Because time is flying, it’s already 3 months ago that a car ran into a telephone pole (and street light) outside my office building, knocking it (them) down.
I ran out and got some streetside safety gear, and my little electric chainsaw. Here I am, making all of that look too tiny:
With no accessible outlet anywhere nearby (and no truck yet with bed-outlet), I had to settle for my Irwin carpenter saw. The pole was all hollow inside from rot and bugs when I snuck back later to have at it.
I cleaned up my mess and left. I still have this stuff. I was thinking it would be interesting to try to stabilize some of it for turning, but I think so much less now :)
As a consolation prize, a few weeks later, I snagged the crossbar that goes across the top. The city workers detached it from the pole in their light cleanup effort. The pole itself stayed pushed up against the wall for at least a month more, before it just suddenly wasn’t there one day.
It has “RAINIER CH 68” stamped into it, but I couldn’t find any info online relating to that in any way. No idea what kind of wood it is. I researched that, too, but there are many species listed as possibilities.
I just finally got around to sticking it on the band saw 10 days ago:
Here’s a little movie of that:
I’m still learning about the quirks of my rickety band saw. It’s a Craftsman 12” wood/metal, and it just loves to vibrate and shake all over. While shaking all about, the blade guard came loose, so after the cut, the blade clanged against it for quite awhile while it slowed down. You can hear this in the above video. This means, however, that after my next cut or two, the blade snapped on me. What a sad moment. I didn’t realize that it was the teeth hitting. I thought it was banging left and right against the side supports (still not good, but not nearly as bad):
Here’s what I got before the blade broke:
So I lost my 2TPI Suffolk Machinery “Timberwolf” blade, but I still had a 3TPI version. It turned out to be thinner, so it’s not as stable through hard, and/or thick stuff. It wanders, and I can’t really tighten any more. Setting for blade drift helps quite a bit, but it’s still not perfect. Looks like I’m going to need another 2TPI in the thicker steel.
-- Gary, Los Angeles, video game animator
6 comments so far
Todd A. Clippinger
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5638 posts in 993 days
posted 124 days ago
I have had my hands on many of the cross-arms and they have all been vertical grain doug fir so far.
-- Todd A. Clippinger, Montana, http://amcraftsman.com
a1Jim
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16696 posts in 470 days
posted 124 days ago
Wow Gary you find wood every were
-- Jim from Heirloom Woodshop Southern Oregon
lew
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4483 posts in 649 days
posted 124 days ago
Gary,
Too bad about the blade. I just broke one the other day, also. I wonder if you made a taller resaw fence whether it would prevent the stock from twisting, causing the blade to bind.
I made a resaw fence that is a “single post” design. It allows me to compensate for drift during the cut. It is made to the maximum height of the bandsaw guard/bearing assembly. This way it supports the widest possible stock to be resawed. Just a thought.
Lew
Gary Fixler
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646 posts in 275 days
posted 122 days ago
Todd – no idea. I have a ton of DF 2×4s I’ve worked with lately. They all smell like either lemon or pumpkin when cut, though DF I’ve used in the past has not. The green stuff especially has these smells, or a mixture of them. It’s actually kind of appetizing. The crossbar doesn’t look or smell like those, but then, there are several species that count as DF, and this thing is old and dry, baked in the sun probably for a few decades at least.
Jim – I know! I wish more of it was quality hardwoods, or beautiful, colorful burls.
Lew – I did actually make a taller resaw fence. It’s about 6” tall, maybe a bit more. This was a somewhat squatter piece, and already fairly square on the bottom. It broke when the blade was spinning by itself, not when it was cutting, because the teeth were clanging against the guard, which had slipped forward, moving the bottom into the cut line. When you use your resaw post, do you first draw a straight line down the stock, or do you eyeball the cut you’ve made, and make course-corrections based on that?
-- Gary, Los Angeles, video game animator
Skarp
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177 posts in 219 days
posted 96 days ago
Out of the box my bandsaw had tons of vibration, but after shimming the top wheel out a bit to make it coplanar and adjusting the motor mount so that the drive shaft was level with the belt perpendicular to the shaft and pulley on the bottom wheel, it runs smoothly with no vibration.
How often do you sharpen your resaw blades? I don’t know if the Timberwolf blades have carbide teeth, but if they are regular steel teeth, I have gotten good results with this method despite it being a fairly crude sharpening. Certainly a ton better than a dull blade.
I use a pointing block on most resawing and scribe my line with a marking gauge then follow it and correct as needed. Only instance I would not use it would be slabbing out a log.
Hope something I said is useful to you.
-- Ooo, er.
Gary Fixler
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646 posts in 275 days
posted 92 days ago
Skarp – You give me hope that perhaps I will be able to adjust the vibrations out of that thing.
-- Gary, Los Angeles, video game animator