sams93
Established Member
Bought a 4tpi blade from Ian at tuff-saws for my small-ish hobby bandsaw recently in the hope of trying to have a go at milling some wood from logs. It's all very small scale, but I wanted to see if it would be feasible for small projects. For example, if family member had to have a tree taken down in the garden it might be nice to make something from it i.e a jewelery box or whatever.
To give it a go I used some logs that had been seasoned for fire wood, just to see how I would get on with the process.
I used my Clarke CBS355 bandsaw to make the rough cuts, I am always going to have to do this on a very small scale, but I now realise that even my very short 'trial' pieces were too short really! I can also see that I would be best starting with a square-er log as well (cutting the bark side down square), just to make as much use of the 15cm cutting height that is avalaible on my small saw. It was also good to learn how much wastage there is from the processing, I started off with 25mm thick rough sawn pieces and once they had been flattened etc the pieces I ended up with were 19mm ish.
I used my 'cheapo' Titan Planer Thicknesser from screwfix to face and edge joint, before thicknessing the other edge. I made the mistake of edge jointing first, not realising I should have started with a face, so had to go back to the edge after doing the face, this error didnt cause much extra wood wastage though. Finally trimmed the other edge square with table saw (although forgot to photograph from this point so the ones in the last photo I have still have one rough edge...)
It was really satisfying starting with a dirty old log and ending up with some square and 'useable' pieces (albeit very small and with a lot of voids in!). I'm sure with a bit of practice I will get better at it, but I really enjoyed giving it a go.
Separately, I know the larger pieces are Oak. I'm not sure about the smaller pieces. I have made a separate thread asking if anyone knows what species it is.
To give it a go I used some logs that had been seasoned for fire wood, just to see how I would get on with the process.
I used my Clarke CBS355 bandsaw to make the rough cuts, I am always going to have to do this on a very small scale, but I now realise that even my very short 'trial' pieces were too short really! I can also see that I would be best starting with a square-er log as well (cutting the bark side down square), just to make as much use of the 15cm cutting height that is avalaible on my small saw. It was also good to learn how much wastage there is from the processing, I started off with 25mm thick rough sawn pieces and once they had been flattened etc the pieces I ended up with were 19mm ish.
I used my 'cheapo' Titan Planer Thicknesser from screwfix to face and edge joint, before thicknessing the other edge. I made the mistake of edge jointing first, not realising I should have started with a face, so had to go back to the edge after doing the face, this error didnt cause much extra wood wastage though. Finally trimmed the other edge square with table saw (although forgot to photograph from this point so the ones in the last photo I have still have one rough edge...)
It was really satisfying starting with a dirty old log and ending up with some square and 'useable' pieces (albeit very small and with a lot of voids in!). I'm sure with a bit of practice I will get better at it, but I really enjoyed giving it a go.
Separately, I know the larger pieces are Oak. I'm not sure about the smaller pieces. I have made a separate thread asking if anyone knows what species it is.
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