Est. 1998 — 27 years of woodworking knowledge
What method or jigs have
Ten Thumbs
>worked for folks here to process "chunks" of odd shaped wood (as in large splits from the firewood pile) into something with a couple of flat faces to allow for further sawing etc. I have several cherry, walnut, holly, etc cut-offs that I need to clean up and get out of my floor. They average about two feet long, a foot or so wide and about five to 8 inches thick, mostly quarter sections of logs. Any ideas appreciated.
Re: What method or jigs have
paul womack
>To mark a line to work to, fix your log in place with the intended fla surface horizontal, using saw dogs, or what ever. The floor (or bench) that you're on must be flat.
Then use a giant "engineers surface gauge" to scribe a line parallel to the floor. This can be improvised from scrap wood, nails etc.
Then work to this line using axes, draw knife, scrub planes etc.
BugBear
Re: What method or jigs have
Bill Houghton, Sebastopol, CA
>Once you've established the desired flat face, if you're not too comfortable with a hatchet or don't own a good one, you can waste* a lot of material using the tried and true crosscut-and-chunks method.
1. Crosscut through the waste repeatedly down to near the layout lines. Depending on how much wood there is to remove and the species, these crosscuts will be anywhere from 1/2" to 1" apart. See note at end of #2 below.
2. Using a stout chisel and a hammer and observing grain direction, pry and beat on the resulting chips-waiting-for-release until they've all broken off. If it's hard to tell grain direction, you're better off to have stopped cutting farther from your layout lines.
3. You now have one rough face, ready for the scrub plane and normal flattening process.
*I am using this verb in its positive sense, meaning "remove quickly and efficiently without worrying about how the waste material looks," as opposed to its negative sense.