Probably a dumb Q; rebating a 'railway' sleeper

[m1ke_a]

Folks

I've just got ten new oak 'sleepers' to act as a base for my new shed but I need to cut a rebate in them. One end is going to rest on a 9" hollow concrete block wall, butted up to a new 4" concrete raft. T'other end of the sleepers will be resting on gabion cages.

The sleepers are 5" thick so I need to cut a 1" deep by 9" long rebate so that they'll butt onto the 9" hollows and be flush with the top of the new raft, Hope that makes sense? :?:

I only have a circular saw and a selection of hand saws. A SCMS would allow me to trench the 1" deep cut and slowly feed the wood through to get the rebate but I don't have a SCMS. I guess I could do this with the circ saw but I'm not sure the best way to cut down the long section? I suspect trying to hand saw horizontally is going to be quite hard work and the sleepers are 2.6m long so I can't really stand them on end and saw down vertically.

Any ideas s'il vous plait?

 

[kostello]

cut lots of grooves the correct depth (1") across the grain.

so that the waste material is in small strips

then knock the waste out with a hammer and chisel.................

 

[Midnight]

job for the router I reckon...

 

[m1ke_a]

cut lots of grooves the correct depth (1") across the grain.

so that the waste material is in small strips

then knock the waste out with a hammer and chisel.................

Cheers

You reckon chisel out rather than trying to hand saw the waste out?

I actually have the floor space to lay them out together so I can cut the grooves in one session but man handling 800Kg of wood isn't exactly a one man job (that I'm looking forward to).

 

[AndyT]

Well, you did say that you can't put the wood on end and don't want to saw horizontally; cross cuts to the right depth followed by chiselling will work well.

If you don't want to chisel and have an electric plane, this is probably the sort of job it could do successfully. Line up all your sleepers side by side and plane across the ends. (It's still worth making saw cuts first to give you a clear indication of depth.)

Better to take several light cuts than try to do it all in one go.

 

[m1ke_a]

Well, you did say that you can't put the wood on end and don't want to saw horizontally; cross cuts to the right depth followed by chiselling will work well.

If you don't want to chisel and have an electric plane, this is probably the sort of job it could do successfully. Line up all your sleepers side by side and plane across the ends. (It's still worth making saw cuts first to give you a clear indication of depth.)

Better to take several light cuts than try to do it all in one go.

I'm open to suggestions that keep the work to a minimum. I won't discount horizontally sawing the waste out though I suspect it's going to be quite laborious. Hadn't thought about planing the waste away so thanks for that. I've now got three options to try, chisel, saw and plane so I'll give them all a go. Be prepared for post work pics of 800Kgs of butchered stock and match sticks! :lol:

 

[awemawson]

Definately a job for a chainsaw. Take but a few minutes. Mind you, when we laid our arched bridge over the stream here on the farm using ' oak crossing sleepers' (longer than usual 8'6" railway sleepers) I had to sharpen the chain twice trimming the ends off 20 sleepers to cut them back to a uniform 10' to fit the curved rjs that support the bridge. But these were old and extremely hard.

 

[m1ke_a]

Well we whizzed through the cross cuts with the TS55 in about 5 mins. Then started chiselling the waste out which was OK, though I had one sleeper that was being very stubborn breaking the waste. Fingers crossed this is the only one as I still have 5 tonne of gabion stone to barrow off the drive.

Guess what I'm going to be doing this weekend? :-({|=