and I ate pizza, Rich and Chris were more sensible and ate salad.
We are now trying to figure out when to migrate south a bit to see some of Rich's toys! :D
Our first task was to cut the maple into strips roughly 1.5" in width. That maple brought my saw stop to its knees. The blade would get about 12" into the cut and the wood simple stopped moving. It was almost impossible to get the wood out again. I have never worked wood so stressed in my life, not that I am a super experienced wood worker, but this was just strange. I tried to cut a few boards and it just did not work. That wood clamped back together and warped like crazy. This maple had tame looking grain but then acted crazy. It made me question my saw so I grabbed some scrap I had sitting around and sent that through with no problems. Chris kept saying something about "case hardened". I think I need to look that up. I have heard the term, and can vaguely recite what it means but I am seriously lacking on details.
So we moved on to the next task at hand... surfacing a bunch of 2" oak.
Neither of us own a planer, and it is a bunch, so we grabbed one of my planer sleds, used some shims, then sent it through my planer. This task is a bit slow.
Here are two pictures of the board before running it through the first time.
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This next picture is also a before picture. Under the planer, you see a storage cabinet that I built to sit in the factory stand. I store things such as shims, saw blades, and chalk. It provides some nice extra storage. Yes, those are hand cut dovetails. In the far back on the left hand side, you see another little cabinet that I built to hold things such as hammers, screw drivers, saws, etc.; it works well for me.
352764
Here, Chris is inspecting the results after a few passes. I use carbide tipped blades that I purchased from Holbren. For me, they work well and last a very long time. Chris was impressed at how nice the surface was.
352765
Planing the second side parallel was a much faster process.
Chris wanted to joint the edge, but no jointer. I could not just drop it onto my table saw because the boards are too long in my cramped shop, so, I pulled out my Dewalt track saw. The process is as follows:
Place sacrificial styrofoam for construction purchased at a big box on the floor.
Place the wood on the styrofoam.
Place the track on the wood.
Adjust saw depth to just clear the bottom of the wood.
Attach hose from my Festool vacuum.
352766
The dust collection is pretty good UNLESS you are cutting very close to the edge. In that case, you get sawdust everywhere. That saw had no trouble at all cutting through the 2" oak.
After picking Rich's brain, my 8 year old daughter dragged us all out for pizza, well, my daughter and I ate pizza, Rich and Chris were more sensible and ate salad.
We are now trying to figure out when to migrate south a bit to see some of Rich's toys! :D
Our first task was to cut the maple into strips roughly 1.5" in width. That maple brought my saw stop to its knees. The blade would get about 12" into the cut and the wood simple stopped moving. It was almost impossible to get the wood out again. I have never worked wood so stressed in my life, not that I am a super experienced wood worker, but this was just strange. I tried to cut a few boards and it just did not work. That wood clamped back together and warped like crazy. This maple had tame looking grain but then acted crazy. It made me question my saw so I grabbed some scrap I had sitting around and sent that through with no problems. Chris kept saying something about "case hardened". I think I need to look that up. I have heard the term, and can vaguely recite what it means but I am seriously lacking on details.
So we moved on to the next task at hand... surfacing a bunch of 2" oak.
Neither of us own a planer, and it is a bunch, so we grabbed one of my planer sleds, used some shims, then sent it through my planer. This task is a bit slow.
Here are two pictures of the board before running it through the first time.
352763
This next picture is also a before picture. Under the planer, you see a storage cabinet that I built to sit in the factory stand. I store things such as shims, saw blades, and chalk. It provides some nice extra storage. Yes, those are hand cut dovetails. In the far back on the left hand side, you see another little cabinet that I built to hold things such as hammers, screw drivers, saws, etc.; it works well for me.
352764
Here, Chris is inspecting the results after a few passes. I use carbide tipped blades that I purchased from Holbren. For me, they work well and last a very long time. Chris was impressed at how nice the surface was.
352765
Planing the second side parallel was a much faster process.
Chris wanted to joint the edge, but no jointer. I could not just drop it onto my table saw because the boards are too long in my cramped shop, so, I pulled out my Dewalt track saw. The process is as follows:
Place sacrificial styrofoam for construction purchased at a big box on the floor.
Place the wood on the styrofoam.
Place the track on the wood.
Adjust saw depth to just clear the bottom of the wood.
Attach hose from my Festool vacuum.
352766
The dust collection is pretty good UNLESS you are cutting very close to the edge. In that case, you get sawdust everywhere. That saw had no trouble at all cutting through the 2" oak.