Bandsawing a large board

[forrestb]

Now that my bandsaw is modified to a throat of 6 3/8, I setup today to cut the 5 inch wide x 2 ½ inch thick x 50 inches long. These two boards will be the aprons for my hall table.

Large Board on Bandsaw.jpg (494.42 KiB) Viewed 4025 times

I made a long re-saw fence and added a second wide feather board since the board is heavy. By going slowly I should be able to keep it against fence but I wanted some insurance.

The setup is pretty much straight from Nick's video of expanding the bandsaw table.

As you can imagine, the weight of the 5 foot tubes and the 2 aux tables overpowers my table lock. It was left loose until I had the legs on and flushed the aux tables with the bandsaw table.

Unless I have nightmares tonight about something I have overlooked, tomorrow will a big day for my ShopSmith.

Forrest

[dusty]

Stop collars to lock table height!!! Especially the Main Table.

What is that you have serving as an infeed table to the band saw? Is it a Shopsmith Router Table?

[forrestb]

Good catch Dusty! I have one installed and will jury-rig another tomorrow.

The "infeed" table is a Rockler heavy duty roller stand. When the board exits it, the entire weight is on the SS so I will not have any surprise rising of the board in the cut. I have tested that.

Forrest

edit: Sorry Dusty, I misunderstood your question. The bandsaw 'infeed' table are two aux tables up against each other and the bandsaw table.

[charlese]

HI Forest! I have done very similar re-sawing operations with my 510. The one difference I can see is - I used 5 foot tubes through the Aux table. Things kept aligned.

Another nethod which has also been used in my shop, but is expensive because of the waste, is to not use the bandsaw at all and go directly to the planer.

[kablerj]

...... What is that you have serving as an infeed table to the band saw? Is it a Shopsmith Router Table?

Looks to me like a pair of standard 520 floating tables.

Jim

[JPG]

...... What is that you have serving as an infeed table to the band saw? Is it a Shopsmith Router Table?

Looks to me like a pair of standard 520 floating tables.

Jim

Me Too!

[algale]

I've not resawed a board that big (I dare say no one has on a Shopsmith since you had to do some modifications); but I have used a similar set up to rip an even larger board. I had no issues with slippage or tipping.

[forrestb]

HI Forest! I have done very similar re-sawing operations with my 510. The one difference I can see is - I used 5 foot tubes through the Aux table. Things kept aligned.

I thought of doing that, but felt that I needed a bigger real surface (as opposed to a roller stand) right at the bandsaw table to support the long re-saw fence I made. The 5 foot tubes aren't long enough to put the 2 floating tables (yep, they are 520s) before the bandsaw and reach the far-end aux table.

If I do more of this, and I might since a project from a single rough board is intriguing, I might look around for long tubes. It would make me feel more comfortable to have more support.

The pic is the 5 inch board setup and if it goes smoothly I'll re-saw the 6 ¼ board.

And, as Dusty warned me, I will add a second stop collar to the main table to better lock it in place under the heavy load.

BTW Ganahl Lumber in Anaheim has a warehouse chock-full of 10/4 up to 12/4 rough lumber.

Forrest

[dusty]

Two 5' extension tubes end to end should give you the length. To achieve this, not with 5 footers, but with the shorter tubes, I turned a pair of dowels.

One inch in the center was turner to extension tube od and 3 inches on either side were turned to extension tube id. All this does if provide tube alignment at the joint. No strength to speak of.

[forrestb]

After a shaky first-start with the cut beginning to go off-line, I revised the setup. I found that I needed to secure the 2 floating table to the bandsaw table better and that I needed to wedge the board after a short cut since even though at 6% moisture content for a week it still wanted to close-up.

Revised Setup

Revised Bandsaw Setup.jpg (516.22 KiB) Viewed 3858 times

With those two changes, the through cut from the other end went very smoothly and took only 8 minutes. I took a movie but we can't post those here (I don't think so?).

5 inch Board Re-sawn.jpg (380.6 KiB) Viewed 3858 times

Before tackling the 6 ¼ inch board I cut a couple of long wedges.

Wedges.jpg (491.63 KiB) Viewed 3858 times

Forrest