Wood Thicknessing

[bernienufc]

Hi all

I have been hovering in the background reading and learning as we all do at the beginning and have generally found most of what i am looking for, shows what a good site this is.

I am a hobyist and new to woodworking but have pretty good diy skills and moderate aptitude for anything practical, which means i am really enjoying this new hobby, especially scroll work.
So to the question, most of what i have been working with seems to be in the 6-8mm thickness and most of the Ash donated to me is in the 15mm area. I have a planer thickensses and have had no problem as such getting the wood down, but to me its such a waste of good quality wood, and i geneerally use every single scrap i can out of it.

So far i have made 8 money boxes with different dogs on ( thank you Steve G) and also the santa and sleigh from toy making, all the money made from selling them has gone to greyhound rescue, so i need to keep on but i just cant get it out of my head not to waste wood like this, so do i have any other options?

Thanks for reading
Bernie

 

[yetloh]

If you had a reasonable bandsaw you could slice through the thicker stuff to double up the quantity you have available.

Jim

 

[Scoffy]

Hi, can you not resaw the Ash to the required thickness? If you are OK with 6mm you could get 2 pieces from a15 mm piece using a good bandsaw blade, then you have no waste and twice the wood to work with.

 

[bernienufc]

The band saw i have is not good enough i think. The wood i get is about 400x150x15 i was not sure whether to ask a chap around the corner to see if his band saw would do it, but it seems i should at least ask, thank you

 

[woodcrafter]

Resawing can be done on practically any bandsaw, you just need the right blade. You want the widest blade your bandsaw's wheels can accommodate and low teeth per inch count. The fewer teeth that are in the wood at any one time the better the blade will evacuate the sawdust from the cut and not get clogged up. Make yourself an adjustable jig to set the saw up to accurately cut down the middle of your ash and with a little practice you'll be resawing like a champion.
Lots of resawing techniques explained on Youtube so have a peruse.
C.

 

[bernienufc]

I was just reading another post and it mentioned 'resaw' i have never heard of this, off to youtube i think, thank you

 

[Jacob]

Rule of thumb says expect to lose 6mm flattening a sawn board so that'd leave you with 2 x 1.5mm. You might do better than that but you'd be pushing it to get 2x 6mm from 15mm as you'd need a very precise tiny kerf (laser cutting?) and you would hope that it wouldn't warp at all after ripping, which it almost always will.
So I'd just keep reducing your 15mm to whatever you want and ignore the waste.

 

[bernienufc]

It was interesting to see the resawing in action and your comments Jacob make good sense. I will take a piece of ash round to the chap near wrok and see how it comes out just to see and learn what can and cant be done.
thanks again

 

[Jacob]

Can't beat having a go!
If it doesn't warp you might get away with sawing at 9mm to plane to 6mm, with the off cut planing to say 3mm which could be useful for partitions in boxes frinstance.
Also cut to size first if you aren't looking for boards the full 150mm width. More likely to get the thickness you want from narrower boards.

 

[blackrodd]

Can't beat having a go!
If it doesn't warp you might get away with sawing at 9mm to plane to 6mm, with the off cut planing to say 3mm which could be useful for partitions in boxes frinstance.
Also cut to size first if you aren't looking for boards the full 150mm width. More likely to get the thickness you want from narrower boards.

If I may say so, My thoughts exactly. to try and avoid warping, It is always good practice to try and take material equally from both sides when possible 'cos of the stresses inside the workpiece. cutting down the centre could end up rather wasteful by cupping. Regards Rodders

 

[bernienufc]

If I may say so, My thoughts exactly. to try and avoid warping, It is always good practice to try and take material equally from both sides when possible 'cos of the stresses inside the workpiece. cutting down the centre could end up rather wasteful by cupping. Regards Rodders

Took me a couple of reads but i got there, thanks

 

[custard]

It's almost certain that you'll get some warping when you resaw a board. It depends on how straight grained the timber is, how dry it is, and if it's quarter sawn or rift sawn, but as well as the loss due to the kerf you could well need another 2 or 3mm per board to correct any warping and clean up the cut. So as an example, you'd probably need a 20mm board (and a decent bandsaw!) to be reasonably confident of getting two finished 6mm boards.

If your target is 6-8mm finished boards I wouldn't resaw a 15mm board, I'd just thickness to dimension and accept the loss.

 

[bernienufc]

Well at lest i dont feel too bad about losing so much wood now,thanks for the informative replies, an interesting learning exercise.

 

[RogerS]

And when you are thicknessing remember to remove stuff from each side. Don't just plane up one face and thickness everything from off of the other side.

 

[yetloh]

I think Jacob is being unduly pessimistic about the loss of thickness when resawing. Using Tuffsaws vari-pitch 1mm kerf blade I have successfully resawn and surfaced ash with a loss of only 3mm. Admittedly, this was with a good band saw carefully set up and great attention to the right continuous feed rate, but it shows what can be achieved . This blade really is that good.

Jim

 

[RogerS]

I think Jacob is being unduly pessimistic about the loss of thickness when resawing. Using Tuffsaws vari-pitch 1mm kerf blade I have successfully resawn and surfaced ash with a loss of only 3mm. Admittedly, this was with a good band saw carefully set up and great attention to the right continuous feed rate, but it shows what can be achieved . This blade really is that good.

Jim

It's not so much loss of thickness but the incredible ability to create two banana shaped pieces from something that was, at least, nominally straight.

 

[CHJ]

With a good blade (does not have to be wide) and care with setup loss of thickness can be a minimum.

 

[bernienufc]

Thank you for the brand Jim, will keep a look out.

I actrually have a duratec blade on order as i was told these were good....
cheers

 

[yetloh]

It's not so much loss of thickness but the incredible ability to create two banana shaped pieces from something that was, at least, nominally straight.

It can happen but is certainly not inevitable. Often it is a consequence of varying moisture content through the board which will correct itself if the wood is allowed to equalise its moisture content.

Jim

 

[Jacob]

It's not so much loss of thickness but the incredible ability to create two banana shaped pieces from something that was, at least, nominally straight.

It can happen but is certainly not inevitable. Often it is a consequence of varying moisture content through the board which will correct itself if the wood is allowed to equalise its moisture content.

Jim

Possible, but more often it's differential tension (like case hardening) which is not reversible unfortunately.