Resawing wide lumber

[Jon Endres]

I am going to be installing new garage doors in my shop. One of the criteria for the doors is that they have to have a rustic, board-and-batten look to them. They are flush, smooth wood doors with a plywood face. My plan is to glue and pin thin facing to each door so that it looks like B&B but is much thinner - I'm looking for basically 3/8" to 1/2" thick stock. I don't have a source for this locally so I will have to either make it myself or have it made. I do have a Delta 14" bandsaw with riser, so my idea is to use kiln-dried smooth boards and a coarse resaw blade, resaw the boards into thin pieces and glue and brad nail them onto the door face. My concern is being able to accurately resaw the boards (which will probably be random width from 1x6 to 1x10 and all at least 8' long) into thin stock, and still maintain a consistent thickness when done. Do you guys have any suggestions for accomplishing this? If I knew someone with an industrial resaw or bandsaw mill with resaw, I'd have them do it, but it looks like it's on me. Any suggestions as to a good blade choice and how to set up the cuts?

FWIW, these are going to be covered with a semi-transparent stain, so if there's any other ides floating around that will get me the same appearance without the amount of work I'm anticipating, I'm all for it. The shop itself will have eastern white pine board and batten siding, and I'm trying to match the look.

[Andrew Hughes]

You should be able to resaw them your self it's just gonna be a bit slow.If your resawing pine you may have to clean the blade often that will help.
If you need a smooth face to glue then you will need to face one side after each cut.
You will see some cupping but they should be thin enough to flatin when you glue them right.
Out feed and In feed support tables are a must.
For blades I buy Olsen blades for my 14 inch saw 4t 3/8 wide skip.Is my fav.Rockler stocks them.
Buy several because they are not worth sharpening.
you might want to use 3 t hook the 4 is kinda slow.
Good luck sounds like fun.

[Matt Day]

Make sure you consider wood movement. Or you may get a lot of splits and cracking.

[Eric Schmid]

Does the lumber you are planning on using have a rough sawn face that you can use? The resawn face I get off a 3TPI bandsaw blade is much smoother than commercially available lumber. Too smooth in my opinion to pass as rough sawn. I'd probably be looking to use the mill face and plane down the resawn face smooth for the backs.

It would be a lot simpler to run rough sawn through the planer, one side only, and skip the bandsaw. I assume you can get 3/4" material?

As Andrew says, flat sawn lumber is likely to cup. It might help to plane in stages; wait a bit before a final light pass and glue up.

[Jon Endres]

No, the plan was to purchase surfaced lumber and then create my own rough-sawn face by resawing. I might be able to get 3/4" material if I special order it. I may also be able to find some dry rough-sawn and resaw that, then pass the resawn face through the planer to get two pieces out of a single board. I only need about 80 board feet of lumber, which would cover two doors each 1/2" thick.

I was also considering using 5/4 western red cedar, I can find that locally and it might be quartersawn. That may help with the cupping issue even if it's resawn.

[lowell holmes]

I would practice on some scrap to see what's involved. I have issues with resawing on my 14" jet with a riser. If the boards are cupped or crooked, you will need to flatten the board against the fence.

I also resort to making a centerline on the boards edge to maintain constant thickness of the re-sawn wood.

[Howard Acheson]

You should consider that solidly gluing your resawn veneer to plywood will be problematic. The solid wood will want to expand and contract while the plywood will have little to no movement. This means that your doors will be subjected to splitting and cupping. It's an old rule not to apply thicker solid wood veneer to a plywood substrate.

[Jon Endres]

I agree, I am concerned about the expansion and contraction issue. I could, theoretically, just glue the center of each board and nail or staple it on (just like real B&B) and it would allow the board to expand or contract from the center out.

I came up with another possibility - using rough sawn reverse board and batten plywood, 3/8" thick, and then gluing a wood batten into the groove so that it actually looks like real B&B. I can paint the doors too, to hide the fact I'm using plywood. All of my siding is bandsawn, so it has the horizontal saw marks that will match a typical piece of T1-11 or RB&B ply. Any thoughts on this?

[Stan Powers]

There are still a fairly large number of lumber yards in New England where they saw and dry pine.
I would suggest buying rough sawn lumber which would be a true 1in. or slightly better and re-sawing that. It would give you the look you want at a fairly low cost. Plane the cut side if necessary to get it smooth enough to hang.

[Mike Cutler]

Jon

I'm with Stan. There are still many mills in New England that can crank out the material you need cheaper than you can make it. It might be a drive, but,,,,,,
My house, garage, and barn, are Barn board and Batten, so I know the look that you're looking for.

[Bradley Gray]

I think plywood is a great idea. That would be lighter prevent sagging.

If you decide on solid wood i would consider just planing the house siding to 1/2" or so on one side only and be done. You could do ship lap edges.

probably cost as much in band saw blades as you save on lumber, plus the time resawing and jointing.

[Robert Engel]

There is a textured plywood similar to T111 but no grooves.
I have bought it in the past 1/4" thick.

[Larry Edgerton]

Be aware that you are increasing the weight of the door and will need a different spring/springs. You will burn out your opener if you do not address this issue. Upping the tension on the existing springs is not the correct method.

Here is what I do. I finish the door, relax the spring all the way with the door setting on a pair of bathroom scales, one on each side, and then call Overhead door and get the proper weight spring/springs and install, re tension. A bit of work, and if you are no excited about messing with the springs, [They can hurt you!] just weigh the door and have a door company come and change out the springs for you. I do that myself sometimes, especially as I am getting older.

[rudy de haas]

umm, I don't get it. I've only seen Barn board and Batten done vertically so I'm assuming that's what you want to do too. If so, why not get the real deal look by making two hinged doors out of approx 1" rough lumber (maybe smoothing the inside if that seems good to you)? That way you have the right strength at the hinges, expansion/contraction won't matter much - just get the door frame and seating right - you can take whatever time is needed to build the doors without affecting daily use until installation days (plural because of the framing needed), and you won't have much lumber prep work at all.

If you have a top mounted (i.e. pulls upwards) automatic door opener now whose functionality you want to keep you should be able to make it work. Mine (and I imagine most (?)) just has forward/backward controls and uses a sprocket to drive a chain which either pushes or pulls a fixed distance depending on which way it is going. I can see (but of course my imagination beats my ability to actually do by a mile) changing that to pushing/pulling two gimballed poles easily enough..