Resawing/leveling with Alaskan mill

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When my badly stored/stacked/strapped slabs have warped badly, I figured out awhile ago that router flattening the kinds of hardwoods I work with is way too much work because I can only make the thinnest of passes each time. I'm mostly dealing with 1300-2700 Janka hardness woods, whereas your average hardwood runs in the 900-1300 Janka range. I've seen some people convert router sled flattening tables to a leveling setup where their Alaskan mill runs on the frame rails and was thinking of doing that myself. But my existing router sled frame doesn't quite work with the mill and bar widths I have.

I'd never been quite sure why it wasn't a good idea to try to level the bottom side of a slab running an Alaskan mill conventionally on it, other than the slab needing it to be raised enough on supports for the saw to have clearance. And the supports need to be somewhat sacrificial in case you skim through the top of them. I never thought it through properly, and was worried something might collapse if the bar came out the bottom of the slab at some points on the cut rather than cutting off a whole sheet of wood. When I was resawing a thick edge piece into a slab, where the middle of the piece was much thinner than the ends, I went through in the middle before re-engaging as I got toward the other end and it wasn't a problem. (So the back end of the cut collapses - if the bar has exited that part of the cut it makes no difference, there's no binding.)

When I thought it through, I realized what you're cutting off on the bottom doesn't matter if it's whole or little sheets of wood being trimmed off. The cut is bound by your guide on top and your bar at the bottom of the cut. To be clear, I'm using a ladder on the top side to level the warped slab like any first cut. Where I did run into some problems with this skim leveling technique was after I botched a cut by thinking I had set both posts on my mill to 5 3/4" height and discovering midway through the cut I set the inside edge at 4 3/4" and thus did a cockeyed cut for the length of the slab, losing much more wood than I had planned to. When I flipped it over and ran my mill on the flat side to level the angled bottom side, the outer 4-6" of the bar were skimming the surface of the wood on the bottom and I noticed occasional violent jerking of the mill as I went through the cut. I think the tip of the bar was catching now and then on the wood surface and kicking back hard. It made for a much uglier cut than usual with a lot of small gouge marks. So I've concluded you really want the outer end of the bar buried in wood and not skimming when doing any leveling. Other than that it seems to work fine.

The table below with 4x4 blocks on top is my resaw table and that's a partial sheet of red oak I trimmed off. Usually I move the blocks around on the table and screw them in at the bottom, to chock short slabs I'm resawing (there are lips on top of the blocks). When doing larger heavier slabs which don't need chocking as much like the ones I was skim leveling, I just place them on top of the blocks. I did slide the cockeyed slab off the rear block while leveling the second side and I didn't bother putting it back in place and finished the cut going at an upward angle and it made no difference to the cut. More proof that the mill being guided properly on the top side is the only thing that matters.
 

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Nice. When you've spent enough hours flattening badly out of shape slabs and found that it can take an entire day, this solution makes sense. Why not use this powerful and fast tool that we already have and know how to operate. Good idea.
Do you clamp the slab down so it doesn't move?

I have a big piece of the crotch of an oak that has serious material needing to come off, (I had to cut it freehand because it's too wide for the mill) and I've been thinking of how to do it without burning through a whole set of planer blades cutting and cutting. I'll probably cut slices with the circular saw and knock the chunks out. Although some of it is end grain, and it will take some skill and good eyeballs for flatness, so it will be interesting.

For taking off big material fast there's also the Triton 6" hand planer. I've only heard good things about this fine piece of Chinese engineering. But with the electric planers you need a lot of skill, and some time, and then have deep ridges in the wood to sand (and sand, and sand) out.
If you made a handheld circular saw sled instead of a router sled, that could be good. Slice the length of the wood across the grain an inch or two apart and then knock the chunks off with a chisel. ...Could be onto something there.
 
Nice. When you've spent enough hours flattening badly out of shape slabs and found that it can take an entire day, this solution makes sense. Why not use this powerful and fast tool that we already have and know how to operate. Good idea.
Do you clamp the slab down so it doesn't move?
This way I was doing this left a bit to be desired, but was working okay. Haven't done any more for awhile now. I just clamped small pieces by chocking them in place with my lipped 4x4's - a pretty large piece I did on my sawhorses, I clamped the slab to the sawhorses and took each clamp off when I got to it and then put it back on when I got past it. I've been looking for inexpensive pallet racking 3-4' wide and 8-10' long with two pairs of horizontals, one pair to run the saw mill on and another shelf below to put the slab on I want to trim (or even whole logs). If I can secure the piece so it doesn't move at all, then the chainsaw mill becomes like a giant horizontal bridge saw and I can just trim the top of the piece. With pallet racking you'd have a lot of flexibility to move the lower shelf up and down due to the number of slots on the verticals that pallet racking has. And run the mill in a comfortable standing position at whatever height you want. The only problem to pallet racking is the horizontals are each about 3" wide, meaning you lose another 6" beyond the 6" you lose in a mill from overall bar length. So you need a 48" bar to trim 36" slabs. I have a bunch of 30-32" slabs my 42" bar won't quite do in that kind of setup. I was thinking of using the pallet racking setup for my router planing setup too, instead of building a whole dedicated router planing table.
 
I looked up the pallet racking and see what you mean. I don't understand why the pallet horizontal widths would reduce the width capacity you could cut though, as long as you can fit the mill attachment over them.
You would use the normal Alaskan mill but ride it on the top horizontal rack/shelf, right? If you got a rack that has a little less depth, like 2.5', a 36" bar w Alaskan mill would fit over it and you would have the same capacity as you ever do with that bar. And you could just cut a plywood sheet to go on the bottom shelf as wide as desired to hold the slab. The racking would have to be longer than the slab, though, so that a 3.5' wide slab could fit in a 2.5' depth rack without hitting the verticals.
 
I looked up the pallet racking and see what you mean. I don't understand why the pallet horizontal widths would reduce the width capacity you could cut though, as long as you can fit the mill attachment over them.
You're totally right. I was having a brainfreeze and thinking about how it wouldn't work right on my existing flimsy router sled table that has pallet horizontals as part of the frame the router sled runs on, because of flex problems with my table (light combo aluminum/steel 10' table frame I picked up as junk curbside). The pallet racking setup it wouldn't lose anything.

Yeah, slab has to be shorter than the length of the horizontals. Not much issue in most cases because 10' horizontals are pretty standard and can get longer ones. The nice thing about pallet racking is that heavy steel tubing has zero sag over a 10' span. A lot of lighter steel or aluminum tubing has some sag over a 10' span. If you notice also, the horizontal tubing is shaped with a recess on the inside edge, so you can put cross members all along the length of it to make a shelf, much stronger than plywood. It may actually be designed to hold 1 5/8" thick 2x4's as cross members flush with the level of the outside part of the tubing, I'll have to check mine.

I have to keep checking the steel recycling yard for pallet racks here. They sell old steel at .30 a pound and I found some 8' horizontals there a few years back but didn't click in my mind at the time to get verticals too make a pallet rack system. I just need a half height set of verticals (4-5' tall) and four 10' or 12' horizontals. Something like this photo but with lower racks too.
 

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Went down to the steel recycling yard and had a look around, no pallet racking to be had. Going to wait til I find it on the cheap, not worth spending top dollar on it. Bought some galvalume R panels though and finally broke down my light 10’x3’ salvaged table frame I'd been trying to widen/adapt/make work as a router sled frame for too long and turned it into a roof frame for more covered work space outside. So have more incentive to create a combo setup for chainsaw leveling and router sled planing now, cause have nothing at the moment.
 

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This is actually a great idea. How are you holding the slab in place and are you still using wedges like you normally would?
Which part of all my figuring-it-out babble are you talking about lol? The pallet rack bridge saw idea or where I started with the resaw table? Made another wood resaw table since I first posted out of 2' wide by 8' long heavy wood pallets I got for free from some business, but just have resawn a couple of short thick slabs in half with it so far. Still on the hunt for cheap pallet racking. Always am using wedges to keep the cut open if that's what you're talking about, no matter how I do it.
 
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