How to Use Your Bandsaw as a Saw Mill

[George Vondriska] One of the things that I really enjoy doing, is using my shop band saw as a sawmill. Not everybody's aware of this, it's what I want to talk to you about today. This is pretty cool, bunch of compelling reasons for doing this. One is that we can take stuff that might normally be firewood going into your fireplace. Look for special pieces out of that, and turn them into planks that you can use in your woodworking projects.

Additionally, one of the things I really like doing is, let's say a tree goes down at my house. I can save pieces from that. And then later, make a project out of lumber, from a tree that was on my own property. So there's a heritage, kind of a provenance to that. That's really, really cool.

A couple of things that we need to do in order to get set up. I've got a saw, that's got a 12 inch capacity here. I'm using 10 inches of that capacity for the log I'm going to cut today. In the saw I've got a resaw blade it's a three tooth per inch blade. So it's a good, heavy, aggressive resaw blade.

Now in the log itself, I had to do some preparation. When you cut round stock, the danger in this is that, if the round stock hasn't somehow been stabilized it's got the opportunity to roll as you're cutting it, very dangerous, very bad thing. So I've got this very simple sled, already fastened to my log. Just a 90 degree angle, gussets in here that support it and keep it at 90 degrees. And then there's a series of holes that the screw goes into.

So three different holes. I can pick the hole I need, depending on the diameter of the log on cutting I'm through the holes. I've run some big sheet metal screws. That's what's holding everything together here. The sheet metal screws are just into the bark on the outside here and a little bit into the wood.

So there's a little bit of waste on the outside here. It's a piece of slab wood I wouldn't have been able to use anyway. So not a big deal. Additionally, on the log, if you have a look at the top of it here, you can see this blue. I use the chalk line, a snap line, and I snapped a line from end to end.

So my first cut through this log, which is a piece of cherry is going to be just a free hand cut following that line. Once we've got it in half sections I'll show you how you continue the process to make it into planks. So, pretty well set to go here. And I'm going to spin this around, start the cut and you can see just how easy it is to set this up and turn my band's onto a sawmill. It's important to note that the log is dripping wet green.

You want to not allow the log to dry and log form, we want the log to dry after it's been cut into planks, then the planks will dry over time, so that we have usable lumber out of that. Now let's have a look at what we have inside here. That is some really, really neat looking grain out of this cherry. Now, if we look at the two half sections together. What we've cut out of this log is what's called a bookmatch.

That means that the grain on this face, is the perfect mirror image of the grain on this face. So it's another benefit to doing this. Using your saw as a saw mill, is that if I keep track of these pieces, I could put them into a project. One next to the other, think of a pair of raised panel doors where the grain perfectly mirrors from one door to another. So, pretty neat aspect that by keeping track of your pieces you can have your own bookmatch stuff.

Now I'm going to change my setup just a little bit. And then when we come back, I'll show you how to make this into individual planks. I've done a couple of things now to get ready for the next step. I took that half section of cherry and snapped another line on it. And I cut this flat off of one edge.

The reason for that is that, when I put this piece, the half section against the fence, by having that bottom taken off, it's much easier to hold it upright, so it's not falling away from the fence. The fence itself, I got that installed. I worked through my drift compensation on that. So I've got that all set to go. And I set the distance from the fence to the blade to an inch.

If you want to end up with three quarter inch wood for your project, you want to cut a quarter inch over that. So just add a quarter inch to your finished dimension when you're making it here on your bandsaw mill. I'm all set up here. Now I can just keep feeding my half section through taking off one inch planks. Well, that gives you a good idea of just how easy this is to use your shop and saw in order to turn logs like this into lumber you can use in your projects.

I'm going to go ahead and finish up my half sections here. Then once that's done, I'll let this stuff air dry. Pretty soon it's going to be available for me to use for a project in my shop. So check this out, try it on your band saw you're really gonna enjoy doing this.