Poor man's Rip saw

[Sailing-Randy]

Okay, this probably doesn't belong on this bulletin board, but I am not sure where else to go. Besides, we are an eclectic bunch, so someone might have a good answer or point me to a good bulletin board.

I want to harvest my own lumber and build a boat from it. Some of you may remember I asked about chainsaw lumber mills. I have searched the web for chainsaw lumber mills as well as bandmills. The bandmills are nice!

However, I don't have that much money, nor do I really want to invest that much for what in the end will be a small project, 20-30' cruising boat.

So I made myself an old fashioned bow-saw with a wooden frame using a camp saw blade. Does anyone know how to resharpen the blade for ripping purposes. Before I started resharpening the blade went almost nowhere no matter how much pressure I put on it. I filed the teeth flat like a rip saw without changing angle or fileing the raker teeeth. I finished a 2" thick slab 9'from an eastern red cedar tree in an hour or so. Of course I took breaks, came back after a while, etc.

Anybody have any ideas how to improve on what I did? I know I could buy a band saw blade, but which one, and who would sell me about 4'?

[Art Read]

Is it just me, or does anbody else wonder whether the time spent HAND(!) sawing raw lumber to build a 20'- 30' "cruising" boat won't be repaid many times over by scrounging up, by hook or by crook, or maybe even buying, some "somewhat" dimensioned lumber and a beat up old planer, skill saw and a nice power plane or maybe belt sander? The lumber requirements for the hull won't signify after you've spent months "prowling" and then paying the local nautical flea market, the various required "precious" metal distributers and eventually the local, high-end boat "emporium" for all the otherwise unobtainable odds and ends you're gonna have to break down and actually purchase for the boat before your first sail anyway. Forget about the rigging supplier or sailmaker. HAND sawing....? Maybe mill your own with a chainsaw rig, or better yet, find a guy near by with a "Woodmizer", but HAND saw? I just can't get past that image.... God knows, perhaps you don't have as many people as I do, who are watching over your shoulder and wondering just WHEN you're ever gonna finish the damn thing! ;-}

(Does kinda sound like a fun project though... "You're a better man than me, "Gunga Din"...)

[This message has been edited by Art Read (edited 11-18-2001).]

[wolfietuk]

I dont Know weather to tip my hat to you or call for the guys in the white jackets. I have a cabinet shop and do a little furniture building for fun. A friend is a tree surgeon and gets me some really good logs. We found a local retired man with a portable mill who rips it up for .15 per foot. Do not forget to cut up about twice as much as you need. You will lose a lot to splitting checking and warping. Also you will need storage in a controlled enviroment for 1 year per inch thickness. I would deliver pizzas for the year or more that drying would take. You will make about 3 times as much as you will save on wood. Good luck.

[Chris Coose]

Ditto to all the above.
My mind moved passed the sawing job to thickness finishing and I got up and joined my 4 year old watching Shreck.

[CharlieSanti]

Hi, Email me at csanti@stny.rr.com with your mailing address and I will send you a section of ripping bandmill blade from my Smith resaw I seldom reweld a blade after it snaps. I use 1 1/4" x 3tpi timber blades. I will send enough to make several replacement blades so you can have some filed and ready to change while in the field. Charlie

[Tom Lathrop]

I can remember standing at one end of a big crosscut saw with my dad on the other end making a few extra pennies by cutting fire wood. Having also watched men demonstrate timber making in a sawpit, I have to think that someone here is borderline delusional. I doubt that any of these men deve picketed the first mill to install a waterpowered gangsaw. I wonder how Noah did it.

[JMAC]

Absolutely mill out all your boat lumber using sharp hand tools and the grit of a man obsessed! Then write about your experience for WoodenBoat, who'll ask you to expand it into a book, which will be turned into a documentary on PBS...and bingo! You've earned just enough to outfit your boat and sail away!

[ken mcclure]

LOL! Randy, never lose your dreams - despite what others tell you. However, I'd suggest that you go find a log (a short one...maybe 6 feet or so) and process it by hand. If you find that you truly enjoy the experience, then by all means dig a log pit and get one of the old rip saws. You can find them a lot at antique shops. Just about any book on hand tool maintenance will tell you about saw sharpening.

Next best is to harvest the wood and pay someone to mill it. As said above, there are those who have the equipment to do a limited number of logs, and who may do it inexpensively.

Other next best is to find a salvage place that pulls the lumber out of old buildings. The suggestion above to get a planer and use that kind of stuff is excellent. And you can't beat some of the wood you find that was holding up an old structure. It's usually dense old growth and as dry as it's ever gonna get.

[bud]

http://www.vintagesaws.com/library/primer/sharp.html

[rickprose]

i've worked a saw pit, and it really takes two people to do the job, so buddy up to your friends nice and close. even with a sash type saw, it'll go better with two, because once that blade gets a mind of it's own it ain't goin where you want it, so better to keep four eyeballs on it and make it do what you want in the first place.
i've also riven boards out of logs with wedges, but you'd have to have absolutely clear, straight-grained logs to make it worthwhile. it's easier than ripping, but makes for a lot more planing.
as for sharpening a rip saw, roy underhill explains it pretty well in one of his books, but the basic idea is, the sharp edge of the tooth is perpendicular to the surface being cut, while cross-cut teeth have the sharp edge at an angle to the surface.

[LisaS]

If you are near any of the historical re-enactment museums, they might be talked into using your logs as their demo logs in their sawmill shop. I know there's at least one in Massachusetts that is still running a water powered mill.

[Steve Schulz]

Sawing your own planks! Holy smokes - that's hardcore!

I don't think I'd ever want to try it, but from the pictures and things I've seen in books, usually it's a 2 man job, with one guy on top guiding the saw and the guy on the bottom providing the power with gravity assisting.

Finding a genuine rip filed pitsaw might be tough. I don't think I've ever seen one in an antique store or the like - usually it's old crosscut saws. I don't know if these could be filed to rip. You could probably have the teeth cut off & recut to a rip profile.

A reasonable alternative would be to build a framesaw. It's kind of like a bow saw, but with 2 long beams running parallel to the blade, with the blade in between them. The beams are tenoned into crosspieces on each end and the blade is tensioned with a screw mechanism. You would be able to use a chunk of bandsaw blade from a bandsaw mill. It shouldn't be too hard to make.

You'll probably also need an adze or a broadaxe to rough hew the timbers square before you saw them. Set the squared timber over a pit, snap some chalk lines, have your buddy hop into the pit, and go to it. In the pictures I've seen they usually stop the cut 6-8 inches short of the end so the guy on top doesn't have to balance on a progressively narrow beam as each plank comes off the log. Once all your cuts are made just cut the end off the log and all the planks come free.

I think for the amount of money you'll spend on beer to convince your friend to stay in the pit, you'll be able to buy enough lumber to build 2 boats. Better yet, with the time you'd spend sawing, get a second job and earn enough money to buy a bandsaw mill and the lumber to boot.

If you're really itching to saw some lumber, a smaller 1-man framesaw might be just the thing for sawing up natural crooks for knees and breasthooks.

Good luck,
Steve

[AngWood]

Ignore all of these naysayers. Damn the torpedoes. Full speed ahead!

Everyone seems to assume that you want to handsaw your own lumber only to save money. Some of us realize that it also has a certain romantic appeal. You didn't ask whether you should do it, just how. I applaud your ambition and Thoreau-inspired grit!

[Thaddeus J. Van Gilder]

Excellent. Bravo.
but, I have found that it is more convenient to hew two faces face with a broad axe before ripping into boards for two reasons:
1)It makes it easier to keep the saw blade square.
2 If you change you mind, you can rent a 16 inch makita beam saw and rip boards off with that.

I am pretty hard core. I have no tv, I only have a computer at work, and I type most of my scholarly papers on a manuel typewriter. I like to hew logs with a broad axe, and I don't use epoxy. I can quote Thoreau as much as I want, But man, I will not hand rip lumber anymore. You are 10 times the man I am.

[Tim B]

If your going to be that hard core, then shouldn't you grow your own trees too?

[Three Cedars]

You can make a 20-30 foot boat without using a saw at all . Umiaks were made without saws . Axe, adz, wedges, chisels, knife , drill , needles for the skin .

[paladin]

and a hull and deck of a sailboat is about 20% of the money you're gonna spend...;)

[emichaels]

POST PICS !! I gotta see this. I harvest my own lumber and mill on a bandsaw mill. Thats a good amount of work to get boards out also, given that you would rather be in the boat shop building. But I get it when you say you want to do the whole trip !

Good luck to ya.

Eric

[George Ray]

My hats off to you for even considering sawing it yourself.
Post pictures ....

[Thad Van Gilder]

Excellent. Bravo.
but, I have found that it is more convenient to hew two faces face with a broad axe before ripping into boards for two reasons:
1)It makes it easier to keep the saw blade square.
2 If you change you mind, you can rent a 16 inch makita beam saw and rip boards off with that.

I am pretty hard core. I have no tv, I only have a computer at work, and I type most of my scholarly papers on a manuel typewriter. I like to hew logs with a broad axe, and I don't use epoxy. I can quote Thoreau as much as I want, But man, I will not hand rip lumber anymore. You are 10 times the man I am.


wow... I wrote that some 6 years ago and I still feel the same...
-Thad

[glenallen]

I admire your spirit, but if you value your friends, don't ask them to get into THE PIT.
There are so many rewards in building a boat that you don't need the reward of sawing planks by hand.
And don't waste time smelting steel and milling your own fastners.
What boat are you thinking of?
Good Luck!

[TerryLL]

Randy. When I was much younger and had a great deal more time and energy than either money or brains I spent countless hours behind a big Husky chainsaw lumber mill with a 52" bar whacking four-foot (diameter) old-growth Sitka Spruce logs into boardwalk planking. My advice to you is don't. You will be money ahead to get a job flipping burgers and paying someone with a portable bandmill to rough-cut your stock.

But if you are determined to go this route, I am happy to pass on my lessons learned behind that roaring Husky mill.

The best, Terry

[outofthenorm]

Does anyone know what happened with Sailing Randy and this project? It's been a long time. I'd like to know if he actually did saw his own planks. - Norm

[Wes White]

I always wanted to try splitting out my own planks. I've done plenty on a Wood-Mizer.

[Jay Greer]

I got into Japanese tools via working with a master Japanese tea house builder that decided there was more need for boats than tea houses in our area. One of the saws he had in his kit of twenty three saws was a wide bladed saw called a "Maebiki". Tad once demonstrated it's use to me by slabing a log that was impractical to horse over to the power saw. I swear that if we had moved the log, set up supporting horses and then run it through the saw using three men, we would not have been much faster than he was by himself!
JG

[Bob Adams]

Does anyone know what happened with Sailing Randy and this project? It's been a long time. I'd like to know if he actually did saw his own planks. - Norm

Reality may have set in. My back hurt just reading his original post!

[RonW]

The wooden boat forum is a wonderfull form of intertainment, you never know what you are going to read next.

I would have never thought of hand sawing my own planking, either getting old or just turning into a wimp.
More power to you.......

--Just dawned on me how a very old thread has been revised, hope he didn't try it and had a heart attack.....

[paladin]

When I was about 12-13..I "helped" my grandfather drag some 24 x 12 x 40 foot redwood timbers to a sawmill......he dragged them behind his model A about a mile and a half...one at a time....and had them made into 3 x 6 planks for framing his new house......

[gert]

http://www.mcps.k12.md.us/curriculum/Socialstd/Spray/sawmen.jpg
http://www.festivaleye.com/picsreceived/julia-phillips-workhouse-2005/images/Pit%20saw.jpg

[Ron Joslin]

I know randy from another forum. I will send him a pm and ask him whats up and to take a look here.

[Sailing-Randy]

I was typing a reply...and I must of hit a wrong key cause the whole thread renewed itself and I lost what I was typing. It's not appearing here so who knows what happened. I will have to write later when I have a bit more time - I should be at work now!

[katiedobe]

What Randy you don't use a computer at work?
Come on we are dying to know if you sawed your own planks?

[Thad]

Rip saws are sharpened square to the blade and need a little set.

[Sailing-Randy]

Okay, let’s see this thread started six years ago, and now people are getting and giving me grief! Go figure.

I have plans and patterns for Bruce Roberts 27’ Spray that I thought I was going to build. All of that came to halt one evening as my family watched “Captain Ron.” Great video, by the way.

Understand that my wife is not into sailing as much as I am, but she prefers sailing with rather than boat building, or whatever goes along with that.

As the movie credits are rolling Carol says, “That’s looks like fun.”

Dumbfounded I say, “What? You mean sailing like that?”

“No, living on a boat like that, she says.

“Carol, that’s a 60 foot boat…”

Her reply, “Well you better not build one too small then.”

I sat there in the living room knowing my boat building days had come to a halt. There was no way I could afford the time, money or the room to build a boat much bigger than the Spray.

Carol gave me sailing lessons up in Minnesota for which I was certified to sail a 24’ keel boat. The certificate comforted her figuring that I really did know something about sailing. However, much of it was review. She learned this when she took the course from a much less reputable instructor, and she passed the test and admits, under duress, that she still doesn’t know much about sailing at all.

Another story which I won’t go into, but God made it possible to buy a 26’ Paceship in good shape. However, that boat’s days are also numbered as we can’t afford both my dream of sailing down the Mississippi and up the coast and her dream of traveling to different places. I know it sounds like they should be able to match up, but not living on a coast limits us to the Lewis and Clark Reservoir.

Owning a boat this size has also put a reality check in upkeep and costs of a slip, putting it in and taking it out, and winter storage. Having my oldest of three sons in college this year has also put a cramp on spare time and funds.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s a great boat – sails wonderfully and is capable of weekend and vacation cruising, but the time involved traveling 30 miles to clean and do routine work on her eats up allot of time. And when we’re sailing only two or three of us are really “sailing.” The rest are patiently being passengers going no where in particular. When the kids would rather ride bikes than go sailing….

Of course God must also assist in selling the boat as sailboats in Nebraska are not hot items. He can do it, but the time isn’t right quite yet. When that time comes I can still sail “Friends” my 15’ plywood skiff.

As for being “delusional” concerning the idea of hand sawing my own wood; I know I was. I have found a tree man to get some sawn local wood for other projects.

That is probably enough to satisfy most of the hecklers in WoodenBoat land…


Blessings,
Randy

[PeterSibley]

http://www.pennswoods.net/~zigbug/ (http://www.pennswoods.net/%7Ezigbug/)
Have you seen this site ...? It looks doable for very little $.I built bigger ,fancier version once , ran it for 7 or 8 years .Don't I wish I still had it !!

[Paul Fitzgerald]

Thats a great site, especially the personal part.

[Jay Greer]

I would say that you spoke the words of reason and wisdom when you mentioned
"reality check". My own experiance in life cries out to tell you to take a firm check on your own abilities, resources and the reality of what you are embarking upon. Noah knew the flood was comming so he built fast. How many years do you have to build your dream. Dreams are what spur us on to greatness. Reality tells us if we are fools or voyagers on a sea of dreams.
JG

[Sailing-Randy]

Jay,
I couldn't agree more. However, leading up to Christmas I did a talk on keeping Christmas sane. I drew a diagram with two parallel horizontal lines. The upper line represents our expectations for Christmas and the lower represents reality. Then I connect the two lines with a line marked "Misery Quotient." It's a good diagram for a lot of areas of life, but it has one major flaw. If our expectations never rise above our reality we are stuck without hope of life ever getting any better. Boat builders would seem to be people willing to take the risk of disappointment to accomplish their dreams.

Enough philosophy for this morning...

Blessings,

[Jay Greer]

I suppose the driving force that keeps all of us working on or building boats is the vision of happy sailing with friends and family, anchoring in a quiet cove and smelling the shore while cooking up a meal on the galley stove. Or it could be broad reaching in a schooner race, screaming-surfing off of long bright swells in a stiff morning breeze and experiencing the boat bottoming out in the troughs, water up to the rail caps and the compression throwing rainbows up to the first spreaders! No other boats in sight, are we first around the island what is our corrected time? Noah never had it so good!
Jay

[katiedobe]

Randy,
When you sell the big boat build a 15' plywood skiff and then the two of you can sail together. Remember, one boat is a sail, two boats is a race.

Small trailer sailers are a joy and easy to maintain. Lots of easily built plans out there, and you don't have to saw your own wood to build them.

[Sailing-Randy]

All I know for sure is the story isn't over yet. We'll see what the next chapter brings

[paladin]

somewhere on the forum I posted piks of my lumber mill and automated saw operation.......2 sawhorses....one rather old thai gentleman, a handsaw, a string and chalk.He would chalk the string, tighten it to outline the plank to be cut, snap the string and make a chalk line,,,,and sit on the plank backwards and saw the plank that way, just as well as anyone with a big table saw.

[Sailing-Randy]

I found the pic
http://www.woodenboatvb.com/vbulletin/upload/showthread.php?t=55425&highlight=thai

Interesting...but I am not going to do it. I got boat repairs to start in a couple of weeks after Easter....

[niander]

Ditto to all the above.
My mind moved passed the sawing job to thickness finishing and I got up and joined my 4 year old watching Shreck....lol

same but it was toy story 2!
Man electricity or fuel owns!