Thread: Bandsawing a Spotted Gum

Originally Posted by Barterbuilt

Thanks Paul, great thread.
It's good to see it from start to finish.
I don't think the experienced millers will mind watching someone else put in the hard yards for a change.
And by the number of views that a post like this receives there are definately more newbies reading than full time sawmillers.
That's the beauty of this forum, experienced people willing to share their knowledge.
I'm hooked. Buying a lucas mill very soon.

Cheers
Andrew

Andrew

The bandsaw mill is hard work particularly with Aussie hardwoods. You will be better off with a Lucas mill. I bought the bandsaw first an then got John Laidlaw, the manufacturer, to build me a swingsaw mill to run on the same bed. Much easier. I have since sold the swingsaw mill so only have the bandsaw. Not so much of an isssue as nowadays I only get to mill very occasionally.

Regards
Paul

Paul a very interesting thread thanks

Love the photos

Correct me if I am wrong, but basically you have back sawn all of the log into slabs. You have then taken the two thick slabs you cut approximately either side of the pith, which are the only effectively quarter sawn slabs in the process, to cut in the opposite direction to get your quater sawn lumber.

Originally Posted by dai sensei

Correct me if I am wrong, but basically you have back sawn all of the log into slabs. You have then taken the two thick slabs you cut approximately either side of the pith, which are the only effectively quarter sawn slabs in the process, to cut in the opposite direction to get your quater sawn lumber.

Neil

That's pretty much it. I do end up with four hefty slabs, although the last one will include the heart. Our new printer is not hooked up yet so I can't scan a drawing, but I will be able to do something Sunday night probably. I have just done a count and it is eight cuts to end up with four slabs with at least one sawn edge.

Then the quarter sawing starts, but as I said previously only a few boards will be fully quartersawn, some will have the grain at 45 degrees and a couple will be backsawn.

I will be at the Brissy show Friday and Saturday so I may be able to catch up with you then if you are attending either of those days.

Regards
Paul

Originally Posted by Bushmiller

Neil

That's pretty much it. I do end up with four hefty slabs, although the last one will include the heart. Our new printer is not hooked up yet so I can't scan a drawing, but I will be able to do something Sunday night probably. I have just done a count and it is eight cuts to end up with four slabs with at least one sawn edge.

Then the quarter sawing starts, but as I said previously only a few boards will be fully quartersawn, some will have the grain at 45 degrees and a couple will be backsawn.

I will be at the Brissy show Friday and Saturday so I may be able to catch up with you then if you are attending either of those days.

Regards
Paul

No probs, I'll be at the show Fri and Sun, so catch up hopefully Fri. I will be at the stand first thing, then Stan's stand(?), but generally around. I'll be wearing the forum shirt.

Cheers

Originally Posted by Bushmiller

After a while the blade needs to be sharpened on the profiler. This is how it is done.
Attachment 268008Attachment 268009

I am not sure what hook angle the blades are supplied with (I must ask Henry Bros), but for spotted gum I have always used 16 degrees which is quite radical. Interestingly, I was having difficulty early on keeping a wave out of the cuts, but after sharpening (at 16 degrees, which I have set my profiler to) there was a dramatic improvement in cutting performance.

Well that's about it for now. Thanks for looking. Feel free to ask any questions, although I can't promise I'll have any answers .

Regards
Paul

Hi Paul,
Is the blade a Lennox woodmaster B, 1 tpi 1/14' wide? How many sharpens do you get out of it?


Pete

Faaantastic! well done!

Just a matter of interest but I got my hands on some wharf timber beams that are spotted gum, the stuff is like concrete!

to rip the boards down I had to run a curf over the table saw after jointing one edge then I used a bio metal blade and it cut through it like butter!

I will be using bio metal blades for resawing going forwrad 3 TPI.....truly works a treat!

Originally Posted by pjt

Hi Paul,
Is the blade a Lennox woodmaster B, 1 tpi 1/14' wide? How many sharpens do you get out of it?


Pete

Pete

Yes to all of that except that the pitch is 3/4, which means there are four teeth to 3 inches. I started off with two brand new blades and sharpened them both once with the second blade still going well when I finished. The older blade I have has had half a dozen sharpenings.

I really don't know how many I will get, but I would expect ten to be the upper limit. Ater that you have run out of set on the teeth and maybe out of bi-metal material. I was getting a reasonable amount of timber cut before re-sharpening because the bark is smooth (not full of grit) and the timber is green. Both help blade life.

Regards
Paul

Hi Paul,
I guess it will depend on how much you take off per sharpen, based on my sharpening efforts it will be closer to 4 or 5, I wonder if Henry Bros knows (or could find out) how thick the hard tip mat'l is, that way you could measure from the back of the blade to check on how much is left, most likely need to establish a measuerment from new tho for each band, or there comes a point where the teeth just dull a lot quicker than normal so the hard tip is all gone, I got to that point a few times




Pete

Originally Posted by pjt

Hi Paul,
I guess it will depend on how much you take off per sharpen, based on my sharpening efforts it will be closer to 4 or 5, I wonder if Henry Bros knows (or could find out) how thick the hard tip mat'l is, that way you could measure from the back of the blade to check on how much is left, most likely need to establish a measuerment from new tho for each band, or there comes a point where the teeth just dull a lot quicker than normal so the hard tip is all gone, I got to that point a few times




Pete

Pete

It also depends heavily on your sharpening technique. You only need the barest tickle of the face of the tooth to freshen up the tooh. Of course only the very tip neds to be sharpened but the profiler. Continues right down into the gullet and I normally take the opportunityto slightly increase the depth the the gullet too. This is possible with these larger blades. It is not so much of an
option with narrower blades.

Incidentally. These blades are small too. I thought larg band blades were 6 inch, but large blades are 12 inch.

Regards
paul

Ooops! I just had a look at the typing from my previous post, which I did on my daughter's ipad. Hope you can understand it. I should have taken a little more care .

This drawing is in response to dai sensei's comments and in fact I did catch up with him at the brissy show. it was six cuts to achieve the three slabs not eight as I previously advised:

Cutting seq.jpg

The drawing is not quite to scale and there should probably be a little more heart, which is of no use. I the log had yielded the way I have drawn it I would have taken a board off both long sides of the third slab until it was the 125mm I was looking for. In that way when each slab is is positioned upright on the bed each board comes off in the right dimension and no further sawing is required.

In my case I only had just had enough log to get the 125mm thick slabs from it, particularly by the time I got to the third section.

Regards
Paul

Drying timber can be very rewarding, but also it can ruin all the good work done so far. Consequently it is worth putting some effort into the process.

I have spent the last few days preparing materials for the air drying stack. I needed some bearers and cross members as well as stickers. None of this just materialises out of the blue unfortunately. The bearers I fabricated from some packing crate pine. I used four boards which I thicknessed first, glued with simple PVA glue and clamped together with batten screws.

After drying I planed one edge straight with an electric planner and then used the thicknesser to achieve a finished size about 135mm x 90mm. The beam did not have to be so wide (or deep for that matter) as it does not have to span a large gap, but I wanted it to be stable for placing the cross members and finally the spotted gum itself. 90mm wide stands up happily by itself while 50mm wide wants to fall over at the slightest nudge.

Hardwood would have been better, but there was none I wished to commit to this purpose. The stack I have drying in NSW has 75mm x 75mm steel RHS beams (see below), which I will still be able to use for their original purpose (a truss) when I finally dismantle the stack.

Highgate 017.jpg

The beams being prepared:

air drying spotty 005.jpg

and finished. Not perfect, but I can work with them.

air drying spotty 007.jpg

The cross members and stickers. As I mentioned before most are hardwood (about sixty) with a few softwood (sixteen). I will put the softwood stickers at the top of the stack and not put them on the same level as the hardwood stickers. Definitely not good to mix and match. Originally they were just over 22mm thick, but that is outside the optimum of 16mm to 20mm. I ran them all through the thicknesser again and they worked out at 18.5mm. The cross members are about 85mm square. Definitely sub standard timber, but I think they will be OK for the short spans.

air drying spotty 011.jpgair drying spotty 009.jpg

I hope to set up the stack on the weekend all being well.

Regards
Paul

Well I got a little more done today. Jeez I'm slow. I can hardly believe how long it takes. Initially I partly dressed all the green boards using the electric planer. I think I mentioned previously that the cuts with the new blades had been doing the bandsaw wave more than I was comfortable with and only improved once I did the first sharpen.

I only took off the high spots, but before I did that I had to dress up a board to sit the Spotty on. I found a group of boards sitting at the the bottom of my container and one of those was good. I had forgotten they were there.

Some pix:

air drying spotty 016.jpgair drying spotty 015.jpg

The spotty I get all seems to have an interesting grain. You can see a little of it in the second pic.

air drying spotty 017.jpg

I think the mighty Mak deserves some mention as without this fellow I'd be in trouble. I have heard people express apprehension about using such a beast, but it is easy as. After you have used one of these you would be putting the 82mms on ebay. Actually not quite: You don't use one of these for trimming wall studs unless you are Arnie or Sly . It is a horizontal beast.

air drying spotty 018.jpg

Loaded up ready to drive around to the stack.

air drying spotty 021.jpgair drying spotty 020.jpg

I could have just used crossmembers but I wanted to get a little more height as this aids drainage. The recommendation is 300mm to 450mm . Initially the demolition cyprus next to the Spotty will be in the way of air circulation, but that is intended for the shed so it will gone hopefully in the not too distant future.

air drying spotty 027.jpgair drying spotty 022.jpgair drying spotty 025.jpg

I cut some wider stickers (50mm) from some hardwood pallets for the ends. An alternative is using two stickers, which I will have to do later as I have already nearly run out. The object is to retard the drying of the boards at the ends and minimise the degrade.

air drying spotty 024.jpgair drying spotty 023.jpg

This time I remembered to include a sample board to test the moisture content as I go.

Tomorrow I will weigh the board for reference and check moisture with the meter. Also I have to prise out the Forest Red Gum, which I bought from Mapleman and add that to the stack. More measuring for moisture content. I will also check the Tallow wood, also supplied by Mapleman, as I know Fence Furniture will be interested to know the results there as he has some that was milled around the same time.

So still a way to go plus there is more Spotty down in NSW which I will bring back at the end of July.

Regards
Paul

just rolled over in my hammock and noticed this happening

interesting

and now back to zzzzzzzz