Some Mundane Luthier Work

Hi Brad...interesting photos...the round bar thingie on the fence does it work better with it fitted ? If it is better! then I will have to make one .:)
 
Nice looking koa.

Personally, I find resawing wood to be one of the fun parts of building. Each cut is like turning the page of of book, and seeing the face of an instrument for the first time.
 
Hey Ken, I discovered the drift bar for the fence some years ago when my Sears Craftsman 12” finally died after 30 some years. The bar came with the 14” Rikon that I replaced it with. I find it is the only way I can use a fence to help guide things. It compensates for wood that is not perfectly flat and square and allows you to steer things when you encounter some wonky grain.
Brad
 
Nice wood. Nice work... I like the idea of a "drift bar" bar for band saw work. Very interesting. Gives you some play on the cut... 0.1 inch cut is pretty good by way. Must make thicknessing so much easier I'll bet.
 
OK, moving on to some less mundane things. I am building this ukulele at a friends request for a Christmas present for his wife. I know that Jonah Kumalae made some concert sized ukulele back then. This is my attempt at reproducing such an instrument. And just for something different I am using an inside mold method of construction as shown in Graham McDonalds book. My thanks to Graham and Ken Timms for the information they provided. The one hack I have made in the assembly form is to taper the sides of the cauls as well as the wedges. This keeps the bottom of the cauls flat against the form.

https://photos.app.goo.gl/fHXVJ7aNuJDnnMEQ6
Brad
 
Brad-Some time ago a friend that shows up here occasionally, guided me toward resawing off the open side of the wood rather than between the fence and the blade. For thin repetative cuts, it will change your resawing experience. More cuts and you don't have to deal with the curves and drift that increase with every cut you make. The flat, square side that you start with is always against the fence. Does not matter for larger simple cuts like splitting a 2" board in 2, but makes a huge difference when splitting that same 2" board into slices a few mm thick. The fence gets moved every cut by the thickness of the slice to be cut. You have to invent a way to move the fence the right amount, but that was not too hard. Probably lots of ways to do that.-Bob
 
Bob, you're so right! When I visited Les Stansell a few years ago, he showed me the Laguna Driftmaster fence on the big Laguna that he uses for resawing. As you might guess from the name, it has a convenient mechanism to adjust for drift but, more to the point, it has a large crank that shifts the fence about .070" per turn. This makes it easy to slice consistent plates off of a board while keeping the flat, smooth side against the fence. I've tricked mine out with a dial indicator on a magnetic base, which provides a little better repeatability.

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Thanks very much Bob. I was aware of the method of resawing off the back side of the billet, but do not do so because of the need to reset the fence for every cut. Maybe as you say there is an easy way to repeat the thickness setting, but I have not found it yet. In fact in this case it took me three cuts to get the fence down to a nominal 2.5 mm. The first try was 3.0 mm, the next was 2.75 mm and the 3rd through the 6th were 2.5 mm. My work around to avoid the increased wavyness in subsequent cuts, is to dress the billet on my 6”x48” belt sander to dead flat after each cut. So just like cutting off the backside, you always have a flat and level surface against the drift bar. So in the end, you can reset the fence in between cuts, or you can dress the billet face in between. My feeling is you are going to have to clean up the faces sometime! As you say, lots of ways to get it done.
Brad
 
Thanks very much Bob. I was aware of the method of resawing off the back side of the billet, but do not do so because of the need to reset the fence for every cut. Maybe as you say there is an easy way to repeat the thickness setting, but I have not found it yet. In fact in this case it took me three cuts to get the fence down to a nominal 2.5 mm. The first try was 3.0 mm, the next was 2.75 mm and the 3rd through the 6th were 2.5 mm. My work around to avoid the increased wavyness in subsequent cuts, is to dress the billet on my 6”x48” belt sander to dead flat after each cut. So just like cutting off the backside, you always have a flat and level surface against the drift bar. So in the end, you can reset the fence in between cuts, or you can dress the billet face in between. My feeling is you are going to have to clean up the faces sometime! As you say, lots of ways to get it done.
Brad
I find sanding the base of the billet flat to start with helps cut out vibration and give a smoother cut.
 
The dial indicaor is an interesting idea. The crank on my Driftmaster has not been accurate enough for me. I slide a large magnet tightly up against the outside of the fence, which is aluminum. Then when I move it, I move it over until a preset shim (something like 3,4,5,6mm etc.) drops between the magnet and the fence. Make the cut, slide the magnet over against the fence again, then move it over for the next cut until the shim drops. Not fancy, but works very good. Will work with any fence. No need have the pricey Driftmaster, although t does have some cool features that makes resawing a lot easier. Brad, really worth working this out with the price of koa these days. You're jointing away good stuff.-Bob
 
Fascinating that we've pretty much had the same number of processes as there have been people responding! So many variations possible to get a good result.

I recently got a new Rikon saw. I have a resaw bar (came with the saw) but I find I don't use it. I also made a special tall featherboard to help with resawing but I've found I don't need to use that either. I'm using a copy of highland woodworking's wood slicer blade, and once I got my guides, fence, and table set up well, and figured out the right tension on the blade, I haven't had any drift. If I square up the bottom edge of the stock and one face, I can resaw a whole stack of plates and they all come out the same. Set the blade to about .110" from the fence (which works out to about a .100" thick plate), check thickness on scrap, then just push the board through over and over. I've resawn maybe 30 ukes worth of wood and I haven't even had to think about drift, or squaring each face, or changing the fence between cuts. It's a beautiful experience, compared to resawing I've done in the past without a good blade and/or saw setup. I like it so much that I often find myself standing in my shop eyeing my wood stash and daydreaming about which boards to resaw next, despite the fact that I've already got several years worth of plates cut and ready to go...
 
Yesterday I decided to try resawing from the backside of the billet, so I could compare methods. I will admit to being a little dim yesterday and did not understand Bobs method of resetting the fence, but I made a shim to help me eye ball things and carried on. On a billet just slightly thicker than 1”, I was able to get seven slices with a nominal thickness of 2.2 mm. That is one slice more than I got using the drift bar, so I will be switching how I resaw now. And fortunately today at our ukulele group get together my friend and fellow luthier Paul Arrington was there and he explained how Bob uses the magnet and shim to reset the fence, duh!
Brad
 
Its funny how someone mentions something and you realize you have been doing things the hard way for far too long.....

As soon as I read the method Bob laid out using the magnet to adjust the fence...the light-bulb turned on. This is brilliant cheap and simple. Just the way I like it.

Thanks for sharing that Bob!
 
For you guys that are using the Lenox woodmaster carbide tip blades, I just found a way to sharpen them. I spend (at least until recently) about $500 a month on blades, so this is a real money saver. I took a bench mounted chainsaw grinder and mounted a diamond wheel to it. The trickiest part was making an accurate indexing system to allow for precisely grinding just enough tooth to get back to sharp. I'm so happy with the results, so far I've gotten three sharpenings out of one blade, each sharpening cuts good as new.
 
For you guys that are using the Lenox woodmaster carbide tip blades, I just found a way to sharpen them. I spend (at least until recently) about $500 a month on blades, so this is a real money saver. I took a bench mounted chainsaw grinder and mounted a diamond wheel to it. The trickiest part was making an accurate indexing system to allow for precisely grinding just enough tooth to get back to sharp. I'm so happy with the results, so far I've gotten three sharpenings out of one blade, each sharpening cuts good as new.

Good idea Mr Johansen......Seeing as these grinders are not too expensive I thought why not get one and see if it can be converted to sharpen most of the used bandsaw blades that I have laying around...Meanwhile :) Have a look at this video by good old Matthias on how he has found a way to do it.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LxvYXbeaLxE
 
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