Wood Cutting and Resawing
Wood Cutting and Re-sawing
The are a variety of cuts and re-saw techniques that can be used in woodworking. Re-sawing, done right, is a excellent want to turn one thick board into two or more thin boards.
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Tapering adjoining sides of project parts like a table leg is easy with a commercial or shop-made tapering jig. Make one cut, roll the leg 90 degrees and cut the second side. As long as you marked the faces to be tapered and then actually cut those sides, all is well. When the tapers are on opposite faces 180 degrees apart, the process gets more complicated. Avoiding tear-out when cutting veneered sheets
When cutting veneered or melamine coated plywood or particle board on the table saw, there is always the problem of tear-out at the bottom. Tear-out can be reduced by cutting more slowly, setting the blade relatively low, and by the use of a zero clearance insert. But even with these measures, some amount of tear-out still happens. Some people avoid tear-out by putting tape over the area to be cut, but that is time consuming and messy.
Quick Tip for Grooving a Dowel
Do you need to cut a groove in a dowel? All you need is a table saw and a couple of 2"x4" scraps. Wind the blade completely down into the table saw. Clamp the 2"x4" scraps to the fence near the blade. Turn on the table saw and raise the height of the blade. As the blade cuts into the dowel, rotate the dowel.
10 Tips For Cutting Plywood.
Re-sawing Lumber with a Band Saw
So you want 1/8″ thick exotic wood, or maybe thinner? Or slice a 3/4″ thick board into some 1/4″ thick pieces? It’s a common question from our customers. “Can you slice a thicker board into numerous thinner boards?” It’s a sensible question because it seems like a big waste of wood to plane a 3/4″ thick board to 1/4″. So, sure, re-sawing is no problem.
Re-sawing Small Logs on the Band Saw Using a Shop-Built Rip Sled
With a decent band saw and a simple shop-built rip sled, relatively small logs can be resawn into lumber in the home shop. By relatively small, I mean logs of up to 6" to 10" in diameter (this of course depends on the capacity of your band saw) and up to roughly 2 or 3 feet in length. Attempting to cut full-length (i.e., 8 foot) logs on a home shop's band saw would be quite unmanageble, not to mention dangerous. If you want to cut the big timber, you should consider using a commercial grade saw mill machine.
There's a fine art to making thin boards out of thick ones. Re-sawing is the art of slicing large boards into smaller ones. And it is an art - any woodworker who has done a lot of re-sawing will testify to that. To re-saw a board - and do a good job of it - you have to know your machine intimately and develop a “feel” for the wood. This blend of knowledge and skill is what elevates this simple technique to an art.
After struggling with his band saw fence, blocks, clamps, and a re-saw guide, John Hodges decided to design his own band saw re-sawing guide. You can build one just like it by gathering up some scrap stock. To use this guide, first mark a line along the top edge of the piece to be re-sawed. Adjust the center portion of the jig until the band saw blade aligns with the marked line on the wood. Tighten the wing nuts that to secure it in the miter-gauge slot.
