Heirloom Woods
|
Heirloom Woods
|
|
The stock comes from the supplier in random widths and lengths so the first step in the milling process is cutting it to rough manageable lengths on the radial arm saw. . Once we get things down to a manageable length it's time to start cleaning it up and readying it for glue up into panels. If you are asking yourself "why I just don't buy stock wide enough to start with" the answer is that even if stock that wide was available the premium price of scarce wide planks would raise the cost of a cradle well above what it is now. There is also the practical matter of the capabilities and capacities of my tools to consider. First thing to do is to get one flat face to use as a reference for milling the other sides. After getting a flat face I can put it against the jointers fence to get a straight edge that is at 90 degrees to that face. Later on I'll use that edge to rip cut the second edge on my table saw. Last step here is to run the stock through the thickness planer to clean up the second face and get the stock close to it's final thickness. You can kind of think of these power tools as the apprentices of yore. They take care of the grunt work quickly and efficiently. Like apprentice's the machines have to be fed and cared for. After every job they have to be torn down to some extent and all those sharp edge cutting tools have to be sharpened and the tool alignment checked. That's a days work in itself.
|
