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101K views 166 replies 96 participants last post by  REK 
#1 ·
Palax Power100S Firewood Processor

I come across some pretty amazing woodworking/woodprocessing tools online during my nightly research escapades - things I think the majority of the LJs crowd hasn't seen (like me) - so I thought I'd make a little series to highlight some of the cooler, or rarer things I unearth. First up, one of the most convenient tools I've seen for processing entire trunks into firewood in a timely fashion.



I have a bittersweet feeling when I see tools this efficient at handling trees. They grow so slowly, it almost seems disrespectful to handle them so rapidly, and emotionlessly. Still, I have to be impressed by the tech itself. It's a sweet machine.
 
#3 ·
Definitely a serious piece of equipment. Makes me thing of farm machinery. When Wheat was planted by had, harvest with a scythe and threshed with a flail, it took 1.5 hours to produce a bushel. Today, with mechanization and combines with 30+ foot headers, it is in the bushels per second range. That must put cords in the per hour rather than per day range :))
 
#5 ·
the "dragsaw"

Most of the dragsaws I've managed to find online seem to be from years in the range of 1910 to 1920, and feature a mechanical movement similar to, but the reverse of a locomotive's drive wheel and connecting rod. Instead of a steam-driven piston driving a circular wheel, an engine-driven wheel drives a reciprocating piston, which is attached to a large cross-cutting saw. There are all manner of models on YouTube in every state of restoration or disrepair, but I particularly like the following example. It shows the motion well, including the finishing stroke. Most other videos give up far before that. I think I need one of these, connected to an exercise bike ;)



This one in particular makes me feel the power that one of these things can hold, and I worry especially for the man's legs and feet!

UPDATE: Don't forget to check out the dragsaws littering Google Images Those things could buck some pretty big logs! Perhaps the most incredible thing about the following image is that the historical site whence it comes claims that the man pictured - one John Shambolt, c. 1917 - is using the dragsaw to turn that tree into stove wood! What a waste of such enormous lumber! Makes me long for a time when - and a place where - resources were functionally infinite. Of course, I'd miss the internet ;)

 
#6 ·
Okay Gary, I know what you're doing watching all these videos. You are trying to find a way to cut up the lumber you've been hauling around in the back of your pickup. . So when will we see your homemade v8 powered dragsaw?
 
#8 ·
Predator: V8 Chainsaw

The Predator - born in Washington state, USA - is a 2-man chainsaw powered by a V8 engine, capable of cutting through a 3' log in less than a second. All of their videos of this monster are fun, but this recap on an unspecified television program (which seems at the very least sponsored by Prolong Oil) sums things up nicely.



My first question - "Who would build such a dangerous beast?" - has been answered. His name is Robert Andrews. My second question - "What on earth would give one the courage to handle such a monster on its inaugural run?" - has not.
 
#22 ·
cedar shake saws

This is without a doubt the scariest looking sawyer job I've seen yet. Check out how casually he thrusts his unsupervised hand at the 4'+ tall circular saw blade!



There are many more videos of people in this job with these saws on YouTube. Scary stuff.
 
#46 ·
The Bench SlideMount

I think I'm going to end up with several Bench SlideMounts. They're exactly what I didn't realize I've been looking for. I've been dragging my heels on a bad idea I've had to install T-tracks in my 8'x2' work table, seen here almost 2 years ago when the garage was still nice and empty and traversable.

I'd make a shelf below the bench to hold my smaller bench tools on squares of plywood, bringing each up as needed, sliding its bolts into the T-slots, and locking them down with some Rockler T-slot locking clamps I have. Seemed like a lot of work, while ruining my table, and still not making it really easy to set up my heavy little tools and break them down again in a hurry when I only needed to, say, sharpen a chisel. Check out this alternate solution to the problem:



It seems ideal for me. 3 of the tools in the video are exactly what I'd want these for - bench grinder, scroll saw (which has been in my dining room since shipping it here from my folks' house this past December!), and possibly a benchtop belt/disc sander, though I'd really prefer a large floor model if I can find a place for it. The other thing it would be great for would be my WorkSharp 3000, which keeps moving around the shop, being in the way when it's not being extremely useful.

I have so very little space, I have to turn to crazy transformer-based solutions to reclaim enough room to turn around, and these seem a perfect fit to that end. I really wish they were $40-$50, though. Their site currently lists it for $117.95, but the site that linked me there claimed only $97.99, same as the article on Fine Woodworking which alerted me to this whole thing in the first place. If only I had a shear and press brake, I could just make my own. Perhaps I can work out something with angle iron.
 
#47 ·
Wish I had thought of that. I'll bet they are making a fortune with those. But I do have my own version of how I use these tools and store them. Once I get it completed and possibly sent to Wood or Popular Woodworking magazines, I'll post it here for all to see and use.
 
#59 ·
The Circular Swing Blade Mill

Just stumbled upon these tonight. I've never seen them before. Very clever! It's basically a band saw mill with a circular saw instead which can swing from horizontal to vertical blade alignment, and thus be run across a log 2 times to saw out a rectangular piece of dimensioned lumber. It helps to watch these 2 videos to understand what I mean:





Obviously, no large through-cuts, so no very-wide slabs, but if you need to turn a big pile of pine, or a very huge tree into dimensioned lumber, it seems these are designed to be quickly set to swing and slide to make those cuts in 2 fast passes with a swing of the large lever between each pass. Push it forward, pull the lever, pull it back, and you have a dimensioned plank. I think I saw some 4×6s at the end of that second video, but it looks like the larger ones could make at least up to 8×8 beams.

There's a good write-up on these saws by Peterson Sawmills here - the link at the end of the first paragraph goes to a PDF of the steps taken to saw out boards. The other name I keep seeing is Lucas, and their page on these saws is here.

One final late-entry - I found another video by Peterson of them milling a log into lumber in under 10 minutes. They really get going at about the 1/3rd mark in the video, and they have a bunch of other videos under their account that obviously I will be digging through next :)



Edit: Timberline has a version that makes both cuts in a single pass, using a secondary 'edger' blade pair, with several other little clever enhancements:

 
#74 ·
SAWSTOP on TimeWarp

There's a show on Discovery called "TimeWarp" which uses super high speed cameras to slow down all matter of phenomena to show what's going on in the physical world at micro timescales. They had a call for entries after one episode and it got me to thinking that I'd love to see various woodworking things slowed down. Apparently they had the same idea last year, but I missed it. They put the SAWSTOP under the cameras, and the inventor even tried it on his own finger! I just found the video:

 
#89 ·
Lie-Nielsen planes

I think I need help. It's happening. I cannot stop researching planes and workbenches lately. I don't have room for a bench, nor money for any planes, but they're just so enticing!

Lie-Nielsen has been the most attractive by far, but I find it staggering the number of planes available - 44 standards listed, with an additional 30 variants, not including left/right hand options for the few that have them (same price in each case). The bench plane model numbers (e.g. No. 5) correspond loosely to size, and go from 1 (5.5" long) through 8 (24" long), with 1, 2, and 8 being fairly uncommon, 5 being very popular, and 4, 6, and 7 being common. But then there are the halves, like 4-1/2 and 5-1/2, and there's even a 5-1/4, and those aren't exactly sizes sometimes. For example, 5-1/2 is about the length of the 5, but has the width of the 7. Then there are varied blade thicknesses and replaceable frogs with different angles, optional corrugated bottoms, a few different blade material choices, more for some planes than others, and even a variety of materials for the plane bodies of a few models, typically iron or bronze.

Anyway, ignoring my spinning head, I've been curious to know what the entire suite of Lie-Nelson planes - arguably the most comprehensive set of planes out there by a single company, many modeled on the old Stanley planes (great, in-depth resource on them here) - would cost. Would they all add up to a billion dollars? I dropped every plane listed on Lie-Nielsen's site - even the weird ones, like the convex sole block plane, and the bronze beading tool and blade set (it's a kind of plane) into a spreadsheet, then moved all the variants out of the way. Variants include non-default casting metal (i.e. bronze instead of iron for some, the reverse for others), corrugated base, HAF (High angle Frog) options, and for a couple of the scrapers and block planes, rodmaker's grooves.

Adding up the 44 standard planes, we're looking at spending $9,968. That's actually a good deal less than I expected. It comes in under the $10k mark. I found myself daydreaming about winning some bizarre prize on a TV show that just happened to be all of these planes. I think I'm too lazy to care for even half that many. Planes require a bit of maintenance, after all.

If you're curious, here is the full list of the standard-option planes compiled from their site:

No. 1 Bench Plane $225.00
No. 2 Bench Plane, Bronze $275.00
No. 3 Bench Plane, Bronze $325.00
No. 4 Smooth Plane, Bronze $350.00
No. 4 1/2 Smooth Plane $325.00
No. 5 Jack Plane $325.00
No. 5-1/4 Junior Jack Plane $285.00
No. 5-1/2 Bench Plane $375.00
No. 6 Fore Plane $375.00
No. 7 Jointer Plane $425.00
No. 8 Jointer Plane $475.00
No. 10-1/4 Bench Rabbet Plane $375.00
1/2-Inch Shoulder Plane $199.00
Small Shoulder Plane $165.00
Medium Shoulder Plane $195.00
Large Shoulder Plane $250.00
Side Rabbet Planes $225.00
Tongue and Groove Plane $195.00
Bronze Edge Plane $150.00
Large Chisel Plane $199.00
Small Chisel Plane $140.00
Bronze Beading Tool and Blade Set $175.00
Butt Mortise Plane $110.00
Scrub Plane $165.00
Small Router Plane $80.00
Large Router Plane $140.00
Small Scraping Plane, Bronze $175.00
Cabinet Maker's Scraper $215.00
Large Scraping Plane $235.00
Model Maker's Block Plane $75.00
Convex Sole Block Plane $95.00
Low Angle Block Plane $115.00
Iron Low Angle Block Plane $95.00
Standard Angle Block Plane $115.00
Skew Block Plane w/nicker $225.00
Skew Block Plane Iron w/nicker $195.00
Standard Angle Adjustable Mouth Block Plane $165.00
Low Angle Adjustable Mouth Block Plane $165.00
Rabbet Block Plane $165.00
Rabbet Block Plane w/Nicker $175.00
Low Angle Smoothing Plane $265.00
Iron Miter Plane $375.00
Low Angle Jack Plane $245.00
Low Angle Jointer $350.00
 
#90 ·
I dont think there is a single one of us that wouldn't want Lie-Nielsen in our workshops mate your just lucky you have a $ sign and not the £ sign because what you pay in Dollars we pay in Pounds forget the exchange rate with these bad boys .
 
#101 ·
There's more than one way to split a log...

My recent battle with the cheap electric chainsaw, and subsequent redesign of my 36" crosscut saw's handle have seen several people recommending I rive my huge logs with a simple wedge and sledgehammer system. I'd seen it done before, but had always thought the splits were messy - not an issue if I'm just making some turning blanks. I also feared that such shock-treatment of the logs would lead to microcracks and extra checking later. I'm probably just being paranoid. Riven furniture seems to hold up just fine.

I decided to look up log splitting with the old wedge method, and happened upon some great examples.

This guy made a wedge with a spike that holds itself in place well:



This guy gives a nice, brief how-to for using 2 wedges to split a long log:



There are also simple contraptions for people who can't, or don't want to swing a sledgehammer, like this one:



And this one:



The Chopper 1 axe has little feet that kick out as you strike a block of wood, helping to hurl the pieces outward:



The Leveraxe uses an offset weight on on side and special tip geometry to cause a twisting motion at the moment of the strike to cleanly break small pieces of wood free (the tire containment idea is also pretty cool). Watch this guy make a couple of Bloomin' Onions:



I'd posted a couple of screw log splitters before, but I think this Ben Hur chariot version deserves a mention:



This has to be one of the most frightening log splitting ideas I've ever seen realized, save perhaps for cedar shake saws. Note the conspicuous lack of safety measures of any kind whatsoever. Who needs em?



But the real bang for your buck comes in when you split logs with black powder:



Can I charge more for furniture made from "exploded wood?"

There are so many more videos of log splitting of every kind. I didn't even bother posting hydraulic things here, of which there are many variations of horizontal and vertical splitters in both powered and manual forms. There is one thing I've learned, though, from watching countless log splitting videos and from posting some myself: You cannot post a video on YouTube that involves methods of cutting, felling, or splitting wood without someone showing up to tell you how terrible you, your methods, and your tools are¹ :) You just have to know up front that some people are simply not going to like you and whatever method you choose for reducing the size of your trees.

¹ same goes for machinists and any videos posted about machining anything.
 
#102 ·
I have split a lot of wood. I thnk it is hard to beat a few wedges and a maul in the by hand methods. Most of those gimmicks could be easily beat with a maul. If you get into power, that's another stroy ;-)
 
#113 ·
The Robland Axis Ergo panel saw

This thing quite literally wouldn't fit in my garage. Take everything out of my garage right now, and take off a wall of your choosing, and you couldn't slide this into it and replace the wall. I'm still putting it on my wishlist.



Watch it in even higher resolution here.
 
#114 ·
panel saws like these are dreamtools, i really wish i had one. we have a similar one in school, and at the lumberyard where i always need to get my panels cut to dimension.
maybe if i rearrange my shop i can fit one in, the guy from the lumberyard wants to sell me their 3rd one, the oldest for €600…
 
#124 ·
drill-powered wheelchair

This is being manufactured by DPX Systems.



Apparently you can get 4 miles out of one cordless drill's charge (190lbs man). I guess if you go a little less than 2 miles, you can use the drill for a little bit when you get there, and still have enough to get back home.
 
#137 ·
Bridge City Tools Jointmaker Pro v2

Well, this just shot to the top of my wishlist. I've for at least 6 years now been specifically wishing for a really accurate, really quiet way to cut wood in my house after hours, when I can't run power tools due to neighbors close by here in crowded LA.

Scroll to the bottom to watch the video, or watch it on YouTube in higher quality.

It's a bit crazy-priced right now at ~$1200, but I'm sure that'll come down. For now, I'm dreaming of a few additions to it already. I'd love something like the Incra FlipStop Fence, but raised up about 2" so the blade can always pass under it. The sacrificial material would be beneath the fence with the super accurate and repeatable flip stop riding above it. This would allow for setting the fence's teeth and ruler once up front, and later changing out the sacrificial material without having to change it. I'd also like the material area to be open on each side so a longer piece of material could be fed in from one side and continually slid over as it got eaten up. You'd be able to take a 2' length of wood and use every 1/8" of it as sacrificial surface, then flip it over to use the opposite side. Something like toggle clamps could hold it against the fence and base securely to make sliding it over at any point trivial.

Oh, and I also would add miter gauge abilities as seen in the Incra Jig Miter Gauge 1000HD, which has 180° of positive stops, and a vernier scale for 1/10° stops between those. A setup as described above would allow for the most flawless, and quietest work ever. I could crank out perfect segmented bowl pieces while watching TV in the living room (wooden floors are easy to vacuum!).
 
#158 ·
Now THAT's a dust collector

I had an opportunity this past week to work with a small team for 3 days on the Disney lot in Burbank. This is the campus where Walt used to work (his office has been preserved there), and where many of the original animated and live action films were created. It was built on 51 acres with profits from "Snow White" (1937) to serve what Walt presciently saw as a need to grow the animation side of his company. There's a history of the studios here, with pics. One of these pics shows walt inside the mill, a large, warehouse-like building I've passed often enough while on the lot (we work nearby - coworkers and I occasionally have lunch there), and in which all the woodworking needed for the sound stage sets is done. I'd love to get a peek inside one day!

For whatever reason, I've walked by this 3+ story contraption before without realizing what I was seeing. The mill building is on the left, and that is officially the largest cyclonic dust collector/separator I've ever seen. It's designed such that a truck can pull in under it and drive away when full. Humorously, throughout the week I kept seeing everything from golf carts to expensive convertibles with their tops down parked under it, dust chute material draped across them. I guess it doesn't get used anymore, or those folks are dumb or brave. Oh, and the folks in the shot are my team. The two on the left work with me all the time. The two on the right flew in from Canada and Australia for the week, just for this one assignment. We had a great time.

Click for a much larger view!
 
#159 ·
they used to have these in all the lumber yards
a big box with a chute
and would drive a truck under
or next to and dump the sawdust in
now days even the particulate gets used from the mills

changing times i guess

good to see you again gary
that wood you have at home should be getting close to ready
now you just need to find time to do something with it
 
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