I came across this big 500-pound
piece of log, which just to get it home in my car,
I had to quarter it.
And I did that with a chainsaw
and splitting it. But, to put those pieces
on my bandsaw, I still need to cut them in half.
And ideally, I'd like to make a very straight chainsaw cut.
Now, chainsaws are designed to primarily cut
across a log, like this.
And that configuration, the teeth are always cutting
side-grain, and that works reasonably well.
But, if you want to mill a log into lumber,
you're cutting like this,
and that means you're always cutting
straight into end-grain.
And this configuration,
its really hard to get any sort of
chips out at all.
But, the direction that's easiest to get chips out,
is along the grain, like this.
So, if the bar of the chainsaw
was parallel to the grain, like this,
that would work really well, but I can't
reach the whole log like this.
So, I figured the next best approximation would be
to cut at a really shallow angle, like this,
and then gradually work in steeper
until I'm cutting all the way through the log.
My first thought was to just run the bar of the chainsaw
along a 2 by 4, but the chain actually cuts
a bit wider than the bar,
so I just end up cutting into the 2 by 4.
So, my next thought was, to run the chainsaw
along this part here, but it turns out
this is not entirely parallel to the bar of the chainsaw.
So, what I've come up with is
I managed to barely drill a couple of holes in the bar.
And I made this guide
that I can bolt to the bar,
and that's parallel, and I'll use that
along the 2 by 4 to guide the chainsaw
for the first few cuts.
So, I have my guide 2 by 4
attached to a log.
And let's see if this actually works.
Wow, that went way faster than I imagined,
especially for the first bit of the cut.
Though here, this is pretty messy.
Hopefully, with practice, I'll get that smoother.
That's getting better already.
The cut I made from the other end,
that was a mistake. I got that misaligned.
And I think what's happening is sometimes the channel
gets so plugged up with sawdust,
I just need to sweep through it from time to time.
Because otherwise I'm cutting through the sawdust
and I don't necessarily cut it where it was.
So smooth, all I need is some 220 bit sandpaper
and it's done.
At just 2 and a half minutes per cut, it'd be tempting
to finish and cut this up into boards.
But the chainsaw curve is just too wide and I'd be
wasting a lot of lumber.
And the cool thing about some of these shavings,
they're long and straight, like this,
and those are excellent for starting fires in a wood stove.
Then it was time to take those heavy blocks inside
and first I get a nice square edge on it,
and then I start cut out some boards on it.
But, I ran into a problem here.
It just wouldn't go.
And the first thing I did is check the belt tension
and tension it up a little bit to get a bit more power.
But, the blade just wouldn't go any further
and when that happens, there's only one thing to do.
And that is to back it out,
which was difficult because the curve was full of shavings.
And then sharpen the blade.
So, it's taking out the blade, here.
I'm using my usual sharpening method with a dremmel.
It looks like I'm just rubbing along the teeth,
but I'm actually touching every individual tooth.
And to sharpen the entire blade,
took about 3 and a half minutes.
This is playing at 16 times speed.
Man, what a difference a sharpened blade makes.
I'm just cutting so much faster now.
Some slight waviness in my previous cuts,
so I'm just going over the jointer a couple of times
to straighten it, and then cutting more boards
off of this chunk of log.
Last cut is just to flatten that rough edge a little bit
so the wood will stack better.
I started every one of those blocks
by squaring it up on the jointer so I'd have a good
reference edge. But man, I never thought I'd
put 60 pound pieces of wood on that jointer.
But, it stood up to the abuse.
Handling all that heavy lumber and pushing it across
the bandsaw, sure was a good workout for the arms.
In fact, I was starting to feel a tingle in my arms,
which is a good signal that says,
I should really stop.
Having thourally tired out my arms
from all this bandsawing,
I just didn't want to carry the last 2 blocks
down into the basement, so I split them apart
by cutting from both sides with a skill saw.
And that cut just barely deep enough
that I could get them apart.
And those square sections,
I'll let them dry and then I can just resaw them
into whatever I need later.
And here's all the lumber from that log.
It's gonna take a while to dry.
And even longer to use it up.