DAMN...Still Wishing

Yep - I'm still wishing I had a sawmill. As much as I love my router planer, it's still not as quick and efficient as a sawmill would be in planing down logs for use as tabletops.

From the last blog post, you can see there are two log slabs that need to be planed down to a 4" thickness to start (ultimately, the finished thickness will be 3"). In order to do that, the router planer has to be "modified" to accommodate their very large size (they're still 10' long overall).

If the planer were wider, it might be possible to do both log slabs at once, but not only is it not wide enough, but it would also be a killer on my back having to reach across both logs to plane off about 1/4" each pass. So, the decision was made to do one at a time (see photo below), and to take it a little easier on my poor, old achin' back in the process.

The rails on this setup are 15' long and consist of square steel 4"x 4". When the sled is set up on the rails, there is a lot of drag, so it isn't the easiest thing in the world to do, but a little beeswax on the upper surface of the rails does help.

I originally cut the logs to 10' lengths in order to have a little wiggle room to play with since the final length is going to be 8'.

In looking at the log slabs, it became pretty obvious taking another 6" off on each end would not only save a little bit on lengthwise passes to be made, but would also decrease the weight of the slab and make it just a tad easier to manhandle.

The 4" inch thickness was marked using a felt tip magic marker to give me a stopping point on the first side to be planed.

The next step was to get the sled set up for "running". In order to do that, a spacer was placed between the rails and then pipe clamps were used to tighten it down. Not only does this provide an even length of run the entire length of the planer, but it also helps reduce "racking" of the sled itself since width of the rails is uniform.

Adjusting the height of the planer is relatively simple. I used 2"x 6" scraps and keep 3/4" x 6" scraps in reserve to use for increments as height needs to be reduced to accommodate the depth of router cuts.

The weight of the planer, itself, keeps it stable. I'd ratchet tie it down if there were any slippage at all, but there isn't, so on to the next step.

Adjusting the width of the sled is critical to the entire operation. Enclosed bearings allow the sled to "run" the outside edges of the rails also helping to reduce racking to almost non-existent motion. I'm thinking of maybe doing the same type of ball bearings on the underside of the sled in order to make it easier to slide when making cuts - haven't quite figured out how to do that, yet, though.

Setting the depth of cut for the router is also pretty simple. All I did was push the sled up against the thickest end of the slab and adjusted for an approximate 1/4" depth of cut - ready to rock n' roll!

After four passes, this is how the top of the slab looked. A long process, but getting there slowly.

Checking how close I am to being done with this side. Dang it! Still have a ways to go to get it down to 4"!

Oh, and the red grill you see in the photo below? That's the air filters that keep the airborne sawdust in the shop while I'm planing to a minimum. I used an old furnace motor to pull air through the filters and blow clean air out the other side. I was skeptical at first, but this thing works great!

Now we're talkin'! I'm done for the day! Even though the planing didn't quite take it down through the entire mark, this is close enough for now. DAMN! Am I ever tired! And SORE! Oh, my achin' back!

I guess more got taken off overall than I thought. That's a really nice flat edge to work with.

To start the other side, all I need to do is flip this one over. It won't even require any shims (did I forget to mention I had to shim the slab before starting in order to prevent it from wobbling during planing? Didn't think so, but shimming is required on the first cut almost every single time).

The deeper I got into the wood, the more the grain popped. There was even some spalting going on that you can't see in these two photos.

The last "to do" item for today is to flip this bugger over and take a looksee at what's in store for tomorrow.

Well, the sapwood is kind of punky in spots, but shouldn't be too much of a problem to grind off to get a nice natural edge. The heartwood is another matter entirely.

This is a Douglas Fir tree. In leaving it up by our barn in the sunshine to help it dry, ants got into it. You can see the vein where they attacked. It goes almost all the way through this slab. I guess it will need to be ground out and filled with something to finish it, but I ain't giving up on it! No way, no how!

You can also see how I "missed" the mark with my rip cut using the chainsaw. I just gotta get better at doing this - this is just frustrating, not because it affects the end result of the planing, but because I'm kind of anal when it comes to how things should be done.

The ants were driving me crazy the next day! Every time I made a pass with the sled, the router bit would uncover more of them. They'd climb out very slowly (this is winter time after all), and I'd have to smash them as they did (didn't want them to get into any of the other wood I have in the shop).

This kept going on and on, so I decided to grind out the heartwood with my electric long necked die grinder and cup rasp. Now I know what I'm facing when it comes time to fill this chasm - it is deep, that's for sure!

On a final note for this post, the stump I hope to use for pedestals for this table was just sitting there waiting for itself to get cut in half before the snow set in. My son, Bobby, has been after me to teach him how to use the chainsaw, so I thought this would be the perfect opportunity to do just that. He's almost 18 and I've been putting it off long enough now (Mom and Dad concerned for his safety, don'tcha know).

The stump is an old root system taken from our property. Most of these stumps are chock full of resin, so they are very dense and the sawdust that comes out is very sticky.

After Bobby got all the appropriate safety gear on, and he'd been prepped in how to tighten the chain, check everything for safety (you know - like clearing an area around the stump, making sure he was working on a pretty level surface area, etc.), he was ready to go.

First cut - looking good!

Tip it upright to take a gander at it.

 Tip it back over on its side, and finish the cut all the way through.

And there you have it! He really did a nice job on this, especially for his first try at chainsawing.

Well, that's it for now. Next step is to finish planing the other side of the first slab. Once that's done, it's twin will be next. Until then......

DAMN...Wish I had a sawmill

Cut firewood.....? Cut tabletop log slab.....? Cut firewood.....? Cut tabletop log slab.....? Guess the slab won out. Besides, it should be more fun, right? Well, maybe more challenging, that's for sure! And, we already have enough firewood to last a couple of days at least.

Blue line instead of red line: the first step was to get a straight guideline so I could eyeball my cut as I'm making it. Blue chalk line works just great - only thing is, I gotta beat the snow. Otherwise the line is going to disappear and I'll have to do it all over again.

I won't show the chainsaw but, take my word for it, the chain has to be very sharp to rip a log. It must also be nubbed to less than a 10 degree angle (mine is actually 0 degrees) in order to do this.

I decided I'd go at the log from both ends using a 20 inch bar and chain instead of the big 32 incher I mentioned in my previous post. That thing is just too big, too heavy, and too dang dangerous for this old duffer to use for any length of time (and this DOES take time and a whole lot of effort).

First cut - one end:

Second cut - other end:

Next step was to cut as deep as comfortable (didn't want to go through all the way for most of the length in order to avoid hitting dirt and dulling the chain). Having the arch "up" in the air really helped in this process. All I had to do was follow the chalk line and keep the chainsaw bar as straight as possible all along the length.

The next step was the trickiest. The log had to be "rolled" so it could be cut up through from the bottom. Chocking the log for this step was critical to prevent roll while cutting. The photo below shows the end result of the cut all the way through.

And, VOILA...bookend slabs.

This is the configuration I envision them having when they are joined together.

Even with all the precautions I took, it's the chainsaw's fault the top and bottom cuts didn't quite mesh, right?

This is what I was afraid of - some rot in the heartwood. Shouldn't be too much of a problem the grinder can't fix. There'll be a void, for sure. That void can be filled with anything and then epoxied in.

Glad this step is over. DAMN, I really DO wish I had a sawmill! Oh, well. Doing it this way isn't even as hard as WAY back in the day when lumberjacking was done with handsaws. Guess I really can't complain.

Next step: getting those suckers loaded onto the truck and down to the shop where the old router planer can be put to good use.

Man, my shoulders are sore. Need some heat - maybe some wine. Sure did feel good to get back in the saddle so-to-speak.

Conference Room Table - Beginnings

This project, when finished, will by far and away be the biggest project I've ever undertaken. That log in the foreground of the first picture is 10 feet long and almost 1 1/2 feet in diameter all the way along. Plus, it's "bent" allowing for an arch of sorts. It will ultimately form the meat of the tabletop.

The tree this log came from is a Douglas Fir. It was located right behind my shop and presented a hazard should it fall over. So, it had to come out. Because it was bent a bit, I decided to dig it out by the roots instead of just cutting it off at the base because part of the root was actually exposed and would make a really gnarly tabletop if slabbed right.

After a very long and arduous process of digging around the root system, many curse words, and a whole lot of frustration that I wasn't making as much progress as I would have liked to have made, a kindly neighbor and some of his young pups came over to help this old duffer.

We still had to dig some, but ultimately wound up pulling it over with a "come-along" chained to another tree close by. After that, it was a simple matter of cutting off the root system and deciding how long I wanted to leave each log cut from the tree trunk - three total.

I decided on 10 feet per log, and am now glad I did because the conference table will ultimately wind up being 8 feet long and 3 feet wide. Cutting the logs to 10 feet lengths allows me some "wiggle room" to play with.

Once we got the log situated up by our barn in a place where it could dry naturally, the patience quotient became a factor.

Three years later, it seemed to me it was ready, especially given that the bark virtually fell of when I tried to peel it.

In order to take advantage of the curve in this log, it had to be stood sort of "on end" with the arch up in the air.

Once that was done, the peeling was a breeze.

After all that, all I had to do is chock it to help prevent it from rolling over.

The next step in this process will be to sharpen the ripping chain for the 32 inch bar on my Stihl chainsaw, and try to cut this sucker right down the middle all along its length. That way, I'll have two bookend slabs to flatten out using my router planer. Those slabs will form the outer rails of the tabletop. I won't explain how I envision it to work in this post - that's fodder for when I'm farther along in the process.

The journey begins.

In the "no sympathy for stupidity" department

Awhile back, my teddy bear of a Father-In-Law told me something that's stayed with me ever since that one time when I clocked myself up alongside the head with a lawn rake that hadn't been put away property and I stepped on the teeth; "there's no sympathy for stupidity"! Boy, was he right!

Three years ago, I cut up a bunch of cottonwood rounds into slabs I hoped might make some nice tabletops at some point. Yesterday, when Katherine looked at the cottonwood slabs I'd been working on for the television stand, neither one really appealed to her. They just didn't seem right for the application.

So, I went into the back 40 (actually the back 4 or 5) to the cottonwood wood pile and saw some slabs that might work if I split them using a wedge and a sledge hammer. The first photo is of one of those slabs. Nice grain, nice shape, waaaay too big. Yep, gotta split it.

Put wedge in an existing crack, and started hammering away at it. Problem is, the wedge wasn't really a wedge in the truest sense of the word. It was actually an old maul head the handle had broken off of years before.

My thinking, however flawed (or stupid, if you prefer), was this would make a really good wedge. It's shaped right, very heavy, and made to hammer stuff, right?

Wrong! In the photo below, you can see one of the areas that chipped out of the hammerhead when I struck it with my sledge. The little piece beside the hammerhead is the piece that went into my knee like a bullet shot out of a gun.

I won't bore you with a photo of the actual wound, but it wasn't enough to make me feint (do so at the sight of my own blood most of the time). Walking back to the house wasn't even a problem.

The photo below shows some of the blood, but also shows the hole in my jeans where the piece went through them.

Thank you, Katherine, for taking such good care of me. I am going to go back up to the shop today at some point and start planing down those slabs to usable thicknesses. I promise to be more careful!

Lesson(s) learned:

1.) Put on those damn chainsaw chaps - that's what they're for, you dummy! Ya shoulda learned the first time you put that chainsaw across your other knee!

And,

2.) Use a real wedge designed and made for that specific purpose, you dummy!

Television Stand - Part Cinq: Major Change of Plan

Well, this is what I get for charging full steam ahead with good intentions to make a television stand using walnut slabs - they're too nice to be covered up by a TV and accompanying equipment.

Got the under part of the pedestal all leveled off.

Got the walnut slabs planed down to the thickness I wanted and the whole thing to the height we needed.

Set it up in the shop just balancing the slabs to see how it might look when finished (they'd actually be moved over some to the right in this picture to balance out everything and make maximum use of as much of the slab as possible). Looking really good, right? That's when Katherine and I decided together those dang walnut slabs are just too pretty to be covered up.

Decisions, decisions. What to do? What to do? Don't have any other pine slabs to use, but do have a whole lot of cottonwood slabs that have been curing in the barn now for three years. But they're way too big for something like this.

Well, they're way too big if used as one piece. The one in the back of the photo below is about 4' high by almost 3' wide. What if I split the dang thing right down the middle? Tried it using a sledge hammer and driving a wedge down into the grain from the end and got two really nice slabs about the same width.

Problem was they were each about 6" to 7" thick depending on how bad a job of chainsawing I did when cutting the slab originally. The depth desired is 2 3/4" to 3" thick. Back to the router planer.

Because these slabs are 4' in length, it's necessary that I set up the "big boy" router planer and use the 15' long rails to support the router sled. The height adjustment here is a little more dicey than on the other set up I use, but once set, it's really easy to use.

First pass and you can see the sawdust this generates.

I made it a habit to use a leaf blower after each pass is finished to not only keep the work area cleaner, but also to be able to see the work done to that point.

Next step was to make absolutely sure depth of cut didn't take the slab thickness down to below 2 3/4". Perfect!

It was about this time when I began to realize the sawdust generated by multiple, multiple passes of the router was going to be excessive to say the least. Brain fart told me to remember some of the photos I've seen of projects on one of my favorite woodworking websites ever, LumberJocks.com, in which sawdust is used to enhance the photos, and I began saving the shavings.

At this point, I also wanted to see what the planed slab of cottonwood might look like when mounted on the pedestal, so I spread some of the sawdust on the work platform by my shop, brought the pedestal out, and set the slab on top. I'm not so sure I want to use the cottonwood for this application either after seeing how pretty it looks as a tabletop (just kidding).

Bottom line - cottonwood is a very misunderstood, maligned wood that has a beautiful grain (especially in branch crotches), but is really stinky to work with.

And, I do mean STINKY!