Cutting up a Log

hello everyone today I want to summon my inner Matt Cremona and start soaring up some blogs so and I've got this big lump of you here which it's been sitting around for ages my mate chained sawed it in half so he's got one outfit I've got the other half and I just want to soar it up into something usable now I have never done this before I have no idea what I do kind of know what I'm doing but I can't read logs that well but there is a lot more to think about as opposed to just cutting it into slices so and yeah I've got a Bansal I've got a nice sharp blade which should work really nicely for this let's just have a bit of fun I think all right so firstly let's mark out what I actually do know about logs so which end of this is flattest let's go with that one this thing is heavy right so obviously this is half a log which means that the growth rings are going to be like this sort of shape obviously they're going to follow the contours off the outside a little bit but overall they look like a sort of rainbow kind of thing now from my understanding you have three cats of wood you have got quarter sawn where all of the growth rings are right angles to the surface of the wood so if most cut a slice up here you see that all the growth rings are going across like that which have mean to the faces here they are perfect right angles and that actually gives you the most stability in terms of wood movement because we're trinks in the direction of the grain so this is going to shrink like that so mainly that dimension is going to change it will shrink a little bit more that way as well I think that's radially and this is tangental shrinking or something like that might be making that up might I've gotten the wrong way around but this is going to experience the least amount of wood movement the other sort of cut you've got is through and through or crown cut or something like that that's that is where you take a slice all the way through the log like that and you have the growth rings going sort of like that so this obviously gives you a little bit of a quarter sawn surface here and then it starts going diagonal and then it starts going a bit horizontal in the middle in most cases and this looks quite nice in terms of grain pattern I've got a bit you over there which is through sawn and it gives a really cool pattern the only issue of this in some cases is growth rings try and straighten themselves out over time so because there's arcs on these growth rings on this board that's going to be through here it would mean that as those arcs try and straighten out it's going to cut the board up like this so it's going to make this straight board that we have cut through on the bandsaw into a smiley face sort of pan the advantage to a three-song board other than the fact it looks quite nice is that it's very easy to reproduce obviously you just got a cut loads of strips through the wood like that and you're ready to go so when you buy Wayne eh timber with wainy edges on both sides generally it's gonna be through so on or it will be through so in the all cases really now the other option you have here is it's called rift sawn in America don't know if there's another word for it in the UK off it's the same one and that is where you take a chunk out of the material I don't know let's say here if it was a leg or something like that wait for the doorbell finish okay so rift sawn is where you can see that the growth rings here are going to be diagonal like that so this is going to shrink mainly across this diagonal here in the direction of those lines and a little bit less this way here but overall it's a pretty stable cut the advice to this is that this gives you straight grain on all four of the sides because the lines are going diagonal and they're going to go straight down from there whereas on a through some board where these lines sort of scraping the top surface like that that is what gives you the crown cut pattern quarter sawn you're going to get the most linear grain from it because they're going perfect right angles to the surface which would be here and rifts on all of the grain patterns are meeting up with all the faces so you're gonna get straight grain on all four of the faces quite good for chair legs and table just legs in general really so am I think given the size of this log I think it's gonna suit sort of boxes draw components I'm obviously not gonna make any legs and stuff out of it but then at the same time I do want to get some through sawing logs out of it because I really like the look of you when it is cut straight through and you get the sort of crown figuring pattern on it but then at the same time I've got some funky stuff going on here and I don't know if I through saw it if it's actually gonna be that stable because I've got these two branches that used to be coming out here if I cut that all the way through don't this what I mean I haven't done this before I don't quite know what's going to happen obviously it's gonna pretty much repeat that pattern all the way through is there going to be much of use for that it does look quite nice I'll give it that if I cut off these branches and just have that central section there that does look quite cool it actually looks book-matched even though it isn't the only issue being this line here looks to be the pith which is the like center growth ring and that tends to split as it is doing down here so I would need to get rid of that first and then the board after that would be the through so on board and I still have the issue of it capping over time because this bit of wood isn't very dry as far as I'm aware so as the material dries out that tends to be where most of the movement happens as much as through sawn gives you lovely patterns with you I think I'm probably just gonna try and quarter-sawed it I reckon but then at the same time I do want to test out how good that bandsaw cuts over something that deep right I reckon one through sword board will do off the bottom like that and then if that piff does start splitting overtime or something like that if I was to actually use it in a component I'll just fill it with resin or something like that and reef flat in it so we'll try it yeah we'll try and get one through so on board off that then the rest of it I'll try and quarter-sawed I reckon so just to reiterate that we're going to take one straight off the bottom like that so that's going to be our through so on board so all of this here and then after that we'll call the saw all these ones up from here they're going to start going to rifts ogham pieces here where the grain is going diagonal and then if I carry on sawing them here the grain is going to start going down more and that might give me some pretty cool patterns on the faces here but I think quarter sawn is probably going to be the way to go so what I'll actually do is do some cuts up like this and then I'll start doing cuts like this yeah I guess I'll do something like that maybe I might be being Oh actually no that could be a nice rifts on piece there I could just make a square of it I have no idea what I'm doing this is right fun right so setting up this bandsaw firstly isolate so that it can't turn on and kill me and remove my hands and all that so er right let's get my blade so this one is three quarters of an inch thick and it has four TPI on it so four teeth per inch and is a pretty coarse cut on there now unwrapping these this is always scary that's why I just chuck it on the floor there we go saves it exploding in your face so let's get to the other one wrapped up and then that should make the blade nice and loose good remove the mouth guard on there and I should just be able to unhook that off the wheel and get out the column around the table and then it's going to come out of this little side area here oh yeah okay and then to wrap them up put one foot on the bottom turn your hand to the opposite way and then you just turn know that one thing go and then just turn there we go and then somehow it gets itself into a nice old coil like that and it's ready to be hung up again right and then new blade on so make sure you've actually got it round to the correct way to start with because you don't want the teeth going the opposite way it need to take some tension off the wheel in order to get that in it's on the tire so let's just tension it up now alright now I'm just going to spin the wheel by hand and we're gonna get it tracking on there so now you can see that it's pretty close to the front tire and so on the back here as I'm turning it if I turn that one way maybe this way that's no the other way as I'm turning this it's gonna start tracking those wheels and it's gonna allow the blade to move back okay and there we go so it's looking pretty central now I did see a video by the Wood Whisperer where he did something with a guy I can't remember his name but he basically specializes in band saws and machinery and things like that and he said about setting the bandsaw blade instead of being in the center of the tie like that more towards the back so that the teeth are actually more towards the center at the tire rather than the center of the blade I can't remember the exact reasoning behind it if something's due at the arc of the wheel because if you put that blade central on the wheel and it's on the sort of arc then it's gonna wobble side-to-side whereas if you Center it more towards the back the teeth therefore have more tension applied to them so you're actually gonna get a straight to cut because those are now properly resting on the tires so I'm I'm to know the guy I definitely knew what it was talking about so I think I'm I'm just gonna try it like maybe towards the back this blades too thick to get the teeth right in the center of the wheel anyway so that's no I'm gonna yeah I'm gonna try it there so a little bit more towards the back let's just try this out and so now for the bearings I'm going to do is spin the wheel and just check that it's not hitting any of them so I've got one at the back here to check as well not hitting that and underneath the table not hitting any of those bearings either okay and then these bearings are try and get them to be as close to the blade as possible without actually touching it there for now let's just check that blade isn't gonna hit that steel or I could actually get a little bit closer okay and the other one about there maybe cool they look to be close enough so see it's just touching like that I'm just going to back it off a bit I'll do on the side here we're gonna set them so they're sitting just below the gullets of the teeth so they're not going to be steamroller over the teeth as they go through but it's still properly supported up at the front of the blade so lock that in place and I'll just check the tracking again to make sure they're not hitting the bearings oh good still so then we've got one more bearing at the back which you can see at the top there so loosen that off and again we're going to get this as close as possible without actually touching the blade looks good to me no he do exactly the same with the bearings underneath the table get them as close as possible in there fiddly job but definitely worth doing right and once can go on and will close the doors up as well cuz that's all set up now so now we've got the thing cut here called a bandsaw buddy which is sold by Axminster and what this does is this allows you to get the fence perfectly parallel to the blade so it's got two little magnets on there and it just sticks to the edge of your blade like that and you'll notice that there is a little cutout on there as well to account for the teeth so you can't just rest it on there like that the teeth can go into that little groove like that then I'm gonna get the fence upright because that is the position I'll be using it and then we can slow it up and of course the camera tripods in the way so I can see that it is touching at the back to the front here there's still a little bit of movement so that means we need to adjust the fence a little bit so I've got four bolts at the front of the fence here that's will allow me to slightly realign it now this is something that you can do pretty much every time you put a new blade on doesn't really take a lot of time and just make sure that the fences always going to be parallel to the blade and you're not going to get any sort of uneven wear on the blade or side-to-side tracking with your cuts just allows everything to stay where it should so let's slide this up to the bandsaw buddy get the fence in line with it look to be about there so tighten down opposite corners very likely to start with let's just get more biting check move the fence away and back up to it just make sure that it's locking yep then just tighten them down nice and evenly to make sure you don't skew it at all there you go that is now perfectly parallel to the blade right and then providing everything is correct on there let's just put the guard down so we don't have any risk if problems are there [Music] it's touching the bearings slightly on the bottom but I don't think as much with issue so M let's get cutting this log out so firstly I'm just gonna square up one of the edges and I'm probably gonna play in this square as well on the planer so I reckon it'll be this edge if I square it off in that sapwood I'm going to lose quite a lot of material up here so I'm probably just gonna square it off about there so I'll take off that little bump which doesn't really matter and then that's just gonna carry on down should just about start taking off that SAP at the bottom and give me a square is to start with so yeah let's go with that to start with so decided that when I do this I want to have a nice flat face up against their bandsaw fence so I'm gonna try and claim this and literally maxing out the planer on the first time I have used it which is going to be great well I have used this one install but this the first time I've used mine and and then I've got a square off the edges to that flat face just to give me a good reference surface to rest of the wood on so let's just go this could be so fun right so the finish left over on this is just buttery smooth like to say the least it is so nice like these spiral heads on these planers are serious serious business they are really nice so now we've got a flat face we've got two square edges I'm gonna try and rip straight through this high twice on the bandsaw and yeah see what sort of finish we're left with I'm actually quite interested to see what the next board will look like that because this has actually cleaned up quite nice and I think that if I was to square that off that would make quite a nice box lid or something like that so maybe through so on is the way to go with this I really don't know it's all fun doesn't matter the highest of the blade will go within about five millimeters so it's safe to say that I am maxing out this machine so I think what I'm going to do is take off just over because I already planed one side the other side will only need to be thickness so it would be quite easy to miss just makes it nice and easy to setup your resaurant distance so yeah let's do it as may not be about twenty-two they're most likely [Music] [Music] [Music] they're getting nicer as I cut through them like I don't know if I can bring myself to call this all straight down the center of that like you just look so good when it's through sword so one more [Music] [Music] [Music] so yeah I got a bit carried away with the through-and-through sorry I don't know it's it's not that it was easier it's literally the results we're just getting better and better every single time I went through obviously I started with this which looks pretty good it's pretty wacky I mean a lot of this that's gonna be wastage but there was some cool stuff going on so as I got through I was like a bit cleaner maybe I could have a cleaner face as opposed to another pun like that now let's call us so I'm gonna throw a bit further and the pattern started getting a little bit more swirling in the middle you see here it's still quite linear up in this area linear down there where is this a bit more swirling in there sorry I thought maybe just one more and then I went to this one we started getting a little bits of PIP eNOS in there so that's where you gave you little dots and again the pattern kept getting so earlier so I thought one more cut that one off and then got even more picked which is a really sought after effect on you so I just thought you know what it's looking really good still I might want to go and then I've got this proper swirly one at the end as well obviously this side mostly sapwood but it still looks pretty cool I'm sure I can incorporate that into something but yeah this is the advantage with cutting straight through the board because we're getting the top of the growth rings and as a result you get all of these swirling patterns going on whereas if I was to cut it corpse walking down the middle you know I'm going to get a linear grain like I've got across the top here but it would be all the way down so yeah I think you is it's just one of those ones that looked great when it's cut straight through the middle and I just couldn't resist it as I was going yeah that was a fun experiment I'm gonna try and think of a project to make around all of these I have been asked to make a box I think this would make a good opportunity to do that and we'll just have to see thank you very much for watching I thoroughly this and I'll see you next video please [Music]

Channel: Matt Estlea

Views: 208,129

Rating: 4.9014196 out of 5

Keywords: cutting up a log, how to cut a log, cutting logs, bandsaw log, bandsaw milling, cutting boards froma log, things to do with a log, crown cut, quarter sawn, rift sawn, cuts of timber explained, different cuts of timber, wood movement, wood movement explained, most stable cuts of wood, why is quarter sawn more stable than crown cut?, axminster machinery, axminster bandsaw, planer thicknesser, cutting up yew, yew logs, wood porn, matt estlea, sbw4300, at129pt spiral, planer

Id: KfCR2TOrdwE

Length: 21min 3sec (1263 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 12 2018