Sawing Out Cement Form Stakes

[Sawyer Rob]

I'm going to pour an approach in front of the man door on my shop one of these days, so i thought i'd make some stakes for the forms as i'm about out of them.

Every time i saw a log, there's always a board under the slab with a lot of wayne on it, so i started sawing out those boards at about 5/8" thick to make stakes out of.

First i rolled a red oak onto the mill and sawed the first slab off..

Once i had the slab off, i took one "stake" board off and turned the log.

With the log turned, i started over and took another slab off and also another board for stakes off.

You can see the stake boards have a lot of wayne on them, but sometimes like this one they can be pretty good quality and if good enough i put them aside for some other use.

Rolling the logs is very easy useing my mills "log loader/turner".

Check out the wood "rays" on this quarter sawn board!!

Here's what i got out of that log, you can see the stake boards on the left in the picture.

Now to make the stakes. First i used a curcular saw to saw all the boards to 40" length Once that was done i could take them in the shop and saw them again to 20" boards, and start edgeing them. Once edged, i ripped them into two boards and then split them again on an angle corner to corner.

Before you yell SAFETY to me, i took the guards off so i could get better pictures for you...

Here some of them ready to use! Hope you enjoyed the picts..

Rob

 

[dustytools]

Awesome pics. Rob. Is the log turner/roller powered manually or by electric? It looks like it could be easily made with some come-along parts and pieces.

 

[Sawyer Rob]

Awesome pics. Rob. Is the log turner/roller powered manually or by electric? It looks like it could be easily made with some come-along parts and pieces.

Yes, you could make the log loader/turner at home, but i don't think it's as easy as it looks. I know several guys that have made them, and they ended up building them twice to get them to work decent.

Another thing. Mines powered with a boat winch, but NOT just any boat winch, this one has two speeds, and in low it's geared very low. I've seen guys buy a cheapo boat winch, and then it wouldn't turn big logs.... A come-along would work, but i think it would take a lot of danceing around to get it to work smoothly. It's VERY dangerous rolling 2,or 3,000 pounds logs, so this isn't the place to go cheapo.... The hook is another thing that HAS to be right, or it will bend or just slip out all the time.

I did make an adapter for my drill, to turn mine into electric powered. With the winch geared so low, i can use it with my 14.4V cordless drill, as long as i have a "good" batt. and keep it in "low"... AND, in this case going slow is important!

It works pretty good, and only took me about an hour to make... I don't saw for all out speed, so most times i'm fine with just turning the crank to get the job done as i like the control it gives...

Rob