Resawing in a very small workshop
Hello,
I have a very small woodworking workshop and work with hand tools only. The problem that I have from the beginning is thicknessing stock. I get my wood (oak and walnuss, sometimes cherry) and almost always it is too thick. It is not a problem to take few mm with hand planes but taking 10 mm is. Especially because instead of having two boards, one board ends up in shavings.
After experimenting with rip saw and frame saw, I realized it just takes too long to rip a board in two, it is very tiring and not fun at all.
So, I guess everything that is left is to but a band saw. Well, putting anything in this small space is a challenge. I noticed that the most important factor is the height of the board I can put into bandsaw (at least 200 mm). The bigger the height the bigger the machine overall.
Any ideas on alternatives? Or maybe some tipps how to solve the problem with the place?
Thanks.
Replies
Any chance you can get rid of the door? It is "occupying" space in your shop (approximately a 3 foot radius) that could help?
I would say I have a shop as small as yours. Normal in the UK!
I can see space for a bandsaw in there (put it on wheels) and it will be a total revelation.
Thicknessing with a frame saw etc isn't fun work and wears you out. . So you end up adjusting your design to avoid it. A bandsaw is quiet and can do so so much for a small footprint. You won't regret it!
Also remember your need infeed and outfeed space. Most stock if under 8ft so a machine in the middle needs 16ft. Angles and open doors can help. If you take a 1hp machine with a 6" cutting depth and put a spacer block on it to get 12" you still only have 1hp.
Harvey’s Ambassador C14 is 3 HP & has 14” rip capacity. Price fluctuates daily. I’m sure you could get a good price. $1,649 right now.
If it’s on wheels you can make it work.
I work similar to you and thicknessing by hand, thought possible, can be quite laborious. I purchase two tools to take care of this - band saw and a DeWalt thicknesser. If you had the room a bandsaw would be more flexible for use (Paul Sellers has a lot on this). Thicknesser (often called planer) on the other hand doesn't take up much space - on order of a small microwave. You could take it outside when needed so you don't fill your shop up with dust.
If what I see hanging on your wall are the tools you have what I don't see is a bow saw.
I do have a bow saw (frame saw) but it is not on the photo.
Just get a mobile base with whatever good bandsaw you like, and you'll be good.
My shop is jam-packed. Everything is on wheels, and it's Tetris every day.
It's not that bad, though. Things roll out and back in when I'm done.
My 18" Laguna is on wheels and i have no complaints.
I have two frame saws - one is four feet and the other three. there's a monstrous difference in how practical it is to use them, but for the benefit of the power tool group here, something like a guitar body or a large door panel may take 15 minutes to resaw.
I build furniture infrequently, so 15 minutes twice for flat panels on a door on a large cabinet isn't an issue for me.
I had an 18" Jet X bandsaw years ago and am glad to be without it at this point - it was OK for pattern cutting, but to resaw something close to its limit was just asking for blade wandering and ruining the stock.
Now, I don't know from the picture but would guess your frame saw isn't four feet, because the most sensible place to use it is standing off of the front of the bench with the wood in the bench vise. if I were shorter on floor space, I'd still have a bandsaw. Too, I guess it's not trivial at the moment to get a four foot frame saw unless you actually make it and file the blade from purchased spring steel, which is what I did. it took relatively little time overall to make but the filing of a four foot blade at 2 3/8 teeth per inch did take a solid two hours. I've now done it four times for different blades - it's not impossible.
if I'm in your situation and wanting to feed long boards through a bandsaw, a mobile base and perhaps when nobody is home, rolling the bandsaw out into a larger space would be a possibility. Not only do you need enough space for the infeed and outfeed, but you need enough space for you on both ends of it, too, without standing flatback against a wall - that would get old in a hurry.
A bandsaw on a wheeled base, parked right in your doorway, will work (that's pretty much what I've got).
Also, do you have a sawmill/lumber dealer nearby? Sometimes you can hire them to resaw for you (I did this too for squaring/thicknessing, until I got my own jointer/planer)
I will add only that whilst you can re-saw 8" on a 14" band saw, it's not much fun. If you plan to do that often then you really want an 18 or 19" machine. If it's an occasional thing then its tolerable.
You do need at least 2HP/1500W for re-saw. As with all compromises in woodwork, if you have less it will work, but be harder to get right and cuts will take longer.
I would absolutely get a mobile base. Hammer saws can be fitted with one from the factory and are superb saws, though big beasts.
I don't think resawing is a great option. My first 14 inch bandsaw couldn't resaw for crap, in spite of upgrades and countless hours of tweaking. I finally got a much better bandsaw, which cost three times as much. It resaws flawlessly.
But there's frequently a problem with resawing thick stock for thinner boards. They can really cup like crazy. Radically. And by the time you flatten it, it's too thin.
I'd recommend a thickness planer, such as the Dewalt 735. If I could only keep one machine in my shop, that's what I'd have. Then you can remove equal thicknesses from both faces, and the cupping problem disappears.
Is there a reason the OP is acquiring (buying?) wood for the purpose of getting 2 boards from one board?
I’ve debated back and forth on whether the one tool would be a bandsaw or a planer/thicknesser. I’ve yet to resaw on my bandsaw and I spent a lot of money to ensure I had that capability. In the recent Lost Art Press book, American Peasant, a strong case is made for a 10” bandsaw. They are relatively inexpensive and fine for the kinds of rip and curve cuts most hobbyist do in their shop. Plus they are small. I could easily see having a DeWalt 735 and a 10” bandsaw in a small space. Heck, you could probably store the 10” bandsaw on top of the 735 when not in use.
I will state that you have room in there for a bandsaw. Further I will say thet you have room for a dust collector and planer, you just don't know it yet. Don't go light-pockets on the bandsaw. A cast iron delta clone will not get you to an 8" resaw, no matter the space under the guides.
Choose your stock carefully if you want to use the offcuts. Rift/ Q-sawn can survive, flatsawn usually fails. You'll lose more than you think to milling. A 3/4" board will BARELY produce two 1/4" boards if everything goes absolutely perfectly. A 1" board will get you a 1/2" board and a guitar side.
Good advice. You can definitely lose a lot when resawing. Learned the hard way :(
I've found I'm able to salvage quite a lot of 1/8, 3/16 thickness stuff, though, by at least attempting to resaw instead of planing.
They are GREAT to have around for small drawer bottoms and small projects in general.
From your pictures it looks like you might have space to store a benchtop thickness planer under your bench? The problems with that are that you'd have to lift it down and up and have some sort of dust collection for chips. Other than that it's difficult to know what would work for you. Even a bandsaw requires some sort of dust collection to make sure your whole shop doesn't fill up with chips and dust.
Regarding power tools, a shopvac type of dust collector can be adequately used on a bandsaw. A planer generally requires a dedicated and larger dust collection system with a 4” hose. Trying to use shopvac on a planer won’t work. Given your shop’s small footprint, I’d go with the 14” bandsaw, shopvac combo. There’s also a remote chance your available electrical circuit might not support running a large power tool and dust collection at the same time.
Hitachi B 600 resaw bandsaw. 3" blade! They come up and one is for sale on San Francisco Craigslist right now. No?
Oh well, in thinking about your situation you have a pretty good thing going. All handtools! It's romantic, your a purist! Don't mess it up! Hand tools are elegant,these machines are not! They are however loud!
Used bandsaws are all over the place and can be had cheap and cheap enough that you can keep it outside and tarp it. Got an outside? A luthier friend of mine had a giant old babbitt bearing bandsaw that he kept outdoors for decades that he used just for resawing. Yah, there was some rust.
Short stock you have your frame saw -long stuff- how much do you do? Someone, somewhere near you does have resaw capability and maybe much better than your ever going to get into your little room. If you join the machine age then you'll want another machine. Jointer, bandsaw,planer. They are kind of symbiotic. I bought a tractor once and discovered that it sat a lot but needed care and feeding just the same. Things went south in the economy and I was able to sell my tractor for quite a bit more than I bought it for so did and discovered that I could get someone to turn my garden and cut my brush for a fraction of the cost of maintaining my own machine. You can probably get a lot of milling done by others for the price of a good bandsaw with the resaw abilities you require. Just think you can take that bandsaw money and buy yourself a set of handcrafted Japanese nomi chisels or something.
When I moved house, I had to shrink the number of woodworking tools as the new house had far less shed-room than the old. One thing that went was the 12" bandsaw, a fine Scheppach thing that could resaw great big monster planks.
However, it's unusual to have to resaw great big monster planks. Resawing a 4 - 8 inch wide and 2 inch thick board is more usual.
Now I resaw the widest boards (8" wide) partly by machine (table saw) and partly with a handsaw. The table saw rip-cuts a deep kerf on both long edges and the handsaw cuts through the remaining strip still joining the two halves-to-be inside the deeply-kerfed plank.
A thicknesser (you say planer) smooths the remnant of the hand-resawn bit down the centre of each plank and gets the two resulting planks to exactly the right thickness.
This process, then, needs a tablesaw and a thicknesser (planer). And a powerful dust sucker. Mine take up quite a bit of room in the small one-car garage but you could buy tools with a decent capacity and power but a much smaller footprint than my full-size machines.
Table saws are far more used for all sorts of other WW tasks than are bandsaws ..... unless you're a bandsaw ideologist :-).
This.
I will try table saw first, because I saw there is actually a safe way to do it. Going slower and using jig, still faster than as bandsaw. Especially since I work with hard wood.
And it does not have to be precise, because I will hand plane the pieces anyway.
lol. I love the bandsaw ideologist comment. I don’t have a table saw.
Oh, another idea. If space is tight, find a local makers group or high school with adult ed evening classes. I did that in my area and for all of $15 for 3 hour access I can now use the tools for the weekly open sessions. It goes a long way towards tampering my desire to have the biggest and best of things.
Man, that's cheap: $15 for 3 hours! Yea, I'd have to drive to another state to get something like that.
Nothing costs more than California...and Joe L lives in California I believe. Nothing in California costs more than Sausalito but the library there created a Maker Space - cnc/ Lazer/ 3d printer etc. I went to their opening day and joined ... it is all free. I haven't used it yet.
A friend of mine, a lawyer ,decided to remodel his house. Went to community college classes -1st for stained glass and did a bunch of windows for his house...then a lathe class,then a decorative metal working class, then ceramics ..on and on for years and ended up with a pretty spiffed out hand made arts and crafts house all from cheap night classes. He died and his wife decided to move on ..sold the place for 2 1/2 Mil!
By the way..I wouldn't want to be without either of them....a table saw or a bandsaw. But if I had to have only one I'd have a bandsaw. A bandsaw is able to do many more things useful to woodworking than a table saw. So I guess that puts me in the iconoclast crowd. I can cut a straight line with a bandsaw and I have rarely been able to cut a curved line on a tablesaw and at that never by choice! Short of a dado I'm having a hard time thinking of something else that a tablesaw can do that a bandsaw cant.
Lol … you have to have some good amenities to live out there with those tax rates and cost of living. That’s amazing.
I live in the Midwest. No amenities. 😁
I do indeed live in CA. It is very expensive here. There are some nice local woodworking classes for adults in the Bay Area. Mount Diablo Adult education in Pleasant Hill near Walnut Creek has a lot of nice classes. They have series for traditional woodworking with all high end machines, wood turning classes, and woodcarving classes. There are also lost wax casting (jewelry focused but still you get the skill) and other things. Each of the wood areas has Bay Area clubs that then loop you into the local community. I didn’t realize Sausalito has stain glass stuff. I will have to look into that. I thought it would be fun to build a piece and instead of a wood panel to have a door.
Oh, in Oakland, there is a place called The Crucible in a not great part of town. They have blacksmithing, leather work, various glass arts. Not nearly as inexpensive but not prohibitive either.
I will probably stay put in the Bay Area when I retire given all these nice hobby related activities I can have access. Though, it does come at a cost in terms of housing and taxes.
My shop is a little bigger than yours and I’ve put my 10” Rikon Benchtop bandsaw on a workbench which also serves as my router table, and added casters to the bench (the kind that set the bench legs on the floor). This works great for the kind of work I do although I do find I’m moving the bench and tools around a lot which is not efficient. It is a game changer for re-sizing stock.
I’d really like to get a thickness planer but the waste they create is enormous and now you’re buying a DC system that will also need a fair amount of space.
With a big saw and the DeWalt 735, I had this exact issue. Before I could buy the dust collector, I needed to upgrade the electrical sub-pannel in the garage for $4Kish (based on two quotes). Then I had to buy the dust collector. That was a lot to spend. I’ve also found that for all of $50ish dollars, I can get about 100 board feet thicknessed for me. Lots of potential ways to work around the costs. I’d still want a thicknesser but I’d design things so that I could do all that work in the back yard rather than in the shop.
Since we are talking about bandsaws vs. table saws, I would remind everyone that a bandsaw is much safer. I have met too many people who think they understand how to use a table saw safely but really don't; not only are they not using proper jigs, having their hands in the wrong place, etc., they do not understand the physics of cutting with a rotating blade that can cause kickback and also draw your hands into the blade. The only way to get hurt with a bandsaw is to be careless about where you put your fingers, there is no possibility of kickback. I have known several people who are missing parts of one or more fingers because of accidents with their table saw. I don't know of anyone who has seriously been injured on their bandsaw.
Sawstop
Gary Bennett Knox -- lost a finger on his bandsaw.
I am sure that you can hurt yourself using a bandsaw but the point is that they are statically safer than table saws. But there are sharp things involved in woodworking, no question, and we should all be careful and alert to problems. A while back I sharpened up a #2 pencil, marked off things to shape the next day in the shop, set the pencil down on my workbench - with the point just over the edge. Walking by, my hand hit pencil, point stuck in my hand, and was dangling there as I raised my arm. Solution, only use dull pencils? Marking knife?? Maybe not. Clear bench when done for the day???
Bentusi - Almost lost a finger on his bandsaw last week....
Bona fide resaw capacity in a bandsaw is expensive. Your average 14" home shop saw just really isn't up to the task. It'll scream and whine and lose adjustment and frustrate.
I routinely resaw boards up to 10" wide. Did it on my old Rikon 14" and now a newer Laguna 14", which is better. I've done maple, cherry and ash, plus random other woods. I think if you use roller supports on the outfeed, a high fence and a carbide tipped blade (1/2" or 3/4"), it works fine. It won't be dead straight, but close enough to get two 3/4" boards from a 2" rough board.
I don't always do it just to save money by buying rough cut lumber. If I'm making panelled doors, I like to make the panel from bookmatched 1/2" panels (or 3/4" with bevel edges). You get a nice pattern that way that catches the eye.
But very doable on 14", IMO.
I think he was referring to the common 14 inch bandsaw with a 6 inch Resaw capacity and a 3/4hp motor, cast iron C frame. I also have the 14SUV Laguna with a 1 inch carbide blade and resaw up to 14 inches in tropical hardwood without loosing power, the common 14 inch would bend and loose tension trying to resaw 6 inches.
Years ago I was involved in producing a little gift shop item. Resawed hundreds,maybe thousands of pieces of 6" wide cherry using an old Rockwell 14" bandsaw. Sharp blade,proper tension, one good side and square to the edge is the trick. There is a limited capacity with any saw, some have more capacity than others of course.
Statistically, everyone has a tablesaw, bought it first when they had the least amount of experience and of course no training. Possibly bought a dubious Tupperware saw with sketchy unreliable fences and bases that can cause the thing to tip on longer stock. Some people have other machines such as bandsaws, jointers,drill presses. I don't see that there is anyway to compare these machines statistically. One of my better scars was produced by a dremel tool! One of the most common workman comp claims is from lacerations from utility knives( box cutters). Statistically your tablesaw is safer than your ebike!
Bandsaw on a heavy duty mobile base. One size bigger than you can afford. On wheels.
a decent 14" saw would work in there given the circumstances. What are the saws you are considering at the moment?
I have a small shop space with an underpowered 14” bandsaw (rigid) that was given to me. It works great for thin stock and plywood but any hardwood over 1/2” is a maddening slow cut.
I find myself resawing by hand frequently with panel saws or a Japanese saw.
I saw at least one comment indicating that, to resaw on a bandsaw, you need to buy larger than 14" capacity saws. I have not found this to be true. While I have not tried to resaw to the full 11" resawing capacity on my 14" Rikon, I have resawed numerous boards up to 9" and it works great. Over the years, after having difficulty resawing, I found that there are some requirements, even on saws larger than 14":
1. Sharp blade that you dedicate to resawing only (if possible). Cutting curves can take the set out of a blade.
2. Proper placement of the blade side to side on the wheels. The deepest part of the gullet centered on the wheel.
3. Proper setup of the bandsaw guides.
4. Proper tension of the blade. While I suppose you can tension a blade too much, that is very hard to do on a 14" saw.
5. Proper setup of the table meaning square to the blade.
6. Don't hurry the cut. Pushing the board through too fast will likely cause it to wander in some way.
Following the list of setup and use guidelines that have been immortalized by Alex Snodgrass will give you great results, whether it's a 14" or a 20" saw. By the way, I've never heard my 14" Rikon "scream" or "whine" with proper setup and feed speed.
The real problem with resawing in general is that, when you resaw a thick board, there is almost always twisting and/or warping of the two resulting boards, only resolvable with making sure you have a thick enough board to begin with, have a jointer to make an attempt to flatten the resulting boards, and then have enough wood left to meet your thickness requirements.