Woodworking

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Lanx

Oye Ve
<Prior Amod>
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131,345
I'll ask in here

I ordered a CNC and it's coming to Canada from the us. I got an email from FedEx asking about if I have a customs broker. If I don't I can use their services?

I have no idea what this is about. Can I handle this solo?
whatever happened to buy canadian?
 

Kovaks

Mr. Poopybutthole
2,354
3,142
Finally got the new house which has a 600 sqft shop in the back, went to order a Laguna F2 to upgrade my tablesaw and the fucking things are sold out across the country till August or later, looks like I can either get a harvey, so new I'm not sure about quality or service, or drop the extra money on a sawstop. Fucking backed up supply chains.
 

Borzak

Bronze Baron of the Realm
24,420
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whatever happened to buy canadian?

Oddly enough the last large CNC equipment bought for the company a 5 axis two head plasma toch beamline came from Canada. Part of Lincoln electric.
 

BrutulTM

Good, bad, I'm the guy with the gun.
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Is anything even made in canada?
Screenshot_20210414-212521.png



Picquic screw drivers. They're pretty nice or as some would say, skookum as Frigg!
 
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Intrinsic

Person of Whiteness
<Gold Donor>
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Finally got the new house which has a 600 sqft shop in the back, went to order a Laguna F2 to upgrade my tablesaw and the fucking things are sold out across the country till August or later, looks like I can either get a harvey, so new I'm not sure about quality or service, or drop the extra money on a sawstop. Fucking backed up supply chains.

Fuck Sawstop. No way is it worth 3x the price. Sorry but you can put a price on safety. I was looking strongly at the F2 as well but reviews seemed a little spotty on quality. But part of me thinks they were just older reviews of the F1 because of old pictures vs recent publish dates. Kind of turned me off.

Pretty sure I’ve decided to keep my Ridgid job site and just grab a Grizzly combo 12” Planer / Jointer. But I haven’t found a new house yet so don’t 100% know what the space situation is going to be like.

Everything is back ordered basically though. Gives me time to research and find a new house and new shop setup at least.
 
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Kovaks

Mr. Poopybutthole
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Fuck Sawstop. No way is it worth 3x the price. Sorry but you can put a price on safety. I was looking strongly at the F2 as well but reviews seemed a little spotty on quality. But part of me thinks they were just older reviews of the F1 because of old pictures vs recent publish dates. Kind of turned me off.

Pretty sure I’ve decided to keep my Ridgid job site and just grab a Grizzly combo 12” Planer / Jointer. But I haven’t found a new house yet so don’t 100% know what the space situation is going to be like.

Everything is back ordered basically though. Gives me time to research and find a new house and new shop setup at least
For myself I completely agree, after thinking about it a bit, one case where I can kind of make a case for the extra safety and cost is that my kids are getting more interested in building things, and while they are probably 5 years from using the tablesaw, I would spend about anything to keep them safe.
 

Dandai

Lesco Brandon
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I didn’t think to take pics, but today I tried my hand at milling with a bandsaw on a dolly, pushing it through a log fastened to a tall saw horse. It -worked- but even with a purpose-designed blade for resawing green logs (3 TPI, thin set, hooked to clear the chip), the 3/4 hp motor made it a real chore. Free hand milling with a chainsaw is surprisingly very accurate with minimal practice and a good technique, but my Stihl 261 gets fucking heavy after 5-10 minutes. I was hoping the bandsaw would be more sustainable but it’s too inefficient to be practical.

Tomorrow I’m gonna take a few hours and build a simple chainsaw mill. I’ll take pics of the result at least.
 

Kovaks

Mr. Poopybutthole
2,354
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I didn’t think to take pics, but today I tried my hand at milling with a bandsaw on a dolly, pushing it through a log fastened to a tall saw horse. It -worked- but even with a purpose-designed blade for resawing green logs (3 TPI, thin set, hooked to clear the chip), the 3/4 hp motor made it a real chore. Free hand milling with a chainsaw is surprisingly very accurate with minimal practice and a good technique, but my Stihl 261 gets fucking heavy after 5-10 minutes. I was hoping the bandsaw would be more sustainable but it’s too inefficient to be practical.

Tomorrow I’m gonna take a few hours and build a simple chainsaw mill. I’ll take pics of the result at least.
I have a couple oaks on the new property that have rot and need to come down, they jave long strait sections with no branches and I really want to mill them to slabs and dry them, let me know how it goes.
 
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Captain Suave

Caesar si viveret, ad remum dareris.
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Free hand milling with a chainsaw is surprisingly very accurate with minimal practice and a good technique


This guy's channel is great. He has some land out in the wilderness and on a series of extended vacations built a pretty decent log cabin and bunch of furniture and craft items, basically all by hand with self-made tools (less the chainsaws, obviously).
 
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Dandai

Lesco Brandon
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This guy's channel is great. He has some land out in the wilderness and on a series of extended vacations built a pretty decent log cabin and bunch of furniture and craft items, basically all by hand with self-made tools (less the chainsaws, obviously).
That's exactly where I learned to do the free hand milling technique. I'm still using a cross cut chain (I ordered a couple ripping chains from granberg tonight) so my slabs aren't as pretty as those, but they're pretty uniform. I'll grab a picture tomorrow.

For my pine slabs/posts I use a tape measure to locate the edge of a full 4x4 post on the log and drive a 3" screw about an inch into the log. Then I hook my chalk line over the screw and walk to the other end, locate the edge of the 4x4 post on that end, and snap the line. Finally, I roll the chalk line back up and remove the screw. I initially make a shallow first pass that goes over the chalk line then make progressively deeper passes using only the tip of the bar and paying careful attention to my form and maintaining the bar perpendicular to the ground. For a 7 ft long 25" diameter log it takes me about 10 minutes (I haven't actually timed it but it feels longer than 5 and shorter than 15) to get all the way through. Of course this is 3 minutes of cutting and 7 minutes of me shaking my arms, groaning, and generally wondering if a fence is actually necessary or important. My first slabs I had the log on the ground and kept dipping my chain in the [very sandy] dirt, instantly and frustratingly dulling it. I eventually wised up and started using a thick slab as a cutting bench so I can plunge without worry of getting the chain in the dirt.

Free hand milling isn't be too bad for making slabs, but I'm looking to make a few dozen fence posts for the perimeter of a 5 acre property. That makes setting up what is essentially a jig for milling (chainsaw mill/sled) worth the effort to me. I'm sure I could eventually get on his level where I could mill for longer than 5-10 minute stretches, but I'm trying to finish milling these fence posts sometime this year!

Edit: I forgot to mention that the shavings produced using this technique are super long, way different than cross cutting. A couple of times I've been very close to fully separating a slab from the log and started using more than the tip of the bar and packed the saw so full of long shavings that it jammed. I've got a Stihl MS261 (coincidentally I think the same saw he had in that video) which is a 50cc engine. I've been saving up some new tool money for a few months now and may end up getting an 80cc saw for milling. Before I pull the trigger I want to spend more time milling and woodworking in general.

Edit2: I'm watching the video again to refresh my memory. He does mention the long shavings, and then he talks about using bungee cord as a guide. I initially tried using masonry string and after cutting it a couple times decided to switch to a chalk line. I've practiced enough now that I might be able to use the string again, but it's not obvious to me that the string would be any quicker than marking with a chalk line.
 
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Dandai

Lesco Brandon
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I have a couple oaks on the new property that have rot and need to come down, they jave long strait sections with no branches and I really want to mill them to slabs and dry them, let me know how it goes.
After watching the vid above and sleeping on it, I’ve decided I just need to suck it up and free hand and not bother with the chainsaw mill. I’d forgotten that Advoko (the Russian lawyer in the bush craft vid) said his experience with his chainsaw milling jig was pretty much the same as mine with my bandsaw on a dolly (it works, but it’s slow and dulls your chain quickly). It’d be nice to have a less physically demanding method, but I could use the exercise anyway. To me, the appeal of the chainsaw mill was efficiency (in the form of being able to mill more posts in the same period of time), but the disadvantages don’t seem to outweigh the advantages, especially given that I’ll get stronger and more adapted to holding the chainsaw as I continue to practice.

As promised, here’s pics from the first full 7’ rip I did this afternoon (on a slab already cut at 4” thick:

E01848E5-78A5-48D6-9683-1C23F80D071E.jpeg

1716529C-3889-4D76-8248-DC7FA84C15DD.jpeg

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I started the timer after I took the screw out and had marked the chalk line.

72810EA8-9CBC-4AAF-929D-FEBEC4586872.jpeg
 
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BrutulTM

Good, bad, I'm the guy with the gun.
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Looks good. Feel free to mail me those shavings to use as fireplace kindling.
 

Dandai

Lesco Brandon
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Looks good. Feel free to mail me those shavings to use as fireplace kindling.
You’ll have to fish those out of the chicken manure compost pile but I’ll be making more soon! I’m about to hit up google maps to estimate how many posts I’ll need and use working towards that number to keep me motivated. I’m gonna be fucking sore tomorrow.

Edit: These are from today. I’d moved bigger slabs to the driveway for bandsaw on a dolly milling.

23AFB9F4-0857-426C-AA43-96CA165804BA.jpeg


These are what I’ll be working through the rest of the day (I started them a couple months ago).
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This is my cutting slab setup. You can see the stakes with screws on either end to hold the logs. The heavy logs take some work to get onto the slab but it’s a helluva lot better than burying the nose of the bar in the dirt every time I accidentally penetrate through.

6CCE22CC-696B-433C-B97C-2D586EBDA730.jpeg
 
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Captain Suave

Caesar si viveret, ad remum dareris.
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What part of the country are you in? If you're got moisture and/or termites, using that untreated softwood will just have you doing this all again in a couple years. My great-grandfather was a cattle rancher and I've set my fair share of posts on the family land. You don't want to be doing that shit any more often than you have to. (We were lucky enough to have a supply of osage orange and those will outlive the post-digger. The homestead fence was fir, but those were put in concrete. DIY anti-rot treatments don't work, IMO.)
 
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Dandai

Lesco Brandon
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What part of the country are you in? If you're got moisture and/or termites, using that untreated softwood will just have you doing this all again in a couple years. My great-grandfather was a cattle rancher and I've set my fair share of posts on the family land. You don't want to be doing that shit any more often than you have to. (We were lucky enough to have a supply of osage orange and those will outlive the post-digger. The homestead fence was fir, but those were put in concrete. DIY anti-rot treatments don't work, IMO.)
North central Florida. It’s humid here but the sand drains so well that fence posts last longer than you’d think. I put a new 6” post so I could hang a gate that opens to the back of my property. The 4” post I took out to was no worse for wear and at least 15 years old. The top was weathered but the buried part could’ve been from a month ago.
 

Borzak

Bronze Baron of the Realm
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Just rough cut it then use an adze and hand plane knock out real quick.

Done with just an adze, nothing to it....

Rye_Shipyard-_the_Construction_of_Motor_Fishing_Vessels%2C_Rye%2C_Sussex%2C_England%2C_UK%2C_1944_D22783.jpg
 
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BrutulTM

Good, bad, I'm the guy with the gun.
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Just rough cut it then use an adze and hand plane knock out real quick.

Done with just an adze, nothing to it....

Rye_Shipyard-_the_Construction_of_Motor_Fishing_Vessels%2C_Rye%2C_Sussex%2C_England%2C_UK%2C_1944_D22783.jpg
This reminds me of the time my buddy spent the whole weekend watching the New Yankee Workshop and then came in to work all fired up about getting into woodworking. I just told him that it's a great hobby but watching Norm Abrams build something is sort of like watching a great artist do a painting. It looks easy when they do it, but when you try it's not going to go that way.