Resawing

I was resawing some wide hardwood, 10 1/2" wide, today and decided to try out an idea I had seen on this forum. Not sure if it was here, but I think so. A common issue with resawing wider boards is that the last couple of cuts are often difficult. The thin boards often warp a bit and are hard to get through the saw intact without ruining them. So, the idea I had seen was to glue on a backing board and then saw or sand it off. The gluing part was the one I was avoiding as glue can impregnate a thin piece of wood and cause other problems later. I decided to give it a go using hot melt glue today and it worked great. Easy to apply and easy to separate after sawing. On a10 1/2" wide x 5' long board I just put a dab of hot melt glue at each corner, one on the top and bottom of the board in the middle, and glued on a 5/8" piece of relatively flat plywood. If the plywood ran against the fence, that would be optimum, but my set up works the other way and the piece being sawn off is against the fence. I might try to change that around. Anyway, the hot melt glue was extremely easy and fast to use. I think it will save me a lot of wood.

David Borson of Borson Resaw uses this approach. I got some stuff from him about 12 years ago it was glued to the backer with epoxy.... see you are starting to get through the pile `

Did the lovely book matched boards in the second photo have that finish straight from your bandsaw?

No. That's after sanding and misting with water. My saw does saw cut straight with 1" carbide blades and a powerfeed, but I still make several passes with 36 grit to get all the saw marks out.

Hey Bob,

This is Josh (honomalino wood mill), good to see such beautiful koa! Glueing the board to a ply backer is really helpfull. I found that a thin double sided tape works best for me in that the adhesive is a consistent thickness. Not to sure if it makes a huge difference, but I like to tell myself it does.

About getting the ply side to index off of the fence- switching to this method of attack made a huge difference in accuracy. My guess is that over subsequent cuts, small wobbles and dips add up each time the fresh cut face is registered to the fence. My solution was basically to copy laguna's driftmaster fence. The key to this system is a horizontal length of ACME rod that runs along the front edge of the bandsaw table. The fence is attached to this for via a mounting block. Each time a slice is taken, the ACME rod is rotated an exact amount to move the fence closer to the blade. On my set up, three cranks moved the fence 4mm closer to the blade.

Hey Josh, our runaway Hawaiian! Hope you're having a good time over there. A hurricane was due in today, but never made it. The usual! You're missing the fun. Thanks for the resaw ideas. The tape should work good too. Good idea.I know it would be much better to index off the same flat face. My roller fence has about 4" of travel via a hand crank. I'll have to see if I can control the travel enough to get a consistent 4-4.5mm slice. If not, I'll follow up on your ACME thread idea. Should not be too hard to rig that up. Good to hear from you. I'll tell Jay you're still alive!

Your loss our gain

Josh, I did come up with a way to move my fence equal amounts so that I can resaw off the outboard side instead of against the fence. Way better! Thanks for suggesting that to me. Aloha, Bob

Right on Bob, I just stole the idea from laguna, but boy did it make a huge difference. That and switching to Lenox woodmaster ct blades. Doing good here, finally decided to have a go at ukuleles... The price for koa has risen so much, I can't justify putting it into furniture anymore. Thanks to guys like you Pete, Chuck, and the rest sharing so much knowledge, makes it easy for guys like me to start. Say hi to Jay for me, I hope he's still messing around with logs.