Prepping sawn ash

[RogerS]

To be honest, having struggled and made a pigs ear so far, I'm beginning to wonder (a) why anyone would ever want to prep their own stock from sawn timber and (b) maybe I'd be better sticking my ash pile in the next Pughs' auction.

I've been trying without much success to rip down some boards out of a piece of 6x4" sawn ash. I've now got three wavy pieces of stock that now need planing and thicknessing but I reckon by the time I've finished with them, they'll be more like veneer.

So how do others go about this? Planing one face square before running through the bandsaw was one idea but I'd need help manhandling the baulk of timber as it's damn heavy.

 

[jlawrence]

The simply answer to that is get some help then.

To my mind you need to prep one edge before running through the bandsaw.

 

[bjm]

Planing one face square before running through the bandsaw was one idea but I'd need help manhandling the baulk of timber as it's damn heavy.

That's how I do it but I generally rough cut it and leave for a few days before finish planing in case there is any residual stress in the cut pieces. If it's too big to handle I tend to use my jigsaw to rough cut the pieces but you tend to get more a little more wastage.


Brian

 

[Doug B]

Roger,
I try & buy sawn timber that is fairly close to the finished size timber i need. That way i only have to remove a minimal amount of timber on the planer.
The problem with machining narrow boards out of large sections is the tension in the section is released & you end up with bowed boards, as you`ve found out.
It doesn`t matter how dry the timber is, the tension is a result of the growth of the tree.

 

[jasonB]

Its not really worth preping an edge on what you have, if you are ripping it into 4 1" boards they will move all over the place once ripped of the main post. This is really resawing and not just preparing timber down from its nominal thickness

I'd ping a chalk line down the center and follow that with the bandsaw, then leave to settle again before cutting the now 2" boards into 1".

Jason

 

[woodbloke]

You don't give the complete size, the board is 6'x4"x? so if we had the other dimension it might give us a better indication of how to convert it - Rob

 

[RogerS]

You don't give the complete size, the board is 6'x4"x? so if we had the other dimension it might give us a better indication of how to convert it - Rob

2m give or take.

 

[woodbloke]

You've got a 2m ish long board 150x100mm that you want to convert into say, 3 finished boards at 150x25mm, making allowances for waste, so firstly plane up a straight face and edge on the p/t, awkward 'cos it's long but doable. Then once one you have two datum surfaces, take a slice off on the bandsaw at about 30mm. Re plane each surface again on the p/t and repeat for the second board and again for the third board.
You'll end up with three boards with one planed side and edge. The three boards may not be accurate at this stage so then they could now be carefully surfaced, edged and thicknessed using the p/t. If the MC is still too high, I'd leave them for another couple of months in stick before machining them down to size - Rob

 

[flanajb]

Roger,
I try & buy sawn timber that is fairly close to the finished size timber i need. That way i only have to remove a minimal amount of timber on the planer.
The problem with machining narrow boards out of large sections is the tension in the section is released & you end up with bowed boards, as you`ve found out.
It doesn`t matter how dry the timber is, the tension is a result of the growth of the tree.

Not what you want to hear, but totally valid and I agree 100% with Doug's comments

 

[RogerS]

Roger,
I try & buy sawn timber that is fairly close to the finished size timber i need. That way i only have to remove a minimal amount of timber on the planer.
The problem with machining narrow boards out of large sections is the tension in the section is released & you end up with bowed boards, as you`ve found out.
It doesn`t matter how dry the timber is, the tension is a result of the growth of the tree.

Not what you want to hear, but totally valid and I agree 100% with Doug's comments

I agree with both of you. I'm really off the idea of prepping your own timber.