Bandsawing some small stuff

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BobL

No longer addicted to AS
AS Supporting Member.
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Perth, Australia
The Woodlander has been getting flogging on hard stuff but since last Friday has been getting a rest so I thought I would give it something easy to do.
On Saturday I finally got around to breaking up a 100 year old ft x ft by 6ft Jarrah beam for a mate of mine - he only gave it to me to cut up about 6 months ago and I only just got onto it. The beam comes from some 100+ year old wool store warehouse near Fremantle Harbour that was demolished about 20 years ago. Some real history there.

I cut 6 ~2" thick boards from it.
IMG_5362.jpg

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Cut like a hot knife thru warm butter .

This morning I milled up 4 short English Oak logs from a yard tree - my first time on milling this wood.
These are not my logs and when I took the job I told the client I was busy and would take 4-8 weeks to get to this job. Anyway I'm delivering tomorrow which is at the 6 week mark so I am pleased about this
All milled at 1 1/4" thickness.
EOAK2.jpg
EOAK1.jpg

Hit a very rusty nail on the last one log (red arrow) - shoulda paid attention to the black stain appearing in the wood.
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BImetallic blade cut right through the nail but didn't risk a second cut.
I flipped the log and cut down to the first sign of stain.
Cut speed had dropped by ~50% but I managed to cut 3 slabs before stain showed and I stopped.
If I had hit the nail again I wasn't fussed as band is up for sharpening anyway.
I warned client about nails in yard trees and that he's up for a sharpening fee.
Nail.jpg
Apart from after hitting the nail, was again like a hot knife thru warm butter.
Boss just called to say there are more Oak logs coming in on the next truckload of logs.
 
Todays wood is Norfolk Island Pine (NIP).
Iit grows like a weed around these parts and people that plant them in home gardens eventually regret it (huge, invasive roots, drop endless super itchy needles and branches) and so the tree lopper gets to remove lots of them.
We have several dozen NIP logs in the yard (AL = Arucaria cumminghamii) and I thought I would try milling one as I have never done one before.

Logs1.jpg

This has to be the softest stuff I have ever cut, softer even than Lebanese Cedar.
It's tempting to go super fast but the blade will dive when it encounters knots, of which it has more than a few.
We broke the log up into a 16" cant and then broke that up into ~2 1/2" thick slabs.

NIPmilling1.jpg


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The face cuts bow enough to be near useless so I selected the 2 centre most slabs (pseudo quarter sawn) and this is how the 1 1./4 boards came out
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The aim is to turn this lumber into a smallish rustic desk/worktable for my autistic Grandson
So I kept one 16" wide boards to use as a top, and the rest I broke up into almost 100 ft of 1 1/4" x 3 3/4"
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It almost took longer to clean up than it did to mill this timber.
 
Nice. I want to get a smaller Woodland mills BSM in near future.
I like Pine. We have some great Pines here. Eastern White being the favorite, but there are so many like Red and Scotch that it's a very popular wood and always has been. The Pine and Spruce from this area was floated down the mighty Ottawa River to the St. Lawrence River then shipped out to build the first large U.S. cities of America like Portland, Boston, N.Y.C.
Of course as the forest of large Pines near these Metropolises got cut away, lumber companies went farther north, south and west to fine the easy, large trees.
 
Nice. I want to get a smaller Woodland mills BSM in near future.
I like Pine. We have some great Pines here. Eastern White being the favorite, but there are so many like Red and Scotch that it's a very popular wood and always has been. The Pine and Spruce from this area was floated down the mighty Ottawa River to the St. Lawrence River then shipped out to build the first large U.S. cities of America like Portland, Boston, N.Y.C.
Of course as the forest of large Pines near these Metropolises got cut away, lumber companies went farther north, south and west to fine the easy, large trees.
We only have a few native pines here in Oz, the rest, like Norfolk Island, and loads of Radiata plantations that supplies the building trade are foreign.
The native pines are relatively rare and only grow in very select places.
King William Pine is a really nice pine that only grows on the Island of Tasmania. I used pieces of this to make the top of a guitar.IMG_8069.jpg
Houn pine also only grows in Tasmania and is famous for its ability to survive under water for centuries. They're still hauling up sunken logs from river beds to use as felling remaining forests of this has ceased. Its a prized timber for use in wooden boats.
The rarest plant in the world is the Wollemi Pine that grows in just an isolated gorge of the blue mountains 150 miles from Sydney. The location not accessible to the publics as there are just 40 know tree left.
We're 2500 miles away on the other side of the country in Western Australia and agin the only native pine we have grows on a small island (Rottnest Is) a few of these have been successfully transplanted to the mainland but I still have not been able to find one to mill.
Fortunately we have many different species of other timbers (800! species of Eucalypts) so there' plenty of variety.
 
This is sort of "milling small stuff" using my upright home shop WW BS

My BIL asked me if I wanted some Macadamia pistachio nut tree branches as a couple of large branches had fallen off one of his trees in a recent storm. Its is very dense but not that hard.
Unfortunately it was mostly small stuff, but I managed to get 4 pieces between 6 - 10' in diameter and between 2 - 3 FT long.
BIL wants me to use some of it to make something small for them as a memento.Logs.jpg
I cut a couple of the more interesting ends off (like that 3 way branch union) for my carving mate and the cut then to 26" or less so they would fit in my BS sled.

Here is one of the bigger ones on the sled.
The ends of the sled are adjustable plus there are 3 pointed bolts at each end that screw into the ends of the logs.
The underside of the sled slides and is held in the mitre slide.
Carbide tipped 1.3TPI blade makes short work of the cuts.
log1.jpg

This is the smallest log.
Only 3 of the pointed bolts make contact on this one so this is about the smallest size I can cut.
log2.jpg
I use th sled to cut 2 adjacent 90º sides using the sled and then will eventually revert to just using the BS fence to cut up boards and squares.
Wood is blander than I remember although there are some interesting greenish streaks in a couple of the logs.
I seem to recall the green tinges eventually go brown.
2sides.jpg
 
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