Anyone ever milled lap siding at home?

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Jesse snowden

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Hello again ya'll

So I'm happy to share more details of the project as it comes about, but I wanted to see if anyone has tried it with a chainsaw mill! The goal is 6" wide lap siding that is 1/2 inch thick on one side and 1/8 inch on the other. Out of a combination of western hemlock, douglas fir and whatever spruce/pine/fir I can get. I'm in the seattle area and windfalls in winter time are what I'm hoping to use to get started.

Here is the plan:
1. Mill 6"thick slabs @ 10-12 feet
2. Cut slabs into 6×7 beams with a prazi beam cutter
3. Send beams through bandsaw for 1" boards
4. Stack and dry 1" until I have enough to do the job
5. Send the boards through the bandsaw again at an angle to give me the 1/8th-1/2 bevel

Any tips/suggestions/alterations/additions to the plan gentlemen?
 
What kind of bandsaw do you have? Resawing is hard work and hard on a bandsaw especially if it's underpowered.


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What kind of bandsaw do you have? Resawing is hard work and hard on a bandsaw especially if it's underpowered.

Haven't bought it yet. I move into the house at the end of September and I'm waiting until then to buy a bandsaw. Thinking I'll get one from grizzly. They have a 17" with a 2hp motor for under 1,000 bucks.
 
You might be better off hiring someone with a band mill. As with all projects like this it boils down to how much is your time worth. I've never seen it done on a shop bandsaw only a band mill but may well be feasible. I would probably saw the lumber in such a way that if you tilted the bandsaw table and sawed at your desired bevel you end up with two equal opposite pieces. Less waste.


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I was getting ready for just what u are talking about. When hot weather hit. I cut a few pieces of pine and planning to use on a privacy fence, with live edge exposed on the face. They are going to be vertical and not horizontal like on a house.

Waiting on Jesus
 
You might be better off hiring someone with a band mill. As with all projects like this it boils down to how much is your time worth. I've never seen it done on a shop bandsaw only a band mill but may well be feasible. I would probably saw the lumber in such a way that if you tilted the bandsaw table and sawed at your desired bevel you end up with two equal opposite pieces. Less waste.


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Yup that was the plan! If I start with a 1"board, tilt the table and use a tall rip fence I should end up with roughly 1/2-5/8 on the big side and 1/8-1/4 on the other. Close enough :) and it gives me an excuse with my lady to buy a 240 volt bandsaw.
 
Yup that was the plan! If I start with a 1"board, tilt the table and use a tall rip fence I should end up with roughly 1/2-5/8 on the big side and 1/8-1/4 on the other. Close enough :) and it gives me an excuse with my lady to buy a 240 volt bandsaw.

Yes!! That's how I get all my new tools. "Honey of you want $xxx piece of furniture in gonna need $xxxx piece of equipment to make it happen." Works every time. . . . Well sometimes. . . . Ok, almost never [emoji854]


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Could just shim the chain saw mill where it touches the wood to cut on an angle? You could do it after you square the log up the the 6 inches wide. Then you could just slab off your siding. And if I'm think right you could just keep switching ends you started from to keep every other cut level.
 
There is no doubt that a bandsaw will work for making lap siding but like another said ..what is your time worth..
Your 10'-12'- 6"x7" are going to be heavy and a PIA to flop around.
You will need at least a 7' infeed and another at the other end of the same length.. Plus a place to sticker and stack your lumber when cut..
The jig should be fairly straight forward, just make sure its stout enough.
If your shop is not large enough you might want to set up your bandsaw outside for the max room.
Two people would really help to ease things..

I want to see pics when you are doing this..

G Vavra
PS; for me I would just get my neighborhood woodmizer guy to do it..
 
I was thinking the same thing. Manhandling those beams on and off the bandsaw is gonna be real back breaking labor. Ideally you could set up industrial rollers as indeed and outfeed tables. The kind used for unloading trucks. They can sometimes be found on Craigslist for pretty cheap.


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That is a good point! I didn't really think about feeding the beams through the saw. Luckily the garage I have is 2 car long in line. So it's something like 35 feet long and 12 feet wide. So will definitely have to build benches at table height for both sides. Good suggestions.
 
I did this some time ago (pre kids) when I had more time on my hands! I made a jig for the mill that you can see in the first picture, it's basically a piece of beveled siding with blocks screwed on to hold it between the mill rails. It actually works pretty slick and you can flip it around as you alternate passes down the cant. It doesn't show in these pictures but I rabbeted a grove on the thick side so I could overlap the siding and get a tight seal. It also gave me some adjustment range to compensate for slightly different board widths.

Definitely not very efficient because you produce as much sawdust as you do siding. I used it on a garden shed so I didn't need to make too much of it. I'll see if I can dig up some pictures of the siding installed. It's western redcedar.
 
The bandsaw would certainly be more efficient from a material waste standpoint...I didn't have one available or the covered area to set one up. The large cants could get tough to manhandle through the bandsaw without a good infeed and outfeed set up.

Sorta depends on how much siding you need I guess.
 
The house is a pretty basic square shape, built in the 40's. I'm estimating about 1,600 square feet of wall need to be covered. Rough number. And I think the usual ratio is if I have 6" wide boards it will have a 4" reveal. So add another 33% and I come up with over 2,000 square feet of siding to mill... probably more like 2,500 with waste and scraps.

I'll probably be wishing I paid a guy with a bandsaw mill to come by once I'm done. But making something out of nothing is my absolute favorite thing to do. And siding/roofing a house for the cost of the tools is too good of an opportunity to pass up!
 
If you have access to material definitely bypass the bandsaw. There are a lot more fulfilling things to make than siding BTW haha.


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I've made siding on my BSM too, I wouldn't even want to have to pay for enough gas and oil to CSM out that much siding, let alone waste that much wood using a CSM, with it's huge kerf...

As far as re-sawing it on a home band saw, I've seen it done, and I've also done plenty of re-sawing boards on my home band saw, to know it's a really slooow time consuming process to re-saw very much on a home BS...

SR
 
I've made siding on my BSM too, I wouldn't even want to have to pay for enough gas and oil to CSM out that much siding, let alone waste that much wood using a CSM, with it's huge kerf...

As far as re-sawing it on a home band saw, I've seen it done, and I've also done plenty of re-sawing boards on my home band saw, to know it's a really slooow time consuming process to re-saw very much on a home BS...

SR

I'd have to say resawing is probably one of my least favorite tasks in the shop.


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